Once installed, Full-Marks ensures that the virtual helpdesk continues to work by transferring skills, and providing maintenance to the client when required. Any and all bugs latent in the system will be fixed free of charge for the first three months of usage. There is particular emphasis in skills transference, thus empowering the organisation to maintain the product themselves, and saving costs.

There are a number of people that would benefit once the virtual help desk modules are implemented.

• The obvious group is the IT division. Typically IT is in a constant flux of development, improving the IT of any organization. However, much of their time is used up in support on software usage. This is a very real problem and wastes a huge amount of potentially productive time. With this module a lot of support is eliminated. Past users of our hybrid system have noted up to 80% reduction in support calls.
• New staff members are often overwhelmed with all the new protocols and software that they need to learn when starting a new job. A lot of them never get orientated properly, leading to low productivity as they need to learn by trial and error. Others have to go through training courses, of which they forget 60% as soon as they leave the training class. The virtual helpdesk allows them to learn how the different software packages work on the job, saving time and money as they skill themselves up.
• Some staff members are constantly learning new things, and they are regularly phoning IT to find out how this, that or the next thing works. For these people the virtual helpdesk is a godsend. It allows them to skill themselves up quicker and more effectively than if they have to do so going through the manual or training courses.
• Top management thus has a skilled workforce who can use the system with confidence and ease.
• Management can draw usage reports in the administration section on any user or application usage. Reports can be drawn per user, department or region as an overview or detailed report.

VIRTUAL EXPERT

INSTRUCTOR-LED TRAINING

AVAILABILITY

Year-round unlimited access.

One-time class per student.

24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Must be scheduled for a specific date.

At any convenient time for the student.

Scheduling conflicts and is inconvenient.

COST

Inexpensive.

Expensive.

No travel expenses.

Travel expenses, including airfare, meals, lodging, parking, and mileage.

Time savings for the student and the company.

Lost time and productivity away from the office.

EFFECTIVENESS

Ideally paced; students can take courses at own speed.

Student pushed through course in specific timeframe. Either too slow or too fast.

Focus on and learn what is important to student and skip unnecessary information.

All students taught all information and at same level as the rest of the class.

Consistent from student to student.

Different trainers have different approaches and varying quality standards.

Long-term retention enhanced by taking courses in 20-30 minute segments over a number of days and online help available 24/7.

Day- and week-long training not easily retained.  60% of knowledge is lost almost immediately.

Students have access to courses anytime for online help or a refresher.

Student must review workbook, if available.

Can be used as a complement to ILT (as a prerequisite, to ascertain the level of training required or in follow-up workshops).

N/A

ADMINISTRATION

Can track progress, launch courses, and measure learning effectiveness.

Must be done manually.

Is easily available on the students' workstation.

Must be done manually.

Case Study A

Company S has more than 5 000 employees and needed a support and training system for their diverse branches and end users.

The hourly cost per employee to the company is R 95.00.
If Virtual Expert thus could save each employee of Company S, only one hour per year, the total expenses saved by company S would be R475 000 (more than three times the cost of Virtual Expert)

The Support desk calls for company S were extrapolated to be R 23.00 per call.

The average end user made 1.65 support calls per month, so after company S installed Virtual
Expert they got a return on their investment within about 24 days.

Company B has 350 employees and has an annual budget for basic computer literacy skills training of R 154 000.00.

The average cost of a beginner and intermediate course in Microsoft (Introduction to Windows, Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, and Internet Explorer) is R 600.00 per day. Course duration is typically 1 – 2 days per application, totaling an average of 9 days. Thus the cost per user per course is R 5 400.00.

Assuming the employee is being paid an average of R 8 000.00 per month, this means company B loses approximately R 3 272.73 for the period that the employee is on course and not at work.

Thus the total cost for Company B to send someone on a training course is about R 8 672.73

Keeping these costs in mind Company B could send 18 people on a Microsoft course per year.

Company B installed Virtual Expert and were able to train all their staff (350 people) at less than the costs of instructor led training for 18 people.

Company B, not only saved money, but were also able to train up those staff members that never went on training before, due to time and/or money constraints.

• Any Windows Server OS from Windows 2000 onward (Windows 2003 recommended)
• Internet Information Services 5 or above (IIS 6 recommended)
• Around 2.5 GB hard drive space
• 512MB or more RAM
• SQL Server 2000 or above
• ASP must be enabled in IIS

• Internet Explorer 5 or above (IE 6 recommended) or Mozilla Firefox