Data Center – Staffing Levels

Coastal Technologies, developer of HELP!Desk software, has published guidelines for determining the number of technicians needed to staff a support center.

Establishing the proper support staff to customer ratio is essential for any organization. Each of the factors in the table below has an effect on the staff size. Assume a starting ratio 75 to 100 customers per analyst (75:1 to 100:1), then adjust the ratio for the following conditions:

Consideration	Support Staff Levels
Experienced support staff	Decrease
Customer handling expertise	Decrease
Large number of products to support	Increase
Multiple shifts and weekends	Increase
Support staff possesses knowledge of the organization’s business	Decrease
Internal support only	Decrease
External support only	Increase
Both internal and external support	Increase
Service Level Agreements negotiated	Decrease
Budget concerns	Decrease*
Multiple platforms to support (i.e. Web, PC, Mainframe, Mac)	Increase
Automated tools in place	Decrease
Experienced support center management	Decrease
Support center has good reputation in company	Decrease
Center has bad reputation	Increase
Multiple support center locations	Increase
Quality Assurance or Quality Control responsibility	Increase
Proactive support philosophy	Increase**
Support center has additional responsibilities not listed above	Increase

* = A staffing decrease may be required to meet your budget, but too small a staff can create bigger problems later on – dissatisfied customers, excessive stress, technician burnout and high turnover to name a few.

**= Initially, proactive support requires more staff per customer. The trend is reversed down the line as you should see a decrease in customer problems.

Source: http://coastaltech.com/hd-staff.htm

Help Desk Staffing Ratios by Size and Industry

An ongoing survey by Computer Economics is investigating the level of staffing organizations allocate to their help desks. To date, more than 300 companies of varying size, spanning a wide group of industry sectors, have participated in the ongoing study. The study investigates staffing in terms of the ratio between help desk employees and the total number of employees supported by the help desk.

The study has found that the median staffing ratio is 1.3% (in other words, 13 help desk support personnel are supporting 1,000 company employees, or one help desk headcount for every 76.9 company employees). At the 25th percentile, the ratio is 0.4% and at the 75th percentile, the ratio is 2.8%. As the help desk is usually an overhead function, these moderate ratios show that most organizations are applying their budgets prudently. A median ratio of 1.3% provides an acceptable level of support to the operating staff. The study results indicate that organizational size and industry sector will typically have an impact on the ratio of help desk personnel to total employees.

Source: AFCOM – http://www.afcom.com/The_Association/ResourceCenter/Data_Center_Management/Help_Desk_Staffing.asp

IT Staffing Benchmarks

Staff Support

IT Staff Benchmarks

Level One – Basic helpdesk phone support
– 1:80 to 1:110
Level Two – Installation, configuration, and
desktop support
– 1:45 to 1:85
Level Three – Systems, communications,
high end support and design
– 1:250 to 1:400

There is no single answer

Depends on
– Staff expertise
– Technical proficiency of end users
– Number of servers
– Number of remote branches and distance
– Level of high tech systems deployed by the bank
Leave enough room for project resources!

Source: “The Business of IT: Running Your Bank’s IT Department Like a Business”, Brintech, February 17, 2005