Employees embrace better ITSM at Supernus Pharmaceuticals

Workers at Supernus Pharmaceuticals research and produce breakthrough medications to treat Parkinson’s, depression, ADHD, and other nervous system conditions. But the company’s IT operations were less innovative, lacking standards for response time or self-service options for both agents and end users. Combined with a lack of ITIL alignment, the IT support desk was disorganized and undisciplined, leaving employees in the dark about when and how their issues might be addressed.

Supernus turned to Freshservice to provide agents and end users with a modern solution that helped resolve tickets efficiently. Within a few months, the IT team had reached 50% adoption and was able to achieve a 98% SLA adherence, giving agents a confidence boost.

“We have become a more employee-centric IT department,” says Alejandro Massuet, IT support services manager at Supernus Pharmaceuticals. “Our agents have taken complete ownership over tickets and want to solve our users’ issues as quickly as possible.”

The company

For more than 30 years, Supernus Pharmaceuticals has been producing biopharmaceutical treatments for central nervous system diseases like ADHD, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, migraines, and more. Its 700 employees are spread across North America, Asia, and Africa.

The challenge

Despite a reputation for cutting-edge work in pharmaceuticals, Supernus had lackluster IT service management that failed to provide timely, helpful responses to queries. Though users had options for contacting support—email, phone and direct walk-ups—incoming requests were not tracked, leaving leaders in the dark about how the team was performing and how many requests were being raised. There were no pre-defined ticket SLAs, response times, or resolution times. And even though the company had a knowledge base for self-service, it wasn’t used very often by employees, who became dependent on the IT department to resolve even minor issues.

“The lack of these clear processes was hindering operational excellence,” Massue says. “We envisioned a new solution that would centralize all IT service requests and incidents.”

Supernus sought a modern ITSM that would consolidate support tickets on one platform, support performance tracking and comprehensive reporting and be easy enough to use to encourage high employee adoption.

The solution

To identify the best possible solution, Massuet’s team turned to research firm Gartner's comparison of ITSM solutions, with Freshservice ranked near the top. After evaluating several solutions, Supernus selected Freshservice for its ability to centralize and track tickets, automate processes, and deliver analytics. Implementation took a quick four weeks.

To gain actionable insights into its IT support processes, Massuet needed high levels of adoption. “On average, we get around 1,000 tickets per month,” says Massuet. “Our goal was that within five months of introducing Freshservice, 50% of those tickets should come in through the portal.” 

A plan to drive user adoption began with a drumbeat of internal marketing campaigns at the same time Freshservice was being implemented. These emails touted the portal and previewed how users would be able to raise a request or use the self-service options. Once Freshservice was officially launched, agents helped show users how to submit tickets through the platform and access the self-service portal. These measures paid off: Supernus reached 50% adoption within three months, shaving two months off its goal—and reaching 80% by the end of five months.

Freshservice, built on Neo Platform and powered by AWS, has since been expanded to other departments, routing relevant tickets to facilities, lab services, or purchasing, depending on the query. To better track hardware and software around the company, Supernus turned to Freshworks Marketplace for Microsoft Intune to integrate with Freshservice.

Impact

Employees and agents alike embraced Freshservice, driving customer satisfaction scores to 98.8% and giving everyone a transparent way to track ticket resolution, which was reduced from an unspecified number of days to a quantifiable 3.2 hours average response time, achieving a 98% SLA adherence. Apps like Microsoft Teams, Intune, and DocuSign supercharged collaboration across departments.

“Before Freshservice, we didn’t have the processes and automations that we do now,” says Massuet. “Today, we are much more efficient in resolving the issues that our end users have.”