Solidsoft Reply’s $100,000 annual IT cost savings

Solidsoft Reply, a UK-based managed service provider specializing in medicinal track-and-trace systems, has leveraged Freshservice for nine years to support its growing MSP operations across Europe. When other platforms like Halo ITSM attempted to win their business last year, Solidsoft Reply defended their Freshservice implementation—discovering that competing options would require expensive add-ons for features already included in Freshservice.

"Every time they tested something in Halo and said, 'look at this,' I would turn around and say, 'yep, Freshworks does that as well,'" says Matt Sargeant, Managed Service & Support Manager at Solidsoft Reply.

The most dramatic impact has been in 24/7 support costs. By implementing Freshservice's on-call management capabilities, Solidsoft Reply eliminated $100,000 in annual third-party monitoring expenses—with Sargeant noting they had experienced only three actual overnight incidents in three years, effectively costing "$100,000 per incident."

As Solidsoft Reply supports 25 clients and thousands of end-users across European pharmacies and hospitals, Freshservice's comprehensive ITIL capabilities—including incident, problem, and change management—have been critical to their success, with potential expansion to 100 agents (from 32) in the next two years as more Reply Group companies engage their services.

The company 

Solidsoft Reply is a managed service provider specializing in medicinal track-and-trace systems. Part of the Reply Group with 15,000 employees across 200 companies, they support 25 clients including pharmacies and hospitals throughout Europe.

The challenge

When Sargeant joined Solidsoft Reply a decade ago, he faced the critical task of transforming a niche Azure consultancy into a full-fledged managed service provider for the pharmaceutical industry. This transition demanded far more than just technical expertise—it required a complete reinvention of their service delivery model.

"I was brought in to expand Solidsoft from being very much a consultancy that had a little bit of support on the back end to turning themselves into a managed service provider," explains Sargeant. "When I walked in, they had an open-source help desk system called OTRS. Purely just a ticketing platform—very basic."

Their growing MSP practice also faced increasing ticket volumes—from manual post-it note tracking to handling approximately 50 customer tickets and 500 monitoring alerts weekly, with an additional 150 tickets expected from upcoming service expansions.

Solidsoft Reply needed a comprehensive ITSM platform that could unify incident, problem, and change management, provide cost-effective 24/7 support capabilities, and scale to support their expanding MSP business across the Reply Group.

The challenges multiplied as they expanded. A new 24/7 support requirement for a critical customer forced them to employ a third-party company for overnight monitoring—costing approximately $100,000 annually. "At that point we had to employ another company to do monitoring overnight because we didn't want to employ our own staff sitting overnight," Sargeant recalls. This arrangement proved extremely wasteful as they experienced only three actual overnight incidents in three years.

The solution

After evaluating several options including Jira and ServiceNow, Sargeant chose Freshservice for its intuitive interface and comprehensive ITIL capabilities. "I went for a trial with Freshservice and decided straight away,” he says. “It was very easy to grasp the concepts and the features and functionality.”

Freshservice, built on Neo Platform and powered by AWS, provided the complete ITSM solution Solidsoft Reply needed—combining incident, problem, change, and release management in a single platform. Unlike competitors like ServiceNow that were "far too expensive," or Jira that didn't feel as "fresh," Freshservice offered a cloud-based solution that balanced sophistication with usability.

Solidsoft Reply activated Freshservice's MSP Mode to create isolated portals for each of their 25 clients across Europe—ranging from national pharmacy networks to hospital systems. Each portal has its own branding, ticket visibility, and service catalog, enabling a customized yet centralized experience for end users.

“Multi-portal functionality was a huge differentiator," says Sargeant. “It means our customers can log into their dedicated space, while we manage everything on one backend. That’s essential when you’re running a regulated, multi-tenant support environment like ours.”

This also made onboarding new clients faster and more scalable. “With each new Reply Group client we onboard, we can spin up a new portal and workflows without needing to duplicate our entire service desk,” says Sargeant. “We’re serving thousands of users with clean separation and compliance,” he explains.

Over nine years, Solidsoft Reply has progressively implemented more Freshservice capabilities. Workflow automation has become central to their MSP operations, allowing them to automatically route and prioritize the high volume of tickets and alerts they receive.

For their 24/7 support obligations, Sargeant leveraged Freshservice's on-call shifts functionality along with phone and SMS notifications, creating an efficient escalation system that eliminated the need for constant staffing. "With Freshservice, I managed to save us $100,000 a year because we could indicate workshifts and set up notifications via phone,” he says. “Now, our on-call staff will get a call if we have a certain alert that says that the system is down."

Impact

Implementing Freshservice—with full MSP mode enabled—has transformed Solidsoft Reply's operation, enabling them to support 25 clients across Europe with comprehensive ITSM processes. "The automation we've put in place to assess and prioritize tickets and align them to the right customer saves our team about 15% of their time each week," notes Sargeant.

This efficiency has positioned Solidsoft Reply for significant growth within the Reply Group—potentially expanding to 100 agents in the next 1-2 years. Their successful defense against migrating to Halo ITSM validated their decision, demonstrating Freshservice's superior value and comprehensive capabilities.

As Solidsoft Reply continues expanding their managed services practice, Freshservice remains their platform of choice—delivering enterprise-grade ITSM with the flexibility necessary for pharmaceutical industry compliance.