108% ROI in 10 Months and a total three-year benefit of $859,247

Executive Summary

In August 2009, Cherwell Software commissioned Forrester Consulting to examine the total economic impact and potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Cherwell Service Management. Cherwell Service Management is a fully integrated software solution for management of service desk, help desk, or customer call centers. Cherwell is a Web enabled product using Microsoft's .NET technology and out-of-the-box Pink Elephant-verified ITIL v3 best practices. The product is available through a traditional licensing model (Cherwell On- Premise) or as a subscription service (Cherwell On-Demand), implementing the latest in the SaaS evolution: SaaS 3.0. Either model supports a "browser-based" or "rich client" user experience. This study illustrates the financial impact of implementing on premises Cherwell Service Management for the information services department (ISD) of a US-based research company with 14 major locations.

As the organization has grown considerably over the past five years, the IT director wanted to align the ISD with the organization's long-term business needs through managing costs, processes, and services. The IT director initially implemented a manual change management process and developed a homegrown solution for service management. Struggling with the need for a more sophisticated solution for change management and reporting requirements, the organization purchased a service management solution for the enterprise.

The organization attempted to implement the solution for more than a year but was unable to do so due to challenges with upgrade compatibility, contractors, and matching the software configuration with its requirements. The organization ultimately decided to discontinue the implementation of the previously purchased software and to start its search for an IT service management software solution from scratch. The organization conducted an extensive requirements and needs assessment phase for three months, identifying 33 different possible software vendors. This field was narrowed to four vendors. After a series of site visits, two vendors were selected to pilot their software over 30 days with the organization. After this evaluation process, the organization picked Cherwell Service Management.

In conducting in-depth interviews with the organization, Forrester found that with the selection and implementation of Cherwell, it achieved:

• Productivity savings from improved IT service management processes around incident and problem management.
• Savings from cost avoidance of software maintenance fees for the previous IT service management solution.
• Labor savings from cost avoidance of additional administration for the previous IT service management solution.
• Additional savings from solution development, such as a project and portfolio management solution, using Cherwell Service Management
• Improved reporting in terms of timing, accuracy, and flexibility.
• Improved accountability to address continuous service improvements.

http://www.cherwell.com/case-studies/108-roi-in-10-months-and-a-total-three-year-benefit-of-859-247