The advantages of such a structure are visibility of the service desk function and easy communication links. However, there are disadvantages such as the risk of incidents not being prioritised in line with business impact because users are able to physically appear at the service desk and request/demand action.
Another potential disadvantage is that service desk staff are not used as efficiently as they would be under other service desk structures because they are ‘fixed’ in one place supporting local users.
Good reasons for adopting a local service desk structure include time zone restrictions, language issues, the requirement to support a specialist group of users
needing specialist support or the requirement to support specific services which again require specialist support. There may even be arguments for having a local service desk adjacent to and available to key users. Such key users may be important functionally, in that they undertake processes critical to the business of the organisation or hierarchically in that are at a senior level. (N.B. seniority should not drive the prioritisation of an incident. Incidents should always be prioritised on the basis of business impact and urgency.)