Service Desk Cost Per Month

Metric Type


Service: Service Desk
Type: Cost (absolute)
Timescale: Per month or per year
Ease Of Collection: Easy
Informational Value: Low

What Does It Say?

Service Desk Cost Per Month reports the total cost of operating one or more Service Desks.

How Easily Can It Be Compared?

This metric cannot easily be compared between organisations, since clearly the more users are supported and the more incoming contacts and tickets are handled, the larger the Service Desk needs to be. Compare Service Desk Cost Per User Per Month, Service Desk Cost Per Contact or Service Desk Cost Per Ticket instead.

What Is High Performance?

As a result, there is no single "high performance" range for this metric.
Like any cost, the business will benefit to the extent that it can be reduced year on year, provided this is done with care (see Dangers And Pitfalls below). Budget Adherence could also be used to measure High Performance here.

How Is It Calculated?

Add:

  • Service Desk Hardware Cost Per Month
  • Service Desk Software Cost Per Month
  • Service Desk Personnel Cost Per Month
  • Service Desk Outsourced Cost Per Month
  • Service Desk Other Cost Per Month

How Frequently Should It Be Reported?

Since this cost is dominated by people, or labour, an in-house Service Desk cost does not fluctuate greatly day to day, and monthly reporting is quite sufficient for tracking, and for ensuring budget adherence. Daily or weekly reporting is unnecessary, and annual insufficient for anything but the very highest level budgetting and planning.

When outsourced, this cost may fluctuate more if the Service Desk is priced "per contact" or "per ticket", since cost may be driven by how often users call rather than decisions about how many agents to hire. Monthly reporting is still sufficient, typically in the reporting and invoicing done by the outsourcer. As a leading indicator which could be tracked more frequently, use Number Of Service Desk Contacts or Service Desk Contacts Per User Per Month.

Dangers, Traps, & Pitfalls

Reducing Service Desk cost makes the IT function seem cheaper, but may make users less productive and increase Lost User Time, ultimately harming the business.

How Is It Related To Other Measures?

None

Public Domain Sources

Investigate the Purdue service

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