Modern ITSM supports Leeds Building Society’s digital transformation

When Leeds Building Society needed to power their ambitious mortgages and savings transformation, they knew their aging IT systems wouldn't cut it. Manual approval processes frustrated users, inefficient asset management created blind spots, and critical business data was trapped in silos.

Enter Freshservice. "We have had a positive experience using Freshservice since we launched to our colleagues in December 2024,” says Lee Young, IT Service Introduction Lead at Leeds. “It has been a game changer in streamlining our operations and providing valuable insights into how we are performing.”

The results speak for themselves: 96% SLA adherence (up from 82%), resolution times slashed by 3x, and over 70 automated workflows that eliminated manual tasks. Colleagues are delighted with the intuitive new system, IT teams are empowered, and Leeds' mission-critical transformation program now has the agile ITSM foundation it needs to succeed.

The company

Leeds Building Society is a UK financial services organization with approximately 1,800 employees that provides mortgage lending and savings products to customers across the United Kingdom.

The challenge

Leeds Building Society's legacy IT systems were holding back its most ambitious project yet—a complete mortgages and savings platform transformation. The service request process relied on manual approvals with no service catalog, leaving colleagues frustrated and IT overwhelmed. Asset management involved multiple tools with no single source of truth, making it impossible to assess change impact or manage data efficiently.

Leeds needed systems that could support its transformation program, but the aging infrastructure simply couldn't deliver the agility and integration required for such a mission-critical initiative.

The solution

After evaluating competitor solutions, Leeds chose Freshservice for one key reason: confidence. "We knew we would get the support that we needed," explains Young.

That confidence paid off. Freshservice's extensibility let Leeds digitize its request management with clean service catalogs and smart approvals—no more manual work required. Integration with existing asset tools created a consolidated CMDB that gave IT teams their single source of truth. And adding Freddy Copilot empowered agents to handle queries faster and more consistently from Day 1.

Young attributes the success in part to the ability to easily automate workflows, including the “leavers process, which has been really effective for us." Leeds deployed over 70 automated workflows across departments, transforming manual tasks into seamless processes. Built on Freshworks Neo Platform and powered by AWS, the solution gives Leeds the rock-solid foundation its transformation demands.

“What I love about Freshworks is that it's easy to set up,” says Young. “The settings are so easy and intuitive to do yourself.”

Impact

The numbers tell the transformation story: SLA adherence rocketed from 82% to 96%, while mean time to resolution plummeted to just 11 hours 31 minutes—a 3x improvement. The 70+ automated workflows have eliminated manual work that used to eat up valuable IT resources.

The impact extends far beyond metrics. Young notes that colleagues immediately experienced the difference, with one user describing their first interaction as much easier and more intuitive than the old system, resolving their issue the same day with obvious delight.

Young says the organization is already planning its next evolution with Device42 for advanced asset management. The integration will provide application dependency mapping crucial for the ongoing transformation—helping assess change impact and incident analysis across their expanding Azure infrastructure.

Leeds now has what it always needed: an agile, integrated ITSM foundation that powers its mortgages and savings transformation program. The mission-critical initiative is smoothly supported by systems that work with the business, not against it.