Seamless Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing in Adelaide City Councils with Freshservice

The customers in this case study are three large metropolitan councils based in Adelaide, the Cities of Charles Sturt (CCS), Marion (COM), and Port Adelaide Enfield (PAE). These councils agreed to form a collaborative partnership in 2018 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.

In 2018, three large metropolitan councils based in Adelaide, the Cities of Charles Sturt (CCS), Marion (COM), and Port Adelaide Enfield (PAE), formed a collaborative partnership for the benefit of their communities. The IT teams of these councils were responsible for ensuring all projects planned for the communities were seamlessly executed and delivered in a timely and cost-effective manner. However, the IT infrastructure of all three councils was not closely aligned, which hindered collaboration and knowledge sharing across business functions. The Service Desk setup of the three councils was different and made effective collaboration and cross-team communication a challenge. 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. They wanted to improve stakeholder experience, reduce agent workload, and facilitate cross-council collaboration. 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. 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.

• Freshservice has effectively transformed the Service Desk experience at the councils of CCS, COM, and PAE. Employees can now easily raise requests and track the status using Freshservice. 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. 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. 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. 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.

• 1500 IT assets migrated

• 10% drop in phone calls

• Over 1000 tickets raised in a month