Smartsheet gets its assets in order

When your company builds the world's leading work execution platform, your internal IT operations need to be just as streamlined. Smartsheet faced fragmented Excel spreadsheets for asset tracking, manual processes for service delivery, and no unified ITSM platform to support their global workforce.

After considering expensive alternatives like ServiceNow, Smartsheet chose Freshservice to build a comprehensive ITSM from the ground up. What started as cost-effective IT ticketing evolved into enterprise-wide service management across multiple departments.

"We have had a positive experience using Freshservice for the past five years," says Logan Jacobson, Manager of Technology Asset Management. "It has been instrumental in streamlining our operations not only within the IT department but also across various business functions."

Today, Smartsheet maintains a 95% SLA adherence rate while closing over 40,000 tickets annually, thanks to Freshservice.

The company

Smartsheet is a leading work execution platform with more than 3,300 employees globally with $196.6 million ARR. The company empowers organizations to plan, track, automate, and report on work at scale.

The challenge

With thousands of employees across global locations, Smartsheet's IT team struggled to maintain operational efficiency and service quality using fragmented manual processes. Excel spreadsheets tracked assets with no visibility into actual locations or status. "No one knew where any of them were," says Jacobson.

Beyond fragmented asset tracking, Smartsheet lacked unified ITSM for its growing workforce. While ServiceNow handled security functions, evaluating it for enterprise-wide ITSM revealed it was "very expensive" and required "a team to maintain," which was impractical for the cost-conscious, scaling organization, says Jacobson.

With manual processes that couldn't keep pace with high ticket volumes across departments, bottlenecks threatened service quality as the company expanded globally.

The solution

Freshservice delivered enterprise ITSM capabilities without traditional complexity, enabling Smartsheet to build comprehensive service management practices from day one.

The platform immediately unified previously scattered operations while supporting rapid cross-departmental adoption beyond IT, including finance, operations, and distribution. Accounts payable teams use it for tracking AP requests and completing payments, while Security and Compliance teams review TPRM workflows through the platform. "Everyone uses Freshservice," notes Jacobson.

Smartsheet's asset tracking evolved from Excel chaos to comprehensive inventory management. The team built a complete hardware asset database to capture Asset Lifecycle information including purchase data, usage data, retirement information, and maintain live device connections throughout the environment.

Automation eliminated manual bottlenecks entirely.” We're able to create API automations for many managed software including products like Adobe,” says Jacobson. "Someone requests an Adobe license, we approve it, and it automatically assigns and provisions them a license. We created automation by leveraging Freshservice without ever opening the Adobe portal."

Freddy AI also enhanced self-service capabilities, enabling employees to get answers through Slack or Freshservice with knowledge base references, reducing routine support requests.

Powered by AWS, Freshservice scales alongside Smartsheet's continued global expansion.

Impact

Smartsheet's IT operations transformed from fragmented manual processes into unified, efficient service delivery. The team now maintains a 95% SLA adherence rate while closing over 40,000 tickets annually.

Software provisioning saw the most dramatic efficiency gains, dropping from four hours of manual work to minutes through automation. "For Zoom, it could take up to four hours to complete provisioning, and now we're able to provision it within minutes," says Jacobson.

And for Smartsheet to see broad adoption across departments shows just how easy it is to use and quick to deliver results.