IT organizations are increasingly under pressure to meet higher performance standards under significant cost constraints. With organizational complexity increasing across geographies, mergers & acquisitions, and technical platforms, many of our clients are turning to IT Service Management for solutions to streamline operations, reduce errors and increase productivity.
The ConfigureTek team has put together a few high-level areas of discussion for our clients evaluating service desk delivery models.
Financial Management:
The SaaS model shifts service desk expenditures from capex to opex (capital expenditures to operating expenses). This re-allocation of service desk expenses allows upfront cost savings – reduced initial expenses, lowers overall tax burden for the company, and added flexibility from a pay-as you-go model. On the flip side, on-premise, perpetually licensed service desk implementations tend to be more cost efficient over the long-term (after 5 years). The advantage of the perpetually licensed model being that a high upfront cost in year 1 results in reduced expenses over subsequent years.
Performance, Availability and SLAs:
The service desk is subject to requirements from numerous stakeholders across the IT organization. Service desk managers are often guided by a number of availability, functionality, and operational SLAs. SaaS vendors provide impressive guarantees for uptime and performance – often touting availability metrics above 99%. Additionally, the ease of implementation and flexibility offered by SaaS vendors expedites the time-to-ROI for service desk clients.
Security and Compliance:
While every SaaS offering is unique, compliance concerns arise from the basic premise of cloud-based offerings where sensitive information can end up on servers and systems owned by another organization. These requirements demand considerable review, particularly from clients in healthcare, financial services and public sector industries.
