All your consulting needs under one roof
Authors: David Stack
Venue: Proceedings of the 15th annual ACM SIGUCCS conference on User Services (1987)

At last year's SIGUCCS XIV conference, I compared the tradeoffs between organizing computing center staff by hardware versus by function1. The broadly stated conclusion was that it is not feasible to duplicate every service for each class of system that exists at the center or on the campus. It is advantageous to combine services of similar function, regardless of the system being supported. One example where we are organized along functional lines is the front line consulting staff. We find it advantageous to have all our student and professional consultants report to the same supervisor: Mini/Mainframe consultants 2 shifts of students at 2 sites Micro consultants 1 shift of students at a telephone Micro Showcase (for purchases) 1 shift of clerks Micro Gurus 1 shift of 2 full time staff. Although these people report to the same supervisor, initially they worked in separate locales. This necessitated that a user with a question bore the responsibility of determining where to go for assistance. This often resulted in users being shuttled from one room to another seeking an answer. Another concern was reports of poor service in the Micro Showcase, where students, faculty and staff received information on microcomputer discounts. When first opened the Micro Showcase was staffed by the full time micro staff (the Micro Gurus.) After losing or promoting all the technical staff to other endeavors, the Showcase was left with only part-time employees possessing clerical rather than technical skills. A crucial decision was made to not hire a technical manager for the Showcase. Instead it was believed that micro purchase consulting could be broken into two categories: pricing and configuration. We elected to make the Showcase clerks responsible for providing price information. We planned to encourage people with configuration questions to make an appointment to see one of the Micro Gurus. In practice this division proved to be artificial. Micro purchases always require a measure of technical consulting. With no technical consultant readily at hand, the utility of the Showcase decreased markedly. Long time clients of the Showcase, who were accustomed to talking with our technical staff, began to complain that it wasn't worth their trouble to stop in. As a former Micro Guru, I began to receive many calls concerning specific configurations and pricing. Since I no longer worked with this information daily, and did not have the voluminous files of spec sheets in my office, I would refer the callers to the Showcase. Too often I would hear that they had already called the Showcase and had been referred to me, or were unsatisfied with the answer they had received. Not only was the Showcase inefficient and unreliable in performing its stated function, but we also began to question whether it was necessary. The Showcase was conceived as a place where people buying microcomputers could &ldquo;test drive&rdquo; different systems. At first the Showcase contained CP/M, Apple ] [+, Atari and Commodore systems, as well as the new IBM PC. Over time the Showcase evolved into a room filled with IBM PC clones which literally looked alike. (As part of a state university system it was not feasible to negotiate a Macintosh discount program.) Also, purchasers were no longer spending considerable time weighing the features of different models. The usual buying criteria were price and availability of service. Since we could not afford to hire a technical manager for the Showcase, we considered alternatives that could make available the expertise of the other micro staff. Various proposals to assign the technical staff to work limited hours in the Showcase were discarded as too unwieldy. Finally we opted to eliminate the redundant demonstration hardware and to consolidate our consulting services (both micro and mini/mainframe) into the Showcase. Since the Showcase was no longer a showcase, a new name was needed. We chose Info Centre as the least offensive of the dozens of names we concocted. Removing the demonstration hardware was a bold move. The Showcase had originally been conceived as a showroom for microcomputers. Instead of featuring hardware, we chose to focus on information resources such as magazines, DataPro Reports, Ratings Newsletter, as well as diskette publications including Letus ABC and Computer Price Index. Another bold move was providing micro consulting on a walk-in basis. Prior to the formation of the Info Centre, the micro consultant was only available by telephone. It was feared that a micro consultant at a public desk would be overwhelmed by the large number of micro users on campus. But the necessity of having the micro consultant's technical expertise available to micro purchasers overcame the pessimistic expectations. (An observation made at last year's SIGUCCS conference was that every campus appears to be struggling to support a plethora of microcomputer users without sufficient staff.) By consolidating both the micro and mini/mainframe consulting services into one locale, we also hoped to better serve those users who had problems involving more than one system; such as using Kermit to transfer files between a micro and a mini. For convenience sake we also put a &ldquo;hands-on&rdquo; laser printer for the mainframe in the Info Centre. From a management perspective, the Info Centre accomplished our goals. Before the formation of the Info Centre: Several services were located in isolated locales. Space was not allocated efficiently. Users were required to self-select the correct consultant. There was no convenient technical support for microcomputer sales. Micro consulting was only available by telephone. After the formation of the Info Centre: All public-contact services are housed in one location. Less space is needed to house the same number of services. Users can be easily referred to the correct consultant. The micro consultant provides technical support to purchasers. Micro consulting is available on a walk-in basis as well as by phone. We have learned several lessons since forming the Info Centre. The number of users to be found in the Info Centre at any given time is less than we anticipated. This scarcity is attributed to three factors: poor publicity, inadequate signs and inconvenient terminals. The Info Centre was formed during Spring Break and announced only once in our newsletter. When the majority of users, especially students, returned from Spring Break the familiar consulting offices were closed and small hand-lettered signs redirected them to a new room. The mini/mainframe consultant was previously located in a terminal room, which made it convenient for the terminal users to ask a question. Now a difficulty has to be worth the effort of walking down the hall to the Info Centre to see the consultant. The problems with publicity and signs could have been avoided. The inconvenience of the terminals was anticipated, but not avoidable. Although no one has complained about the lack of demonstration hardware, people who were familiar with the original Showcase have commented upon it. Ironically, shortly after the formation of the Info Centre, several vendors offered to loan us new models which we had to refuse. Recently both Apple and IBM have released new lines of micros that we may regret not being able to display. A benefit of the consolidation is the scheduling ability we now have during semester breaks. By scheduling the two technical consultants and the purchase consultant for sequential shifts of a couple hours apiece, we can keep the Info Centre open and provide all the services on a limited basis during the slow weeks. Since the majority of the technical consultants, both micro and mini/mainframe, are either engineering or MIS students, they can often cover for each other if only one is on duty. To promote this cross-consulting, we have replaced the mini/mainframe consultant's terminal with a micro-computer.