Case Study

Large Southeastern City Contracts Turnkey Solutions to Perform IT Help Desk Assessment

Client Background and Overview

Turnkey Solutions was contracted by the information technology (IT) department of a very large, southern city with a population of about 500,000. The department wanted Turnkey Solutions to conduct a deep dive/assessment of their service delivery desk and personnel to ensure that it aligned with industry trends, organizational goals, and industry best practices while supporting the IT needs of its end users and the City. Additionally, Turnkey’s efforts sought to ensure the department remained competitive as an employer to retain and attract top talent.

The scope of work included providing an in-depth analysis of compensation structures for the department’s IT personnel, reviewing their staffing structure and current staffing levels, analyzing and optimizing their business processes and standard operating procedures (SOPs), and assessing their current portfolio of IT services with recommendations for improvements. Turnkey’s dedicated team of analysts and experts not only performed the tasks outlined in the scope, but were also able to provide the department with recommendations and solutions to increase their workforce capacity. Because of Turnkey’s recommendations, the department was also able to create and internally fill a mid-level supervisory role to better support the IT manager and oversee operations for base level staff. This prevented the need for hiring a large number of staff, saving the City resources that otherwise would have been expended for extensive hiring, salaries, and onboarding costs.

Challenges

The City’s IT department had concerns that its current staffing structure, levels, and compensation were not sufficient to retain top talent while also effectively supporting the City’s IT needs. Additionally, the department had been receiving a number of complaints from the workforce concerning job satisfaction and workload, so the department was seeking solutions to prevent employee burnout by increasing operational efficiency. After facilitating various focus groups and carefully assessing the department’s compensation structures, service offerings, staffing levels, staffing opportunities, training program, and documented SOPs and processes, Turnkey’s staff were able to identify the following barriers to the department’s desired operational efficiency:

Employees felt overwhelmed due to understaffing, heavy workloads, and a backlog of tickets, exacerbated by a recent mass exodus of IT technicians.
There were unclear policies and processes in some standard operating procedures (SOPs) creating inefficiency. Lack of documentation for some roles also forced staff to rely on self-created materials.
Limited opportunities for skill development and certification and inadequate initial training left staff reliant on self-learning and restricted career growth.
Staff felt unheard, uninformed, and disregarded in top-level decisions impacting the department, desiring more input and feedback from management.
Field technicians spent considerable time educating users on basic IT knowledge, delaying issue resolution and ticket closure.
Some staff disapproved of ticket prioritization based on rank/connections, which sometimes bypassed procedures, frustrating other end users.
IT staff faced delays from faulty technology and felt unequipped to support technology that was ordered without the department’s approval or foreknowledge.
Confusion about IT services within the Help Desk’s responsibility led to irrelevant tickets, increasing ticket resolution time.

Solution

Turnkey was able to address each challenge specifically, providing tailored solutions and recommendations to address the source of low morale among the department’s workforce, rectify operational delays, and position the department as leading in its industry. The following solutions were provided for each area of need:

Turnkey Solutions provided the client with a Compensation and Pay Report to benchmark staff salaries against. The client’s staffing structure and schedule was also optimized, requiring only 3 additional staff to be hired and increasing peak hour coverage. Additionally password reset duties (which were mainly for the police department) were transferred to them, making this particular service more convenient for the police department and allowing the Service Desk to save resources by adjusting its hours from 24/7 to 7am to 7pm.
Collaborating with department leadership, Turnkey Solutions implemented a Process and Procedure Improvement Plan, editing and enhancing their SOPs by eliminating redundancies, clarifying/editing processes, and recommending a centralized knowledge base to improve staff access, training, and onboarding.
A Career Progression Analysis was provided by Turnkey staff to benchmark the client’s role diversity and opportunities against the market. This led to the creation of a mid-level supervisory role and a re-evaluation of role diversification, with suggestions for better access to online courses and skill development.
Turnkey’s facilitated focus groups inspired the development of a solution to create user education programs to better help users troubleshoot basic issues, reduce ticket volume, and enable staff to handle more complex issues.
Turnkey created an IT Service Catalog for the client to help end users identify services under the client’s jurisdiction and what those services entail.
To streamline prioritization, Turnkey recommended that the client implement a dedicated team of technicians to only handle tickets belonging to high-ranking personnel. This would serve to maintain process integrity, quickly handle high-priority tickets, and alleviate frustration for technicians and end-users.

Impact

Faced with a demoralized IT department hindering City operations, Turnkey Solutions implemented a multi-pronged approach that transformed the department’s efficiency and morale. By streamlining processes, optimizing staffing, and fostering open communication, we empowered staff to resolve issues faster and with greater confidence. This collaborative effort not only reduced costs and improved user experience, but also positioned the City’s IT department as a leader in its field, poised for continued success.