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Cloud-based help-desk software is being increasingly adopted by organizations looking to automate IT support and customer support management—and a fresh survey shows that these implementations offer significant return on investment when it comes to productivity and performance gains.

New research from Zoho (News - Alert) confirms that companies that replaced manual processes like using e-mail and spreadsheets with help-desk software saw near-ubiquitous improvement in help-desk productivity and attained incident management maturity (98 percent). And, a full 95 percent saw a significant increase in end-user satisfaction levels.

This isn’t surprising in and of itself. Help-desk options like TeamSupport offer enhancements like self-service portals, service-level agreement management, help-desk reports and related features to enhance work flows and business processes. The survey shows for instance that 71 percent were able to measure performance by identifying and tracking key metrics for the first time—which positions them for additional performance gains by implementing a feedback and adjustment loop for performance, which better enables them to improve it over time.

Out of all of the respondents, almost half (47 percent) reported that they have adopted help-desk software for the first time—despite the market being quite mature. But this points out a need for better education within the end-user marketplace.

Case in point: More than one in three respondents (39 percent) said that they implemented a knowledge base for the first time ever as part of their deployment. This offers advantages that they previously weren’t aware of. For instance, a knowledge base is pivotal to productivity and satisfaction gains because it establishes a repository of solutions that can be accessed instantly by users and help desk technicians alike.

All of this is leading companies to expand how they think of help-desk software as well. One-fifth (20 percent) of the survey respondents reported that they now use help-desk software beyond the IT department. Support teams in departments like HR, travel, and maintenance and facilities can all make use of the ability to centralize the management of services provided. No matter what the environment is, help-desk software will automate, track, measure, monitor, alert and/or report on tasks and activities – replacing point solutions that live in silos, and/or processes that were previously manual and carried out with non-linked and non-cohesive tools like email and spreadsheets.