TCO is the Information Technology (IT) catchphrase for 1998. It summarizes the efforts made all over the IT world to take the marvels of distributed computing (a PC on everyone's desk) and label all the hidden costs. Hidden costs include things like asking everyone in one's workgroup, "How do you do <XXXXX in Microsoft Word?" rather than asking someone paid by the company to know that sort of thing. The PCWeek article
The True Cost of Doing Business quotes a commonly cited study done by the Gartner Group that estimates that the total cost of ownership of a single PC for one year is nearly 10,000 USD. Pretty impressive for a widget that costs maybe 2000 USD retail!That same study estimates the technical support portion of that 10K to be about 21%. Multiply that by the number of staff in the company, and soon it gets to be real money. Thus anything that can be done to keep this expenditure down is a good thing. One popular method is to reach out to the customer's computer and making repairs over the wire (
PC Magazine Remote Repair (03-10-98) ), but that has nothing to do with artificial intelligence. Using expert systems DOES, however, so feel free to read more about how AI helps automate the helpdesk -- which by implication holds down costs, since you don't have to find as many pricey human experts. (See Empowering the Help Desk , an article by a helpdesk software vendor, for a more detailed take on this.)Lest this seem a simple process -- install expert system available to customer base, reduce helpdesk staff by 25% due to cobwebs on the telephone -- what the computer world euphemistically calls "human factors" has a tremendous impact on how much cost is actually saved.
While, on the one hand, automation can help provide "follow-the-sun" support for mobile and overseas workers (
Remote workers stretch help desks [Computerworld], Anytime, anywhere - Noway, nohow 6-9-97 [Computerworld]), customers still prefer talking to a human being. (Help desks want users to help themselves, but users just can't stop picking up that phone [Computerworld], No rush to online help desks [Computerworld]) On the other hand, poorly-designed user interfaces can cause even the most technology-dedicated soul to give up and pick up the phone. (Users rate server support Web-based support [Computerworld])The key, then, is neatly summarized by David Cooperstein, an analyst for telecom strategies at Forrester Research, Inc.. "The goal should be to get agents off the phone and doing really good interactions." (
Friend or Foe -- Web-based Support [Computerworld])
PCWeek Online offers some more testimonials to the benefits of helpdesk automation, with Pacific Bell's section talking the most about
expert system help for end users.If you're interested in TCO, here are some more articles that offer more background on the topic.
In the article
TCO Workout [PCWeek], the section titled "Trimming and Toning" discusses helpdesk cost. The article TCO tips from the field [Computerworld] offers a nice "top-ten" list of areas that IT executives and managers have found to be the biggest sources of excess spending. The opinion piece TCO Magic, Myth, or Shuck (05-05-98) [PC Magazine] debunks the "holy grail" aspects of TCO, but outlines the true need for IT total cost assesment and management. The Gartner Group will help individual companies do a TCO assesment, as a Computerworld article discusses (Gartner service helps users track PC costs ), though naturally for a fee! PC Magazine offers a spiffy little web-based quiz that uses a basic decision tree to outline some options for reducing cost in three areas (Choose Your TCO Strategy - (05-05-98) ). Be aware, however, that the quiz is biased in favor of net-PCs, the current cost-reduction darling. Lastly, Computerworld has an interesting article "Users offer free cost calculator " that talks about General Accounting's efforts to identify total cost. Unlike the Gartner Group, they offer their home-grown tools for free -- see tco.htm for all their stuff.(
I'd like to continue reading the main page, please)
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"AI and Expert Systems" LIS 385T.15 at the University of Texas at Austin on August 13, 1998 by Jeff Steely, Kimbol Soques, and G. Marc Turner