comment on Mike N.'s cost-justifications - Help Desk

In the BurtonGroup Root Document "Enterprise Identity Management: Moving from Theory to Practice", Mike Neuenschwander iterated many valid points for justifying IdM projects. A few, though, aren't real when considering an IT-Outsourced environment.

Many organizations outsource some element of their business, usually the Help Desk. Just because a tool, such as password self-service, reduces one type of call, does not intrinsically mean there's a savings. Quite often the contract is fixed, and instead of reducing heads, those heads would be reallocated to reducing other types of calls, or improving first-time resolution.

In short, don't assume that you'll reduce any heads anywhere as a result of technology. Those heads will most likely be re-used to fix other failing processes of your organization.