Moving from ServiceNow to SimpleOne ITSM: The Commonwealth Partnership Story

About Commonwealth Partnership (CMWP)

Commonwealth Partnership (CMWP) is a leading consulting company in the commercial real estate space, with over 30 years of market experience. The company offers its clients a full range of solutions for investing in, managing, and developing real estate projects, drawing on deep market knowledge and global expertise. The CMWP team is made up of over 400 employees.

Project Background and Goals

The need for a new ITSM system at Commonwealth Partnership came about as part of the localization of an international company within its market. This change meant the company lost access to the global ServiceNow system it had been using to automate its IT processes.

The idea of going back to handling requests through email and corporate messengers was simply not an option for the management team. They needed a new solution that would allow them to:

• Keep their familiar ITSM processes, so there wouldn't be a big learning curve for users;
• Automate how they handle service requests, incidents, and general inquiries;
• Give their employees a user-friendly self-service portal;
• Have clear and transparent pricing.

Choosing the Right Solution

The company needed a solution that could automate three of its main, high-traffic processes:

• Handling general inquiries;
• Managing incidents;
• Fulfilling service requests.

A key requirement was having a service catalog to build a self-service portal for their end-users. The final decision to go with SimpleOne was made after comparing several different vendors.

Advantages of SimpleOne that influenced the choice:

• Transparent Pricing. SimpleOne offered a complete, out-of-the-box ITSM solution with no hidden fees for extra modules. The price included automation for all the processes they needed and a self-service portal, all without separate bills or complicated calculations.
• A Cloud-Based Model. Using cloud licenses meant there were no hidden costs for adding more infrastructure if the number of requests grew. The company also liked that SimpleOne solutions don't have limits on file storage.
• Ready-Made Technical Support. Technical support was included right out of the box with the cloud package.
• Clean Design. When looking at different systems, the CMWP team was drawn to SimpleOne's minimalist and uncluttered interface.

Project Stages

The project to move Commonwealth Partnership to SimpleOne ITSM took just two months, with the implementation led by their partner, AUXO. The project followed a Rapid Application Development approach, where the integrator's team worked in quick cycles (iterations): they held sessions with the client, gathered requirements, got them approved right away, and then put them into action.

Stage 1 (March 2025 – first half of April 2025): Design and Requirements Gathering

The integrator's team held several in-depth sessions with the client to create a technical plan and a clear description of the new solution. During this stage, they mapped out the processes one by one and got the client's sign-off.

Stage 2 (second half of April 2025 – May 2025): Development and Setup

This was when the main work of configuring the platform to fit the client's needs happened. The team rolled out the modules in a logical order: first the service catalog and portal, and then the processes for handling inquiries, incidents, and service requests.

Stage 3 (end of May – early June 2025): Testing and Launch

This final stage involved testing by the client, training for employees, and the system going live. In early June, Commonwealth Partnership began working fully in the new system.

According to the CEO of SimpleOne, "Commonwealth Partnership is a great success story of a company moving to a new platform without losing any functionality. The fact that the project was completed so quickly shows that SimpleOne solutions are ready for rapid migrations. We're especially pleased that the client is already looking at ways to expand the system to other departments in their company."

Implemented Functionality

As a result of the project, CMWP now has a full-featured ITSM system that covers all of the IT department's main needs for automating its service processes.

The setup for CMWP includes an external portal for end-users and an internal interface for support agents. End-users can submit requests through the service catalog or report incidents through the portal. The support agents then handle all these requests through a single, unified interface.

The Main Processes:

• General inquiries: All incoming requests are handled here, with the option to reclassify them as either incidents or service requests. This reclassification feature was something users were already familiar with from their time on ServiceNow.
• Incident management: Requests come in from general inquiries or directly from the portal. When an incident is created, the system automatically assigns it to the right group and sets its priority.
• Service requests: Users pick the service they need from the catalog, and the system automatically sends the request to the correct department and attaches the right SLA, which can change dynamically based on the request's priority.

The company's service catalog now has about 20 services that cover 80% of what employees typically need, such as:

• Getting access to resources and internal systems;
• Hardware-related tasks, like getting or replacing peripherals (mice, headsets, keyboards) and computers;
• Installing and setting up software;
• Help with email-related tasks;
• Setting up VPN and messengers.

Integrations and Technical Setup:

• Integration with Active Directory: A full sync of the employee catalog, including the organizational structure, department tables, divisions, and manager information.
• Single Sign-On (SSO): Users can now log in with their corporate accounts.
• Email integrations: The system sends out email notifications and can automatically process incoming emails, turning them into requests while filtering out auto-replies and spam.

The Results in Numbers

The SimpleOne ITSM system is used by first-line support team, IT support agents, and all company employees as end-users of the services.

Future Plans

Commonwealth Partnership is already looking at ways to scale the SimpleOne platform to other departments. The plan is to move toward an ESM (Enterprise Service Management) model by applying the same great practices to departments like marketing, accounting, HR, and other service-oriented teams.

The Head of Infrastructure and User Support at CMWP noted the long-term benefits, explaining,"The successful implementation of the SimpleOne platform has given us the right foundation for building a well-managed and transparent process for delivering services and IT support to our business, all in line with best practices. This also opens up the possibility for us to expand the system's features to an ESM level in the future, bringing our 'Single Window' concept to life."

Architecturally, the system is ready for this expansion. All users and processes can be brought onto the unified platform without any technical roadblocks, as SimpleOne is a platform solution which was designed from the ground up for this kind of ESM approach. While the decision to expand is still in the future, SimpleOne already has everything needed to automate service processes across the entire company.

Additionally, CMWP aims to further develop its ITSM functionality and improve the processes they've implemented. Their plans include:

• Adding approval processes for requests that need multiple sign-offs.
• Improving the experience for their support agents by adding reminders for SLAs and other notifications;
• Building out a knowledge base with ready-made solutions for common questions;
• Implementing Change Management to control changes in their IT infrastructure;
• Setting up a CMDB (Configuration Management Database) to manage their configuration items.