Freshservice implementation

End-to-end selection, deployment, and ongoing operation of Freshservice as the company's integrated IT service management platform, replacing a spreadsheet-based asset inventory and ad-hoc ticketing posture with a single ITIL-aligned ITSM platform now operating at roughly 14,000 tickets in 3.5 years and covering incident, problem, change, request, asset, and knowledge management for more than 1,000 employees across 80+ offices in North America.

More than "we use Freshservice." The unified service-delivery platform that turned IT operations from a tools-and-spreadsheets posture into a managed service: every ticket categorized and tracked, every asset inventoried with assignment / warranty / cost, a structured knowledge base, and a reporting layer (cache + Power BI dashboards + AI-augmented triage) running on top.

Pre-Freshservice state

When I took the IT Manager role in October 2022, the inherited service-delivery posture was a fragmented set of tools without unified workflows:

• Asset inventory on spreadsheets, with no centralized assignment, warranty tracking, vendor/purchase-cost record, or lifecycle status. Reconciling who had what computer required asking around or guessing at filenames.
• No ITSM ticketing platform in the modern sense. IT requests came in through email and Teams DMs; no shared queue, no SLA visibility, no historical record, no category data.
• No structured knowledge base. Repeated questions got repeat answers; no Tier-1 deflection mechanism.
• No service-delivery metrics to bring to leadership.

Platform selection (December 2022)

Selected Freshservice after evaluation. The selection rationale prioritized:

• Native ITIL alignment for the six service-management domains (incident, problem, change, request, asset, knowledge management).
• Asset management built into the same product as ticketing, so the asset record and the ticket about it live in the same place.
• A knowledge base that supports structured folder taxonomy and end-user-facing publication for Tier-1 deflection.
• A REST API surface that would support downstream reporting and AI integration.

Asset inventory transformed

Migrated the entire asset estate off spreadsheets into Freshservice with structured records. Live inventory as of May 2026:

• ~3,216 computer assets (laptops, desktops, servers)
• 303 monitors
• 208 docks
• 104 access points (Aruba Instant On + Meraki)
• 57 firewalls (Meraki MX)
• 47 ISP connections (per-office circuits with speed, vendor, IP, account number, gateway)
• 42 switches (Aruba Instant On + other)
• 7 security keys, plus webcams / headsets / storage / scanners

Every asset record carries assignment to a user, location, acquisition date, end-of-life date, warranty expiry, cost, vendor, serial number, MAC address, and (for ISP circuits) bandwidth, account number, WAN IP, gateway. This is the source-of-truth inventory that onboarding, offboarding, M&A integration, and the legacy server replacement program all run against.

Vendor relationships tracked: Dell as the corporate hardware standard plus Amazon, CDW, a Meraki reseller, Dell Outlet, and eBay for refurb where appropriate.

Knowledge base as a discipline

242 articles across 25+ folders, organized by tool and topic: Microsoft 365 (Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive), endpoints (laptops, desktops, peripherals, printers), networks and ISP info, phones, software and SaaS apps, line-of-business systems, scripts and automation, onboarding/offboarding, security policies, identity, FAQ, and general knowledge.

Authorship distribution as of May 2026:

• 167 articles authored personally (69%)
• The onshore IT technician: 70 articles (29%, authored under mentorship)
• An offshore helpdesk technician via an MSP partner: a handful and growing (started late 2025)

Articles cover both end-user-facing how-tos (for Tier-1 deflection) and IT-internal procedures. The fact that two more authors now contribute is itself the outcome of an editorial discipline that did not exist before.

Ticket operation (Dec 2022 onward)

14,168 lifetime tickets. Annual volume:

• 2023: 3,343
• 2024: 3,849
• 2025: 4,423
• 2026 (through May): 2,553, on pace for roughly 6,100

Top categories by lifetime volume: Software (3,084), Email (2,642), HR (1,662), Entra ID (1,032), Purchasing (818), Hardware Issues (669), Cloud Services / Sites (652), Printing / Scanning / Faxing (614), Network (400), Alerts (368), Security (364), Login / Password (278), Laptop Provision (203).

Ticket distribution by type: 71% Incidents, 29% Service Requests, 2 Major Incidents over the entire 3.5-year window.

Roughly 30% of the lifetime ticket volume handled personally on top of strategy work, by deliberate choice to keep hands on the operational ground rather than living purely above it. The onshore IT technician is the deskside / L1-L2 lead and handles the majority share.

Reporting infrastructure on top

A reporting and AI-augmentation layer runs on top of the Freshservice platform. See the Freshservice reporting infrastructure page for the full architecture.

Outcome

• ITSM operating model in place across all six service-management domains on one platform with consistent workflows.
• Asset inventory transformed from spreadsheets to 4,000+ live records with full assignment, warranty, vendor, and cost tracking.
• 242 KB articles in production across 25+ folders. Tier-1 deflection where there was none. Multiple authors contribute under shared editorial discipline.
• 14,168 tickets handled; SLA visibility, queue prioritization, and executive-level reporting now exist.
• Reporting infrastructure layered on top of the REST API, giving leadership and the IT team fast answers from live data.
• Provisioning time compressed from 2 hours to 15 minutes for new-user onboarding.