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10/15/2001 Archived Entry: "InformationWeek > Help Desks > Help Desks Think Bigger > October 11, 2001"

InformationWeek > Help Desks > Help Desks Think Bigger > October 11, 2001

The help desk used to be the lowliest job in the IT department, and for good reason-help-desk employees spent all day answering simple, repetitive, unchallenging questions. That's changing. Users' questions are getting more sophisticated, and in response, the role of the help desk is evolving from one of troubleshooting to one of understanding and supporting business strategy. "The skill of the help-desk person needs to evolve to a business-unit support role," says Rick Mapes, IT department division manager for the city of Aurora, Colo.

Part of the reason is that more companies, and more employees within companies, are using sophisticated business applications such as enterprise resource planning and customer-relationship management systems. Rather than just worrying about problems on their desktops, IT users are more likely to be affected by issues of application use and business process that are outside the traditional purview of the help desk.