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A support mechanism focused on customer needs

More complex support needs

Information technology requires a vast range of support. For faculty members to deliver successful lectures in technology classrooms, the network router must allow them to get to the servers on which their information is stored. They must understand the impact of compression upon the quality of their displayed images. The computer must come up in the right configuration when they turn it on, and they must be able to find the right Web pages for a particular class. There are many ways the lecture can fail, even when the technology works flawlessly. Our current information technology support model draws a bright line between the responsibilities of the technology organization and those of the user. Succinctly, the central IT organization delivers the means and the users implement them. We have met our responsibility by providing the technology classroom, offering classes in PowerPoint and word processing, and having a multimedia center where instructors can convert slides to images. Our traditional users have the ability and willingness to integrate these capabilities into the final product, the classroom lecture. Our new mainstream users, however, are not willing to invest a significant amount of time learning PowerPoint or how to digitize slides, and they are completely intolerant of classrooms that do not work as advertised.

The help desk next door

While mainstream users bring different support challenges to IT, the need for traditional support has not diminished. Someone must know how to use PowerPoint, someone must be able to reset the instructor's PC, and someone must be able to select the right compression ratio for the images. Our new model proposes a distributed support mechanism, with the nexus of support shifted from the central help desk to the department. This offers a number of advantages:

• Support is as close as possible to the user. Most of the questions are answered "next door."
• Department-based support providers-or on-site consultants (OCs)-understand the information issues of the discipline. They know how to configure a keyboard for Spanish characters and which electronic foreign language dictionary is the best. They know what is truly important to the discipline and what is fluff.
• OCs understand the personalities of their customers. They know who wants to be pointed to the manual and who needs to be shown. They know who is too shy to ask for help and who is facing a high-priority deadline.
• Departments can best weigh costs against benefits for their constituencies. If a completely customized desktop environment is essential to a department's success, it can reallocate existing personnel to provide for it. If it is not essential, the department can take advantage of the environment provided as part of the institutional infrastructure.
• Departments can decide when a particular technology should be introduced, and to what extent. If only one person wants a Web page, that can be dealt with one on one.⁵ But if half the people want Web pages, it may be more efficient to provide a class.

Many institutions have tried the idea of departmental support personnel with varying results.⁶ There are several critical success factors for this part of the model.

• OCs must understand the content and culture of the department. It is easier to teach a linguist about technology than to get a technologist to fully understand the academic issues in the Spanish department.
• We must train OCs how to support the appropriate technologies and how to access the resources and tools they will need to efficiently solve problems.
• The department must have a baseline information environment that is reliable and designed to require minimal support.
• OCs must have tools to make them more efficient and effective. Facing a non-functioning PC, they need diagnostic software to help determine whether the hardware is defective. To present a class on the construction of Web pages, they should have a course outline, handouts, and overheads prepared by professional instructional developers.
• We must be flexible when selecting OCs and determining their job descriptions. We might think that every department needs a master's-level computer scientist. In reality, some may be better served by a part-time graduate student.
• Departments must play by the economic rules of the new model. If their OCs spend all of their time holding the hands of a few faculty, the department cannot expect the central IT organization to provide primary support for the rest of the faculty. If departments are only willing to allocate part of a secretary to technology support, they should not expect the same level of service as the department that converts a faculty line to a support position.
• The IT organization must play by the economic rules of the new model. Where it accepts the role of expert, it must be truly expert and deliver expert services.

Implications for central IT organizations

It is fairly obvious from the previous description that our model implies significant changes in the user's department. There are equally significant implications for the IT organization. There are four critical success factors-training, consulting, tools, and baseline environment-for which the central support organization should take the primary responsibility. These elements are all part of a dynamic continuum that must be managed.

When technologies are new, are poorly understood, or are used by only a few within the institution, a consulting service (answering the questions one at a time as they arise) is the only approach. But as the same question begins to be asked repeatedly because more are using the technology, we need to engage training rather than consulting. Likewise, when it becomes possible to provide "automatic" solutions (such as software installers), then we no longer have to take the user's time and mental space for training. And, finally, the same function should eventually be driven into the overall baseline environment and become transparent to the user.

• Getting smarter about training. The complexity of today's environment makes it virtually impossible to provide full training in even a single common application. WordPerfect 6.0, for example, has a reference manual of 804 pages and over 100 options that can be selected from its primary window. Mainstream users are unwilling to take time to learn all the functions, and they would not remember them even if they did. They do not know they need to understand mail-merge until they have to send out 200 rejection letters. When that need shows up, they want to know how to do it now. Classes given once a semester, or even once a month, will not satisfy their needs.

No central organization can afford to deliver this "just in time" instruction. The OC might decide that it is a priority need and attempt to satisfy it, but the time it takes to prepare a class may be prohibitive. Our model proposes a distributed solution to this challenge. Professional instructional developers in the central IT support organization can create a series of instructional modules, starting with an introductory overview and including segments covering special features such as mail-merge, desktop publishing, embedded documents, etc.

Central IT might use these materials to deliver classes at the beginning of the semester, where there is a large demand. OCs would be trained in the use of these materials and would pick the specific content needed by their department. The materials would be designed to allow the training to take place in the department's environment, rather than presenting the trainees with unfamiliar screens and functions. Trainers would be able to choose examples relevant to the department.

• Tailoring consulting services. The consulting function should be similarly distributed between the department and central resources. OCs should be the first contact for questions. If they need help in solving the problem, they have a direct line to the experts in the IT organization. If the OC is not available, the department might arrange for central support to provide temporary backup. If the same question keeps coming up, the OC can provide, or even impose, training in that area.

Departmental support is the primary source for training and consulting specific to a discipline. An OC assigned to the Spanish department can best develop the training materials for the use of the Spanish keyboard and dictionaries. In our distributed model, however, the central support staff would be aware of the special capabilities of the department. If, for example, the Institute for South American Studies requested help in installing the Spanish keyboard, central support could refer the Institute to the Spanish department's OC. In this manner, the institution benefits from both the depth and breadth of training and consulting capabilities.

• Developing technology tools for distributed support. Both consulting and training needs are reduced when the information infrastructure is reliable and consistent. Tools should be developed to navigate this infrastructure efficiently. Even simple information tools can have a large impact on support requirements. For example, if a user can get to the library catalogue by clicking on an icon, many of the details of the communication software, campus network configuration, and library software structure become irrelevant.

The IT organization should take the lead in developing the information infrastructure. It will develop tools of general interest, but it will play a more important role by creating a tool development framework. This will make it possible for departments to develop tools for their unique needs with the levels of expertise they are likely to have. For example, a macro library could be created to make it easy for departmental personnel to extract information from institutional databases and present it in their preferred format.

• Reallocating support responsibilities and staff. This model implies a significant redistribution of support responsibilities and perhaps personnel. If departmental staff field the primary support questions, central IT staff will have the time to develop the more reliable and robust information environment, which will in turn reduce the number of technical problems the departmental staff must resolve. Departmental staff will be able to spend more of their time addressing problems unique to their discipline, thus directly improving the product of the department. The user departments will have to assume a significant portion of the responsibility for their information environments. The IT organization will have to shift its emphasis from primary customer support to secondary support.⁷ These transitions may be difficult to achieve, but once in place, they will provide for a rational economic model and take best advantage of the strengths of constituencies.

Endnotes:

⁵Faculty often need "just-in-time" learning. They can shift overnight from complete indifference to a technology such as the World Wide Web to "I need it NOW." Training delivered monthly or on a fixed schedule does not meet their needs.

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⁶See, for example, Kelly McDonald and Brad Stone, "Distributed Computing with Centralized Support Works at Brigham Young," CAUSE/EFFECT, Winter 1992, 13-18; and Andrea Martin and Vicky Dean, "A Management Perspective on Distributed Support at Rice University," CAUSE/EFFECT, Winter 1996, 22-26.

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⁷We do not think the IT organization will be able to get out of the primary support business completely. Some users, such as freshmen and independent study students, have no departmental affiliation. Their needs, however, can be met by very "generic" environments.

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