Campus Financial Systems for the Future

Establishing help-desk support

A help desk with well-trained staff is key to a successful implementation. If this was important in previous generation systems, it is vital if the system involves a change in both functionality and technology. The usual customer service function that many institutions have in place for an older, mature system may not suffice for the level of requests that will occur.

The help desk needs to be able to address questions about both the functional and technical aspects of the system. It may not be necessary to have people who have the answers to all possible questions, but somewhere in the support function that knowledge must exist, and the help-desk support staff need to know where. It is very important that potential help-desk staff be an integral part of the pre-implementation process. If possible, they should have been members of design teams if the system is developed in-house. If it is a purchased product, they should have been on the selection team. Most importantly, they must be a part of the training process. As stated earlier, it may make sense to have the help-desk manager also be responsible for the actual training. The logistical issues alone associated with scheduling and setting up training will surely cross over to the help-desk staff.

Another critical success factor will be the establishment of a "knowledge base" or problem-tracking database. This kind of application facilitates the sharing of knowledge on previously solved problems and will be of increasing value after implementation. The technology of such knowledge bases has improved dramatically, and the functionality of the World Wide Web is driving much of that change.

One potential land mine is staffing the help desk with people who do not really understand the "why" of the transactions or features of the system, but only the "how." Not only is their value in this kind of complex application diminished, but this lack of understanding can actually have a negative impact on the help-desk support. That is why it is important to have them involved up front in the design or acquisition. After all, the help desk is the point of interaction with the service provider for many users of the system, and their perception of it will depend on how well the staff performs. This will be especially true if the distributed support model is being considered, since the likely calls to the help desk will be from reasonably well informed local support staff who presumably understand the basic issues and are only contacting the help desk on difficult problems.

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