An IT turnaround at Scotland’s Crown Office

In the world of criminal justice and public safety, where decisions can have life-altering consequences, Scotland's Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) faced a critical juncture. With the responsibility of handling over 160,000 crime reports annually and prosecuting suspects to safeguard society from crime, COPFS couldn't afford any missteps in its IT operations.

Serving 2,500 employees pivotal to the nation’s justice system, the COPFS IT team must ensure uninterrupted IT workflows. However, with nearly 65,000 IT tickets and requests streaming in annually, the team grappled with the limitations of an outdated IT service management (ITSM) solution, which proved sluggish and unwieldy.

Freshservice—chosen by COPFS for its uncomplicated but powerful features and adaptability—has helped to revamp the agency’s IT service delivery. Intuitive workflow automations, smooth integrations, and customizable dashboards have quickened ticket resolution times and enabled smarter, faster decision-making. With Freshservice, COPFS can uphold its vital mission with enhanced efficiency and insight.

The company

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service is Scotland’s prosecution service and death investigation authority. It receives reports about crimes from the police and other reporting agencies and decides what action to take, including whether to prosecute. It also investigates deaths that need further explanation and allegations of police misconduct. COPFS is integral to the justice system, working to protect Scotland from crime, disorder, and danger.

The challenge

Amid its weighty societal responsibilities, COPFS faced a pressing IT challenge. The IT team needed to ensure that the organization’s 25,000 employees were unhampered by IT disruptions and distractions in their daily work.

“We're keenly aware of our responsibility to serve the public, whether through direct citizen-facing services or by enhancing the internal processes our staff use to deliver those services,” says Adam Biggs, head of IT services at COPFS.

To keep employees productive, swift resolution of IT issues is essential. But with its existing legacy ITSM platform, the IT team’s 70 support agents were constrained. “Our previous platform was an aging on-premise tool that was a source of frustration for both employees and agents,” says Biggs. “It was slow, difficult to navigate, and we couldn’t easily customize it.”

To ensure employees were unhindered in their work and empowered to better serve the public, COPFS sought a major ITSM upgrade. The organization required a solution that could help it quickly resolve nearly 65,000 incoming IT support requests annually, improve ticket resolution times, accelerate IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes, and free up project teams to confidently deliver new IT capabilities.

The solution

Biggs evaluated several ITSM tools, choosing Freshservice for its SaaS-based environment, intelligent automation capabilities, AI-driven employee self-service, customization capabilities, and orchestration APIs. 

“Freshservice ticked all the right boxes for us,” says Biggs. “Given the critical nature of our work, we rolled out Freshservice gradually to ensure it would meet everyone's needs. We began by using Freshservice to ingest emails into our service desk, and it was simple and well-received right from the start.”

Freshservice’s workflow automation features have immediate productivity benefits: When an employee raises a ticket via email or the self-service portal, the correct SLA is automatically applied, ensuring no ticket falls through the cracks.

Freshservice’s multi-level approvals streamline service requests, automatically routing tickets to relevant departments. If an employee wants to work outside the U.K., Freshservice routes the request to the authorized signatories in HR and security. This fast-tracks the approval process while creating an audit trail that maintains accountability.

Another standout benefit of Freshservice is the flexibility and control it provides. “We use the Freshservice Probe application to sync on-premise groups and shared mailboxes,” says Biggs. “It simplifies managing our employees’ diverse IT requirements. For instance, we've restricted access to the security team’s tickets to maintain confidentiality, which is vital given the sensitive information they handle.”

The platform’s integration with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Azure Active Directory makes single sign-on (SSO) accessible for users of varying technical backgrounds. With the success seen from the Teams and Azure orchestration apps available on the Freshworks Marketplace, the COPFS team is eager to leverage Microsoft PowerShell next to extend their automation capabilities further.

Freshservice has also simplified software deployment—automatically processing 600 software requests to save 200 IT employee hours. What was once a 30-minute process to obtain and install a single Adobe license is now fully automated.

Impact

In the first year following implementation, Freshservice helped COPFS’s 70 IT support agents to manage nearly 65,000 incident and request tickets. The quality of service has been equally impressive: 93% of employees are satisfied with ticket resolution times, and 96% are happy with the updates they receive. The IT team has also achieved an impressive customer satisfaction score of 86% and a 12% SLA improvement.

Freshservice’s customizable dashboards further support security compliance and aid in decision-making. "We're obligated to report on cybersecurity incidents to the government, so we’ve created a dashboard for easy and accurate reporting," explains Biggs. "I also use Freshservice’s dashboards to save time managing team workloads and ticket allocation."

Ultimately, Freshservice is more than a tool—it’s a catalyst for excellence, empowering COPFS employees to serve the public more effectively.