Clackamas County is the third most populous county in Oregon, with 14 incorporated municipalities and a population of more than 420,000 residents. The county's workforce, comprised of nearly 2,400 employees, works towards the goal of supporting the health, stability, and well-being of all county residents.
Its Technology Services department designs, operates, and supports the platforms and infrastructures that enable other county departments—including County Administration; Transportation and Development (DTD); Disaster Management; GIS; Health, Housing, and Human Services (H3S); and more—to design and deliver citizen-facing services.
When a legacy solution impeded service reliability and operational efficiency
The Clackamas County Technology Services department previously relied on a legacy, on-premises help desk solution. As the county's citizen-facing services expanded, so did the expectations and service demands on the Technology Services team to deliver internal IT services faster and more reliably.
However, the legacy solution was not scalable enough to meet the department's new service reality. This led to critical tickets, including security issues, getting buried in queues due to inadequate automation and absent service level management capabilities. Because the tool hamstrung the ability of technicians to spot trending tickets and problems early on, the team would spend more time hunting for information and sifting through tickets than resolving
urgent issues.
Additionally, new procurement requests sent to the Technology Services team—typically requiring compliance to the county's standard operating procedures along with dedicated approvals and routing logic—were being handled inconsistently. At the same time, running reports that showcased different KPIs on daily operations consumed a lot of time without giving clear operational visibility for managers.
The road to service transformation with
ServiceDesk Plus
The Technology Services team decided to transform service delivery operations using a new, modern service management platform that addressed these challenges. Clackamas County evaluated ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, Jira Service Management, Freshservice, SolarWinds Service Desk, Zendesk, and SysAid and chose ServiceDesk Plus for its ticketing automation capabilities that span workflows, service level agreements, ticket routing, and timer-based actions.
Jeff Cary, the IT projects coordinator at Clackamas County, outlined how ServiceDesk Plus helped the team transform the way it managed customer issues and requests: "We’re able to respond to customers much more quickly, and tickets no longer get buried in queues as they once did. Features like hold timers and color-coded indicators help us quickly identify and prioritize the items that need immediate attention. On the purchasing side, request workflows ensure our processes are followed consistently, with approvals routed exactly as intended."
The Technology Services department relies on the flexible reporting capabilities in ServiceDesk Plus to provide managers with clear and succinct visibility into daily operations without any unnecessary details or overwhelming data points. The ability to prioritize work items systematically coupled with robust automations for ticket assignment, approval routing, and SLA enforcement has helped the team to deliver IT services reliably on every single count. Clackamas County further leverages ServiceDesk Plus for governing its IT changes with a focus on minimizing change risk and failures.
"ServiceDesk [Plus] has transformed the way we manage customer issues and requests. Reliability—once a major challenge with our previous on-premises solution—is now a distant concern after making the transition."
— Jeff Cary, IT projects coordinator, Clackamas County
Clackamas County now has a well-oiled IT service engine that runs on ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, and it receives personalized support from the ManageEngine Customer Success team for continuous improvement of its processes. Jeff adds, "Anyone on our team will tell you we spend less time hunting down tickets and digging through details than we ever have. When issues do arise, the Customer Success team has been responsive and helpful, allowing us to continue refining and improving our processes."