I need to know the recommended ratio of users to IT support personnel
in an office. I need to present to upper management the number of
on-site IT personnel we should have, to supplement our international
corporate help desk. I need to cite at least two sources in order to
provide a range (fair, good, very good support level).

Notes: 
- the offices in question have 80 and 115 persons respectively.
- the IT support personnel may be part time or full time
- every person has a Dell running windows XP. 
- half of users have laptops, half have desktops.
- servers are off-site and are maintained by off-site personnel
- we have an international (offshore) corporate help desk (accessible
by phone, email) to take care of many issues. We need to determine the
number of ON-SITE tech support man-days per week that each office
should have.

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Clarification of Question by malcolm4-ga on 22 Nov 2006 09:42 PST

I intended to mention that we are trying to determine the number of
"man-days" per week to adequately support each office. So the answer
I'm looking for would be in the form of:

The standard for fair-to-average support is a ratio of one full-time
IT person per __ users. Therefore the office of 80 users should have
someone on site __ days per week, and the office of 115 users should
have someone on site __ days per week.

The standard for good-to-very-good support is a ratio of one full-time
IT person per __ users, etc.

Thanks

Hello Malcolm4,


IT staffing levels can vary significantly by the size of the company. 

?The typical IT staffing ratio (the number of employees supported by
each IT worker) is 1:27 among all companies included in the survey.
However, companies with 500 or fewer employees typically have an IT
staffing ratio of about 1:18, while companies with 10,000 or more
employees have a ratio of about 1:40.?

A detailed chart showing how IT staff ratios by organization size,
annual dollar volume and by total number of employees is available at
the following link:

Workforce
http://www.workforce.com/archive/article/23/40/39.php



=============================


From the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA):


?By industry, financial services firms have the least number of
employees supported by each IT professional (ratio of 1:11), while
manufacturing and government/education/nonprofit organizations have
the most employees supported by each IT professional (ratios of 1:36
and 1:33, respectively).?

ITAA 
http://www.itaa.org/itserv/release.cfm?ID=72


=============================


According to The Yankee Group ?the ratio of IT staff support to
personal computers in small businesses is 1:25, while medium-sized
businesses have a ratio of 1:33. In fact, some small businesses and 
29 percent of very small businesses have no full time IT staffs at
All.?

Resource Index
http://webhosting.resourceindex.com/articles/000014.html


=============================


For Law Firms:

?Based on a set of 20 standard IT job functions, the survey finds the
average ratio of end-users to IT staff to be 35-to-1. This ratio does
not follow a straight line as firm size increases. Interestingly, we
found that as firm size increases, IT staffing grows at a faster rate
than the growth in the number of end-users would predict.?

The top third of very large firms have ratios of 25-to-1 or less. The
top third of small firms have ratios of 35-to-1 or less.
Eight out of 10 very large firms have ratios lower than 40-to-1. 
Eight out of 10 small firms have ratios of 50-to-1 or lower.

ILTA?s IT Staffing Survey
http://www.iltanet.org/files/tbl_s6Publications/PDF33/83/Staffing%20Survey%20Analysis.pdf






Search terms:
Ratio of IT Staff to Employees
IT staffing ratios

I hope the information provided is helpful!

Best regards,
Bobbie7

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Clarification of Answer by bobbie7-ga on 22 Nov 2006 10:23 PST

Dear Malcolm4,

I just noticed a clarification you made after I posted my answer. I
hope the sources I provided answer your question.

Sincerely,
Bobbie7

Thank you - great selection of references, spot on what I needed!

Thank you for the rating and tip!
--Bobbie7