Dear reader, are you struggling to manage your IT environment using outdated tools and processes? As per Gartner, already more than 50% of an enterprise’s total budget goes into just “keeping the lights on” in IT instead of driving innovation to meet strategic goals.
This percentage is estimated to grow significantly in the coming years with IT increasingly becoming the backbone enabling digital transformation initiatives across sectors. Can you afford to have business critical services and applications go down without modern IT service management (ITSM) practices? Especially when a single hour of downtime can cost up to $300,000!
The need to optimize IT service delivery and drive greater efficiencies has never been more urgent. This is where adopting modern cloud ITSM platforms becomes mission-critical for future success. Through this blog, let me introduce you to one such powerful tool – Freshservice.
I’ll provide insights into:
- Key capabilities that enable IT transformation
- Proven use cases and benefits realized by customers
- Best practices for deployment based on industry learning
By the end of this post, you will have clarity on how Freshservice can set your IT services up for scale and resiliency in the digital age.
Why Traditional ITSM Approaches Fall Short Today
Before looking at how advanced tools like Freshservice can help, it is important to analyze why legacy ITSM mechanisms struggle to keep pace. Traditional models comprised limited functionality spread across siloed, disjointed tools and complex frameworks making management tedious.
Some specific gaps include:
Inefficient Tracking of Issues: Heavy reliance on manual ticketing for event and incident tracking slows down restoration times. Lack of categorization also hampers reporting.
Minimal Process Automation: Mundane tasks take up precious time of Level 1 agents hampering productivity and delaying resolution.
Limited Infrastructure Visibility: Getting consolidated visibility into software/hardware inventory, contracts etc. becomes an uphill task with legacy systems.
Reactive Issue Resolution: In absence of robust knowledge management capabilities, discovering root cause of recurring issues gets complex resulting in repeated outages.
Siloed Teams and Processes: Minimal collaboration between IT service desk, DevOps and other teams leads to misalignment and delays.
With the average cost of IT downtime running into six digits for some enterprises, it has become inexpedient to rely on outdated mechanisms. Next generation tools like Freshservice provide the right set of comprehensive capabilities.
Overview of Key Freshservice Capabilities
Freshservice offers an intuitive, affordable and easy to use ITSM software. It equips IT teams with the right set of tools and information empowering them to deliver elevated service levels.
Key capabilities include:
Service Desk: Multi-channel ticket management powered by advanced categorization, intelligent SLA policies, automated routing and resolution mechanisms.
Asset Management: Discovery tools provide accurate and up-to-date visibility into IT hardware/software inventory helping optimize asset costs.
Knowledge Management: An evolving, self-service focused knowledge base lets agents resolve repetitive queries faster and empowers end users through self resolution.
Change Management: Model upcoming changes, assess risk, create back out plans and establish approvals before changes are implemented minimizing disruption.
Release Management: Streamline planning, building, testing and deployment of releases and enhancements for services supporting business needs.
Mobile App: Enable agents to manage tickets and approve changes on-the-go. Gamification promotes usage.
Reporting & Analytics: Custom reports and dashboards provide insightful metrics allowing managers to make data driven decisions on service improvements.
Developer APIs & Customization: Integration capabilities and customization options help augment platform to your unique needs.
These functionalities make services delivery more efficient. Additional use cases are discussed next.
Transforming IT Operations with Freshservice
With an intuitive interface, enterprise-grade security and affordable pricing starting at just $19 an agent a month, Freshservice allows you to elevate service delivery across parameters.
Streamlining Service Desk
Auto-categorization of tickets based on type, item and business impact enables specialized resolution. SLA policies automatically prioritize critical tickets.
Customizable queues with skills-based routing ensure the right agent gets the right ticket improving first-call resolution rates. Managers also gain insights with custom reports and dashboards for data driven decisions on improving agent productivity.
Enhancing IT Asset Management
With Freshservice, you gain an accurate and trustworthy record of IT assets through automated discovery tools. Detailed hardware and software inventory reports also provide license and contract management capabilities preventing overspend.
Sectioning assets into categories allows intelligent and purposeful tracking. Features like visual mapping further ease the management overhead.
Facilitating Faster End-User Support
The self-service portal containing FAQs, trusted troubleshooting guides and community discussions acts as the first line of defense for resolving tickets before they reach agents.
Enabling users to find answers through AI-powered search and knowledge base cuts down repeat queries. Custom portals can provide language and brand-specific information enhancing global user experience.
Streamlining DevOps Activities
With Freshservice acting as the single portal for logging issues, change requests, bugs and release tasks, better synergy between DevOps and ITSM teams can be facilitated. Consolidated views into project status can also help prioritization and scheduling.
Documenting deviations between test and production environments during releases further allows creating plans to mitigate recurrences.
Smoothing IT Change Management
Model upcoming changes like system upgrades, test effectiveness of changes through pre-production sandboxes and analyze post-implementation performance.
Standardized change approval processes minimize impact on operations by identifying failure risks upfront. Automated rollback workflows with manual intervention abilities also ensure continuity of service.
Become a Data-Driven IT Organization
With rising complexity of business environments, having access to actionable metrics that provide visibility into IT landscape becomes critical.
Freshservice reporting and analytics capabilities empower managers to base decisions on trends rather than intuitions. Some ways it enables data-driven management include:
Ticket Analytics: Category and type-wise ticketing analysis reveals areas needing workflow improvements. Skill-based assignment reports highlight good performers.
Change Insights: Success percentage of changes provides inputs to change advisory boards for approval decisions and technique improvements.
Release Reporting: Defect density measurement during releases helps assess product quality. environments comparison reduces risks.
Asset Analytics: Contract renewal and usage trends help forecast budgets and minimize procurement cycles through better planning.
Self-service Adoption: Usage patterns highlight effectiveness of knowledge base guiding improvement areas.
With insights made available through interactive dashboards and custom reports, Freshservice enables running IT like a fine-tuned ecosystem.
Realizing Rapid ROI Through Elevated Service Quality
The biggest question lingering on your mind likely is – how soon can you expect returns on investing in a modern platform like Freshservice?
The answer lies in the rapid uplifts in service performance it delivers translating directly into ROI metrics:
80% faster resolution via categorization, SLAs, automated routing enabling first-call closures
60% higher productivity through transition of L1 agents to focus on complex issues after self-service adoption
55% improved asset planning powered by comprehensive visibility into inventory and contracts
45% better change success through standardized controls and procedures around transition
35% cost savings from moving to affordable SaaS model with limited overhead
The magnitude of these metrics highlight that Freshservice pays for itself within months through qualitative and quantitative gains.
Gain Additional Value Through Customizations
While out-of-the-box features cater to a wide range of user needs, Freshservices’s customization capabilities such as:
workflows triggered through ticket fields or agent inputs
custom portal branding matching company specifics
API integrations with complementary tools
Further allows adding value unique to your environment.
Some examples include:
- Syncing passwords automatically from Active Directory avoiding reset tickets
- Integrating facility system APIs to auto-create tickets for sensor alerts
- Building sanity-check gates in change plans through custom flows
- Enforcing multi-factor authentication for security or compliance needs
administrators and developers can easily tap into these features to rapidly enhance platform as per unique needs.
Implementation Best Practices
To help you maximize Freshservice ROI, here are some proven deployment guidelines:
Phase 1: Foundation Setting
- Document service portfolio, business priorities and metrics for tracking effectiveness based on pain points
- Profile and classify all IT components into configuration item types – servers, routers etc.
- Design logical ticket categories aligned with services delivered
Phase 2: Execution
- Configure SLA policies factoring in business criticality, costs and revenues
- Build automated ticket routing rules leveraging skills and availability
- Develop hierarchy based change approval flows with reviewers
- Promote knowledge base usage through training and communications
Phase 3: Continual Improvement
- Analyze ticket, change and release trends to identify recurring issues
- Expand self help adoption through targeted capabilities
- Streamline change windows to minimize service blackouts
- Maintain asset inventory accuracy through periodic scanning
Leveraging these guidelines as you rollout Freshservice will accelerate realizing outcomes.
Customer Success Stories
Industry leaders have already validated Freshservice’s capabilities to meet wide ranging ITSM needs delivering compelling ROIs across operational and cost metrics:
Optimity – Leading cloud managed services provider saw 80% faster ticket resolution rates by leveraging skills-based auto assignments minimizing manual oversight.
Cloudreach – Global cloud consulting firm replaced Servicenow instance with Freshservice without losing functionality. The easy-to-use cloud solution led to rapid user adoption across regions at lower TCO.
Stein IAS – By gaining visibility into the entire asset set up process through Freshservice, the leading B2B organization reduced new employee workstation setup time by 90%. This resulted in engagement and productivity within days instead of weeks earlier.
How Freshservice Compares to Alternatives
While Freshservice leads platforms in usability and rapid time-to-value for most mid-market use cases, here is how it squares up technically against some category leaders:
| ITSM Capability | Freshservice | ServiceNow | JIRA | ManageEngine |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asset Discovery | Auto + API connectors | Manual | Asset add-on | Good |
| License Management | Inbuilt | Add-on | Third party tools | Good |
| Knowledge Management | Robust AI-search | Agent driven | Wiki style docs | Decent |
| DevOps Integration | API + Jira sync | Native 2-way | Seamless | Third party |
| Multi-site Support | Inbuilt | Add-on cost | Configurable | Available |
| Ease of use | Excellent | Needs training | Moderate | Good |
| Pricing | Most affordable | Enterprise tag | Premium | Affordable |
While enterprise tools provide higher level of customization, Freshservice offers the best blend of must-have functionalities meeting current and future needs for most businesses at highly favorable economics.
Enable Future-Ready IT Service Delivery with Freshservice
As your organization aims to provide technology enabled competitive differentiation in the digital age, IT services need to equip the business. Legacy mechanisms will not suffice. You need modern, comprehensive ITSM to drive scalability, continuity and innovation simultaneously.
As discussed and proven through real-world cases in this blog, Freshservice offers an unmatched blend of these critical capabilities. The SaaS delivery, affordable pricing and rapid time-to-value make it further irresistible.
I highly recommend signing up for a free trial to validate the solution across parameters meaningful for your specific environment. With the ability to realize value from day one, Freshservice minimizes risk allowing you to future proof IT!
Here are some additional Freshservice resources I recommend exploring:
- Product Demo Videos
- [Analyst Reviews]()
- [Case Studies]()
- [Free Trial Sign Up]()
Feel free to reach out in comments below or [contact me]() if you need any further guidance!
