UK
location
1988
founded
10K
employees
Data migrated
- Incidents
- Problems
- Changes
- Requests
- Knowledge base records
Industry: Wholesale Building Materials
Location: Northampton, United Kingdom
Type of migration: ServiceNow to Freshservice
The challenge: Travis Perkins needed to migrate ITSM and sensitive HR data wholly and accurately.
The solution: Automated migration with pre-built customizations.
The result: The company successfully moved all ITSM and HR records to Freshservice.
I think Help Desk Migration was brilliant. They quickly understood everything we explained and grasped the nuances of how our systems were set up, especially our ServiceNow database.
About Travis Perkins
Travis Perkins is the UK’s leading builders’ merchant, supplying a wide range of building materials, tools, and hire services to trade professionals and self-builders. Their network of over 500 branches provides timber, bricks, plumbing and heating products, landscaping supplies, painting and decorating essentials, and more.
They support projects of all sizes, delivering reliable service, expert advice, and high-quality products to help customers complete jobs efficiently. As part of Travis Perkins plc, they combine extensive industry knowledge with a commitment to operational excellence, enabling tradespeople and builders to grow their businesses.
What led to the idea of switching help desks? Was there a specific challenge or need that sparked the decision?
We had been using ServiceNow for over 12 years. Over time, the system became heavily customized, making it challenging to keep up with the latest features because many of our custom elements were not compatible with new functionality.
The data in our Configuration Management Database became less reliable, as automated discovery tools could no longer be fully supported. Tracking Service Level Agreements and other ITSM performance measures was challenging because our setup had diverged from standard ITIL practices and ServiceNow reporting.
Adopting new features or integrations was expensive and often required third-party implementation.
What did your decision-making process look like? Did your team do any planning before the migration?
Our first step in preparation was to segment the data based on use cases for transfer from ServiceNow. Operational datasets migrated into Freshservice included open IT incidents, problems, changes, requests, and knowledge articles. Open and closed HR case data up to three years old were also included.
Archive data was retained for future reference to meet GDPR, audit, and operational requirements. This included closed IT tickets needed for investigations or auditing system access, as well as closed HR cases required to comply with GDPR for up to seven years.
We then defined the data sources, whether ServiceNow archive or production, and identified the targets, including Freshservice and the data warehouse, along with the retrieval methods.
Operational data was mapped at the attribute level between the source tables and the target in Freshservice.
Finally, we decided to commission expertise to manage the retrieval of data from ServiceNow and ensure the migration process was handled efficiently.
What data was most important to migrate? Were there any records you couldn’t afford to lose?
The most important data to migrate was HR data containing sensitive, personally identifiable information. Legal requirements demand retention of up to seven years, with accuracy, completeness, and restricted access to unauthorized users.
ITSM data was also critical, particularly open incidents, changes, and service requests. These tickets needed resolution in the target system after cutover, so it was essential to migrate an accurate and complete set of open items just in time.
How did the migration go for you? Did you have any special requirements or customizations?
Clive Allen: It was a big piece of work in a short amount of time, so there was bound to be stress and a few problems along the way. But in the end, everything turned out well.
1. Data mapping
Saagar K.: I’m not from a deeply technical background, so I wouldn’t necessarily call these “challenges,” but some issues only came up as we started running into them. For example, as we explored how the tables and mappings worked, we were discovering things as we went along.
Dee Streikus: Once we started communicating directly with Help Desk Migration, things moved much faster. We understood each other quickly, especially with Clive involved. He and Help Desk Migration were able to sort out the mapping conversations much more efficiently.
2. Retrieving archived data from ServiceNow
The second challenge involved retrieving archived data from ServiceNow. Something happened on the ServiceNow side. The initial extraction missed attachments, necessitating a complete re-run of the process for the large HR dataset and delaying the decommissioning of the previous system.
Vanessa Vasani: To be fair, ServiceNow really rallied in the end to help us solve it. So that was a joint effort. Without their intervention, we wouldn’t have gotten everything done.
Saagar K.: Other than that, the tool’s really intuitive. The Migration Wizard was actually pretty easy to follow, even from a non-technical perspective. We could just go in and kind of understand it. The downloads and extractions were pretty straightforward, though the file sizes for archiving were huge.
Why would you recommend using the automated tool for help desk data migration?
Dee Streikus: You’re very flexible and adaptable to customer needs. Every time we asked for something, Ira and Ihor would take it and usually come back with answers within a day at most. You’re very reactive, and almost everything we needed was delivered.
Vanessa Vasani: I thought that because, honestly, the feeling we got was that you really cared about our success. It really came across that it mattered just as much to your team as it did to us. It felt like an extension of our team. It stopped feeling like a third party, and instead, we felt like a group all trying to solve the same problem.
Your platform has a lot of advantages. Apart from the Migration Wizard, the fact that it's reversible and that you've automated the retrieval and deletion process are important. You can do test migrations and then reverse them. I think that’s really powerful. We took full advantage of that.
I was thinking of giving you kudos for the three P’s—platform, people, and process. I think all of those are really strong.
What are 2–3 tips you’d give to others planning a data migration?
- Engage Help Desk Migration early, months before the move, to support planning.
- Retrieving archived records can be slow, so large datasets may take weeks. Plan ahead and confirm all data, including attachments, is recovered.
- Data mapping is complex and must be tested in practice, as some formatting issues appear only after migration. Start testing early and allow for multiple iterations.
