' Our ITAM solution provides a view of a user’s workstation configuration and detailed information on how the workstation assets have changed over the past 30, 60, and 60+ days.'

Please read how Asset Insight saved a company nearly $2.9US million by streamlining Help Desk Support

A major cosmetics conglomerate that is a multi-billion dollar manufacturer and marketer of skin care, makeup, fragrance, and hair care products. The company has 30,000 employees worldwide, with products sold in over 120 countries and territories in North America, Europe, and Asia/Pacific.

Since 2000, the company has been using Asset Insight^® asset tracking solution to manage approximately 4,000 client/server assets located in its corporate headquarters and surrounding areas. During this time, the organisation has migrated away from an IT outsourcing model, taking complete control of all IT assets and services. The ultimate goal of moving IT operations in-house was to improve services, ensure IT supports the corporate strategy, and reduce the overall cost of technology. The first step toward achieving these objectives was to understand precisely what assets are installed in the enterprise, where they are located, and who is using them–information that is automatically provided by Asset insight.

The company has realised numerous Asset Insight benefits, ranging from hard-dollar cost savings to improved employee productivity. The following are key areas where the company has attained measurable and substantial results from a best practices asset management initiative. The estimated return on investment was calculated based on industry averages and actual savings estimates provided by the company.

Use of Asset Insight in the Company's Environment

Prior to Asset Insight, the cosmetics giant was conducting quarterly physical inventories to itemise their installed asset base. Since Asset Insight is a completely automated asset tracking solution, there is no need to visit the desktop for an audit. Instead, Asset Insight automatically inventories the company’s diverse workstations and servers every two weeks (or at administrators desired times). The historical asset information is stored in a central repository, serving as the cornerstone of the company’s enterprise management initiatives, allowing them to:

• Replace physical inventories with automated asset discovery

• Manage software licenses (see also Enterprise Insight and Components of a Unified Solution)

• Budget for new workstations and servers

• Improve help desk resolution time

• Enforce desktop standards

• Plan business continuity efforts

• Manage software migrations

• Perform IT chargeback to the business units

Help Desk Support

The key to improving help desk support is to reduce the time it takes to correct workstation problems, thereby minimising end user distractions and downtime. The starting point for the problem resolution process is the identification of very basic information about the user’s workstation: What type of system is the employee using? How is it configured? What changes have occurred? Typically, help desk representatives must ask end users these questions, only to learn that the end user often has no idea and, therefore, provides erroneous information.

With Asset Insight, the support desk can immediately access a current and historical view of the workstation configuration, avoiding the need to rely on end users for this information and facilitating the overall problem resolution process. In fact, the cosmetics company has been able to reduce the average problem resolution time by at least 2 minutes per call as a result of having immediate access to accurate Asset Insight information.

These savings have not only improved overall end user productivity, but they have allowed the company’s support staff to focus on more proactive IT initiatives. While the company has chosen to maintain its current support desk staffing levels, they could have determined it would be more advantageous to reduce support desk headcount as a result of the savings realised by Asset Insight.

Help Desk Savings per Year

Desktop Standards Enforcement

Many organisations define desktop standards, but do not have a mechanism for monitoring and ensuring that standards are enforced. This company used Asset Insight to assess their install base, define desktop standards that support corporate objectives, and immediately determine when an asset has violated these standards. IT management can then take the appropriate action to migrate the asset to the standard configuration.

According to the company, the average cost per year to support a standard workstation is conservatively $2,800, while the cost to support a non-standard system is twice that amount. This cost surplus can be attributed to the fact that non-standard workstations:

• require specialised end user and support desk skill sets

• lead to network and application conflicts

• reduce the organisation’s ability to attain volume discounts

Standards Enforsement Savings