The multifaceted communications system is on the rise in many organizations, yet the size of the communications system support staff as a percentage of the IT staff may be shrinking.
As shown in Figure 1 from our study, Communications System Support Staffing Ratios, the percentage of personnel supporting communications systems dropped at the median from 2.9% of the IT staff in 2014 to 2.3% in 2015.
This is only the second year our study has separated out this IT function from the broader network support category, and as such, it is unclear whether the decline is an ongoing trend or a one-year anomaly. Outsourcing, cloud services, or growth in other parts of the IT staff could all be a factor in influencing the staffing ratio.
We place the communications system support staff within a broader classification of the Network and Communications Group. The personnel who comprise the communications system support staff include engineers, analysts, specialists, and administrators who manage email, messaging, IP telephony, videoconferencing, unified communications, and other systems.
The full study will help IT managers determine whether their organization is keeping pace with improvements in communications system management by comparing their support staff against industry benchmarks. The study uses three metrics to make that assessment: communications system support staff as a percentage of the IT staff, percentage of support staff in relation to organization size, and communications support staff spending per user. We provide benchmarks for the composite sample, by organization size, and by sector.
This Research Byte is a brief overview of our report on this subject, Communications System Support Staffing Ratios. The full report is available at no charge for Computer Economics clients, or it may be purchased by non-clients directly from our website (click for pricing).
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