Warehouse Group Cuts TCO by 25% with Jira Service Management

Challenge: Amid rising costs and customer expectations, the Warehouse Group sought a new service management solution to lower TCO while delivering even more value and better service.

Solution: TWG switched from one of the most widely known ITSM tools to Jira Service Management, creating a connected system of work with Atlassian apps. 

Impact: After rolling out Jira Service Management in five months (14x faster than their previous tool), TWG achieved an estimated 25% reduction in cost of ownership, based on internal analysis, and helped employees collaborate to deliver even better service.

Shopping for solutions to one key challenge: How can we do more with less?

In retail, one minor disruption can lead to millions of dollars in lost revenue. That’s the challenge The Warehouse Group in New Zealand was facing when they switched to Jira Service Management and extended their Atlassian system of work to more teams.

The Warehouse Group (TWG) has evolved from a single store into one of the largest retailing groups in the country, with three brands, more than 10,000 team members, 200+ stores, and billions in annual sales. In the face of economic uncertainty and rising costs, the company’s leaders posed one key question to their teams: How can we do more with less? As the General Manager of Group Technology, Ankit Gupta collaborated with his team to brainstorm how they could answer this question, while continuing to hit their goal of equipping TWG’s front-line employees with the information and tools they need to best serve internal and external customers.

“We’re on a journey to reduce the cost of doing business and increase productivity,” Ankit says. “We saw how consolidating our toolset and centralizing on Atlassian would help us shift to a more cohesive, value-driven approach. That not only means lower costs, but also less complexity and confusion.”

A new vision uncovers the need for a new service management solution

When Ankit joined The Warehouse Group, his team’s first order of business was to develop a clear vision for TWG’s workplace collaboration and service management practices. Clarifying their vision also clarified their next step: switch to a new service management solution. TWG’s previous tool had met their needs in the past, but they wanted to explore alternatives that would be cost effective and easy to implement, expand to other business lines, and maintain over time. Since TWG’s engineering teams already used Jira and Bitbucket, Technology Operations explored whether adding Jira Service Management would be a good fit in terms of features, cost, and culture. “We knew that we needed a platform that was agile, intuitive, and tightly aligned with how our teams work. That’s why we picked Jira Service Management,” Ankit explains. “It quickly stood out because it’s easy to implement and would reduce our total cost of ownership by 25%. From my perspective, that’s been a massive unlock for our team because we save a lot of money and can reinvest a portion back into enhancing features.”

While the advantages were clear to Technology Operations, they still had to gain buy-in from TWG’s executives and overcome hesitations about switching. With such in-depth knowledge of the purpose and business benefits of Jira Service Management, Ankit served not only as its technology champion, but also as the executive sponsor, building a strong business case and migration plan that gained enthusiastic approval.

Implementing 14x faster to quickly improve service, scale, costs, and collaboration

Together with their Solution Partner, Service Dynamics, the Warehouse Group implemented Jira Service Management for incident, problem, change, asset, and knowledge management within five months – a process that historically took significantly longer to deliver similar outcomes. “We had a tight timeline, so our two teams had to collaborate as one team with one goal,” says Service Dynamics Co-founder and Director Derek Leitch. “Successfully implementing Jira Service Management at TWG in five months is one of the best projects I've seen in my 30+ years in IT.”

While Technology Operations had to limit usage before to contain costs, switching to Jira Service Management unlocked new possibilities. “With Jira Service Management, we’ve been able to scale so our teams across the business – from Technology to Store Operations, to HR, to outside vendors – can access information, collaborate, and work faster. It’s been a huge win,” Ankit says.

Using a solution that is part of a connected platform has made it easier for cross-functional teams to collaborate, deliver even more value in less time, and streamline change management. For example, when an incident occurs, developers, security specialists, and customer support representatives use the Atlassian system of work to collaborate from alert through resolution, while keeping store managers and customers updated. Service Dynamics also helped TWG add governance and controls to their service management practice, which has improved clarity around what’s being done in the environment and why, especially across development, IT, and the change management process. Unifying teams and data on one platform means TWG can work together more, leading to lower mean time to resolution and higher customer satisfaction.

Ankit explains, “The deep integrations between Jira Service Management, Jira, and Confluence have enhanced our overall system of work, driving clarity, smarter prioritization, faster decision-making, and more collaboration across teams. This enables us to better align our resources to outcomes that matter to us. With Atlassian, it finally feels like our system works the way we do, not the other way around.”  

More value in less time: 70% better cost effectiveness in six months

Within six months of launching, the Warehouse Group was already seeing a return on their investment. Implementing Jira Service Management improved cost effectiveness by an estimated 70% within six months and offloaded work for multiple employees. “Work that previously required two highly skilled engineers can now be automated or streamlined, allowing those engineers to focus on more valuable strategic initiatives.” Ankit says.  

As teams across the business saw other departments enjoying their new solution, they asked Technology Operations to set them up with Jira Service Management too. With Jira Service Management, onboarding those teams and making improvements to better meet their needs are quick and easy. For example, the time required to create and configure forms cut in half, meaning faster access to new features and capabilities, plus increased customer satisfaction. “People are coming to us asking, ‘How can you help us go faster?’ Our teams have been much more connected and trust each other more.”

Even bigger results ahead for one of New Zealand’s biggest retailers

Now that they’ve seen the quick, yet significant wins of expanding their platform with a more modern, streamlined service management app, the Warehouse Group is considering how to get even more value out of their Atlassian system of work. Ankit’s team is particularly interested in building more workflows for business teams like HR, adding new apps like Loom for video communication, saving time with self-service and automation, and taking productivity to the next level with Rovo.

“This transformation project has already delivered significant value across multiple areas of the Warehouse Group, thanks to support from Service Dynamics and Atlassian. Jira Service Management has proven substantially easier to manage, enhance, and use compared to our previous ITSM solution, reducing operational overhead and increasing customer satisfaction,” says Ankit. “It’s been a hugely successful project with fast time to value – and we’re just getting started.”