3 Adelaide City Councils Achieve Seamless Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing with Freshservice

About the councils

In 2018, three large metropolitan councils based in Adelaide, the Cities of Charles Sturt (CCS), Marion (COM), and Port Adelaide Enfield (PAE), agreed to form a collaborative partnership for the benefit of their communities. The IT teams of these councils are responsible for ensuring all projects planned for the communities are seamlessly executed and delivered in a timely and cost-effective manner. To enable collaboration and knowledge sharing across business functions, the IT infrastructure of all three councils have to be closely aligned. In 2019, the councils of CCS, COM, and PAE replaced their ageing legacy IT Service Desk with Freshservice. Using Freshservice, the three Adelaide councils were able to streamline internal operations and deliver an engaging and award-winning employee experience. 

Modernizing the siloed IT Service Desk setup

The Service Desk is the face of IT and is the main point of contact for most IT-related requests. To support the councils in their shared goal of contributing effectively to their communities, a Collaborative IT Project Delivery function was formed. This team is entrusted with overseeing the planning and delivery of IT projects across the three cities. The Service Desk setup of the three councils was different and made effective collaboration and cross-team communication a challenge. For starters, all three councils had their own Service Desk solutions, so information from one could not easily be shared with the other councils. Two of the councils, PAE and CCS, also had ageing legacy software which needed to be modernised urgently. 

In 2019, the councils started to reevaluate their existing solutions and identify the key characteristics they were looking for in a new one.  There were three main facets that the new solution needed to address:
 

• Improving stakeholder experience: The Service Desk needed to have a simple interface that was very easy for employees to use. It also had to provide better customer service for all stakeholders, from employees to elected members. 
• Reducing agent workload: The councils wanted to experiment with automation and self-service options to reduce resolution times. The Service Desk also had to have a dashboard where individuals could track the status of their requests, reducing the number of follow up queries directed to the IT team. 
• Facilitate cross-council collaboration: The Service Desk needed to have a common interface that employees across all councils could easily collaborate on. This would establish a strong foundation for future IT collaboration projects. 

Freshservice proved to be the ideal ITSM software to help the councils achieve their objectives. COM was the first to implement Freshservice in June 2019. PAE and CCS quickly followed suit a few months later. In 2020, all three councils were finally working out of a common Service Desk software and were in a stronger position to deliver the first cross-council project. “Having all three councils on Freshservice helped us generate massive savings, not just in licensing and procurement costs, but also in terms of renewals," says Matt Kovarik, Senior IT Project Officer, COM.

 

Transitioning to a common Service Desk

With CCS and PAE officially switching from their legacy software to Freshservice, a formal project team was formed to make the implementation and transition smooth. The team, consisting of a joint project manager and three technical resources from each of the councils, worked systematically to address existing infrastructure challenges and drive adoption of the new system. As COM was already using Freshservice, important learnings and employee feedback from its experience were incorporated to make the transition seamless. Freshservice also assigned the same project manager who had overseen COM’s transition and cloned a copy of COM’s database to ensure uniformity. 

In the first stage, the IT processes of the councils were thoroughly assessed to understand how Freshservice could align the processes of each into a single common workflow. The concerns and requirements of various stakeholders were also addressed to ensure that the software would be able to meet the varying requirements of each IT team. Speaking about the transition, Wayne Prideaux, Team Leader, IT Operations- PAE, says, "We were using the same legacy system since 2000. We didn't want to retain the same solution, but we did want to keep the rich statistical data within it. We had to decide what elements of that data we value and how to align it with Freshservice's configurations. This resulted in a successful migration of approximately 46,600 tickets, 1200 paths and customer details, and 1500 IT assets.”

A collaborative project management methodology was used to guide the project, including use of common templates to ensure a consistent experience for our stakeholders across the councils. Despite the implementation project temporarily being suspended for four weeks due to the pandemic, Freshservice was successfully taken live within a relatively short period of time. 
 

Improving and expanding the capabilities of IT

“Our users have embraced Freshservice, especially the service catalog,” says Irene Tsoukalas, Service Desk Team Leader. “Our reports show that users are using the portal to log calls which is a huge achievement and one of our goals met!” 
Freshservice has effectively transformed the Service Desk experience at the councils of CCS, COM, and PAE. Some of the key outcomes that are evident after implementation include:

 

• Improved employee experience: Employees can now easily raise requests and track the status using Freshservice. Using common templates, employees across all three councils can enjoy a consistent Service Desk portal that is always accessible. Since implementation, the IT team has been consistently receiving positive feedback from employees.
• Reduction in IT requests: The comprehensive knowledge base has helped employees easily find a resolution to many of their queries without having to contact IT. This has resulted in a reduction in walk-ups and a 10% drop in phone calls to the IT team. 
• Faster resolution times: Agents can easily triage, allocate and monitor incoming requests through a consistent dashboard. Since the workflows are the same, employees across each of the councils can effortlessly work within the systems of other councils. 
• Ticket analysis: Within just 1 month of CCS and PAE going live with Freshservice, over 1000 tickets were submitted by employees of CCS and PAE. Since all tickets are visible within a single view, teams can analyse the data to uncover trends and benchmark performance. This data will be of immense importance to help the councils recommend productivity improvement measures.
• Resource sharing: Operating out of Freshservice has helped the councils share resources when the need arises. If an employee in one council has expertise in a specific area, they can easily jump in and help an employee from another council on the task. 
• Continuous improvement of IT: IT teams across the councils can now review and resolve tickets regardless of which council they belong to. This has facilitated greater knowledge sharing across the teams. Future migrations and upgrades will also be smoother since all three councils have only one configuration they work out of.

These impressive results have brought industry-wide recognition for the three councils. Recently, the initiative won the 2021 MAV Technology Award in the category Collaboration or Partnership Achievement of the Year.

 

Looking ahead

With Freshservice as the central backbone of IT operations, the three councils have gained invaluable insights into employee engagement success and strategies to improve Service Desk operations. After the success of this project, the councils have shared learnings on the benefits of fostering cross-council relationships with other South Australian councils. 
 

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