Introduction
Businesses across all industries are becoming more digitalised, with organisations seeking to take advantage of the performance gains that can be achieved with deeper levels of integration, enhanced automation, and better use of data. The problem is that traditional challenges can hold back digital transformation initiatives. IT ticketing is one of those challenges.
Many organisations already process large volumes of IT tickets, with huge amounts of repetition as part of that process, i.e., the same problems with the same fixes cropping up over and over again. IT resources must spend time resolving those tickets instead of working on other initiatives, such as modernisation and improvement projects.
Plus, without doing something about inefficient IT ticketing processes, the volume of tickets will only increase with the introduction of new digital transformation technologies.
This was the issue faced by our client, a leading global investment bank. This case study demonstrates how automation technologies can substantially reduce IT ticket volumes, in addition to reducing costs, freeing up IT resources, and improving end-user experience (EUX).
The Project
Our client has a distributed workforce of approximately 120,000 users. It was dealing with an overwhelming and consistently high volume of primarily L1 and L2 helpdesk tickets.
Exacerbating this problem was the fact that many of the IT tickets being raised related to known issues such as slow performance, application crashes, and profile corruption. These repetitive problems were impacting user productivity and creating an unnecessary burden on IT resources.
Furthermore, the company was implementing a Digital Workplace transformation initiative. It recognised the IT ticketing issue would be a significant barrier to the success of that initiative.
As a result, the bank engaged Access IT Automation to deliver a solution that would:
- Reduce IT ticket volumes
- Improve the digital experience across its workforce
What We Did
Our product, Access Symphony, was perfectly positioned to resolve the problems faced by our client and help it reach its objectives. Access Symphony is a suite of proactive problem-solving, collaboration, and communication modules that automates IT processes and enhances EUX.
One of the modules in Access Symphony is Symphony Agent. Symphony Agent collects data and assesses performance, giving you enhanced visibility of your IT environment.
We supported the bank as it deployed Symphony Agent across its 120,000 endpoints to begin real-time telemetry collection.
Symphony Fix Engine is another module in the Access Symphony product suite. Fix Engine is a dynamic database of IT fixes that can be deployed to endpoints automatically or accessed by users on demand.
For this project, we supported the IT team as they configured Symphony Fix Engine to automate a set of common remediations. Examples include clearing caches, restarting stuck services, and resolving profile errors.
We also helped map client-specific high-frequency ticket types. Fixes were developed for these tickets based on historical service desk data, and deployment of the fixes was automated.
The Access IT Automation team also worked with the client to set up Symphony Fix Engine as a self-service portal that end-users could use to trigger common fixes themselves. This is a live database of fixes that is updated as new issues are identified and remediations developed.
The Results
- 65% reduction in L1 and L2 support tickets in the first 6 months.
- 38% reduction in mean time to resolution.
- Self-service fix usage increased steadily, reaching a 22% adoption rate among the diverse user base.
- The bank’s IT leadership was able to reallocate resources away from reactive support to project delivery.
The bank’s IT Director said:
“The Symphony platform has fundamentally changed the way we support our users. We no longer spend hours on basic fixes. The automation does it for us.”
David Halfteck, CTO at Access IT Automation, said:
“This engagement is a perfect example of how automation and telemetry can drive real, measurable change at scale. We love seeing customers shift from reactive support to a proactive, insight-driven IT model.”
