State Health Department Embraces Automated Help Desk Management System.



The Department of Health Community Nutrition Services Division supports public health nutrition throughout the State through a Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for women, infants and children. The Program provides nutrition education, adult and infant health promotion and support, supplemental nutritious foods and counseling at local clinics. It also offers health screening and referrals to other welfare, and social services for the State.

The Program seeks to serve the needs of its participants obtaining approved foods through the nearly 800 retail stores and authorized military commissaries.

The team at the Health Department needed a Help Desk Management System to track and manage requests, route them to the appropriate individuals and teams, coordinate their resolution and monitor activity to ensure that all requests were resolved. With budgetary constraints, the Department needed to operate effectively and efficiently to serve the needs of the community.

Each team in the Department tried to satisfy these needs using multiple applications across divisions but was impeded by the use of fragmented applications, lack of substantial workflow definition and automation, and additional costs pertaining to licensing policies. These shortcomings meant that the Program requests had to be assigned and routed manually via phone, email or face-to face meetings.

1) Lack of uniformity in help desk processes:

Given the broad scope and complexity of the Program’s needs, standardization of the methodology to    report and address help desk issues was the first requirement.
Given the large number of services offered, greater consistency in their ability to manage issues with    participants at various locations was an imperative.

2) Lack of visibility into help desk issues:

To be notified immediately of a new help desk problems or requests was essential to provide timely    resolution i.e. the ability to identify similar issues across the department was key.
Lack of automation of the work order tracking through departments caused some issues to fall    through the cracks.

3) Lack of collaborative workspace:

Backlog of issues cause productivity problems for help desk team members waiting for approvals
The ability to identify and escalate specific issues that require attention or critical matters to a    different team was crucial.

PointInsight reduced response times for the Department by immediately notifying assignees and approvers, rather than waiting for manual assignments to inform them. The issue owners are able to modify work orders from anywhere and help desk team members can update the status remotely.

Through the use of PointInsight, the help desk team can now spend less time coordinating with the other teams. Instead they can dedicate their time to tracking and address program participants problems in an efficient manner and simply escalate it to the relevant teams for immediate response.

All users at the Department are able to submit participant’s issues into a standardized form created in PointInsight. This form is defined by each issue type selected by the Help Desk team. Fields are populated based on the assigned team and issue category. This improves security, reduces confusion and streamlines/centralizes administration to reduce costs and improve response time.
The Department has achieved a uniformly high standard of issue management and resolution across the organization. Response times have been reduced, participant’s satisfaction levels have improved and help desk issues are now streamlined.

PointInsight established the ability to select all issues related to any particular attribute across all Programs in the organization. For example, management can quickly review all issues that have been reported.

Consistency and standardization of help desk processes

All team members now use the standard workflow customized for the State Health Program to receive    and resolve all participants requests.
PointInsight Help Desk Management System gives the supervisors the ability to decipher problematic    patterns and proactively address situations.

100% visibility and accountability into reported help desk issues

Obtained the ability to look at all requests received by help desk related to the health program across    the organization.
PointInsight Help Desk Management System gives management the visibility into recurring and    critical help desk issues.
Significant reduction in the time it takes for Executive Management to obtain high visibility to ailing    health initiatives resulting in appropriate corrective action.

Track, Monitor & Control

Helps assign, monitor, control and steer through the complexities of issue management
Powerful reporting capability that consolidate information across the enterprise with graphical views
Daily recognition of open, overdue high risk critical issues that require attention
Allows project managers to establish transparent accountability and responsibility structures within    the organization

Enabled streamlined and integrated communication standards

Provided threaded communication by automating the auditable workflows.
Response times were halved by daily reporting of open, overdue and critical issues that require    attention
Improved program participant satisfaction by tracking the requests automatically and monitoring by    the escalation rules across all teams.