Organic adoption becomes the real measure of successful IT platform rollouts

IT teams are under growing pressure to do more than keep the lights on — employees now expect the same seamless digital experiences at work that they get in their personal lives. Freshservice transformation is turning traditional IT service desks into intuitive, employee-first platforms that drive measurable improvements in experience and operational agility for global enterprises.

In response, the IT service management market is evolving to do more than track tickets. For New Balance Athletics Inc., a global athletic footwear and apparel brand, the bar for internal IT support is set by the same standard as its products — it has to work for the people using it, according to W. John Boers (pictured), system administrator for the Freshservice tool at New Balance.

“As a running shoe company, we obviously use technology to gain an edge in the market itself,” Boers said. “We want to make sure, in our IT team, that we also deliver that same level of technology and service to our associates that are supporting all of that — whether that’s our retail teams, or finance, product management. We want to make sure they have a tool that gets them the solutions they need in a timely manner.”

Boers spoke with theCUBE’s Bob Laliberte at the Freshworks Refresh event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the Freshservice transformation, global rollout success and building a foundation for AI-powered operations. (* Disclosure below.)

Freshservice transformation drives global employee experience gains

When New Balance set out to modernize its IT service operations, it turned to Freshworks Inc. and its flagship Freshservice platform. The core of that transformation was replacing an agent-centric, difficult-to-navigate legacy tool with a platform employees actually wanted to use — and the result was adoption that spread organically, a rare outcome in enterprise IT, Boers noted.

“Before we rolled out Freshservice, we had a very old tool. It was very agent-centric, hard to use, confusing,” he said. “With Freshservice, we were able to get a tool built out in a couple of months, ready for go-live, that was user-friendly, it looked good and got tickets where they needed to be.”

New Balance’s rollout extended well beyond a typical North America-first phased approach. Working with implementation partner Whitlock Infrastructure Solutions, the team deployed Freshservice globally from day one, then quickly followed with an onboarding module integrated with Workday that automated the provisioning process for new hires, Boers explained. Organic adoption followed, with finance, facilities and loss prevention all requesting their own service catalog forms without IT having to sell the platform internally.

“We didn’t have to convince anyone to move to this product at all. We said, ‘Look at this tool, look at all its capabilities’ — and they’re like, ‘Can’t wait. Let’s go,'” he said. “Having our agents and associates be very excited about being able to use a tool … has certainly made it much easier.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Freshworks Refresh event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Freshworks Refresh event. Neither Freshworks, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE