THG unified service delivery across IT, HR, warehouse, and facilities, handling 200,000+ tickets from a single platform. 

THG Ingenuity is a Manchester-based, end-to-end e-commerce technology and services provider that enables brands to scale globally. Through its core solutions, THG Commerce, THG Fulfil, and THG Studios, it partners with leading international brands such as Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and LOOKFANTASTIC. 

As operations scaled rapidly, the tools supporting THG’s service delivery failed to keep pace. Since IT and other business teams like HR, finance, warehouse, and facilities worked from their own mailboxes, it resulted in requests getting lost, duplicate tasks, and disjointed collaboration. And as request volumes grew, delays became inevitable and requests slipped through the cracks. It was clear that its service delivery needed to evolve beyond its legacy tools. 

One platform for the whole business 

True to its culture of experimentation and solution-first thinking, THG looked beyond short-term fixes. It needed to standardize how work moved across teams, adapt to peak demand, and extend seamlessly beyond IT into the wider business. ServiceDesk Plus provided that foundation, supporting both internal teams and external clients from a single, unified platform. 

IT makes the first move 

IT became the first function at THG to pioneer a more structured path to service excellence. No matter how employees reach out, whether through email, phone, SMS, or the self-service portal, all requests are now funneled into a centralized system. Every internal request is tracked, assigned, and resolved in one place, giving teams complete visibility into each request’s lifecycle. Incoming requests follow end-to-end workflows that enforce clear standard operating procedures by stage-gating the entire request lifecycle. 

Other business verticals are quick to follow 

As the IT team demonstrated clear ROI, other functions quickly saw the broader potential. HR saw immediate value in enhancing onboarding workflows, while the warehouse team recognized its ability to bring structure to high-volume operational requests. Seeing it in action encouraged finance and facilities to move away from mailbox-driven processes and come on board too. 

Two things were critical when unifying service management across the business: enabling effective collaboration across teams, and recognizing that a certain level of siloing was essential, especially for sensitive data such as their HR and payroll information.  

To make this expansion possible, the IT team built autonomous instances for each business vertical. Each department could use a unified platform but still operate independently with its own workflows, service catalogs, and data access, maintaining strict data segregation. 

Excellent service delivery for external clients 

THG works closely with a diverse range of third party brands, which meant it needed to extend the same service standards to its external clients too. But when clients needed help, there was no efficient way to funnel those requests into a centralized system. They came in through scattered emails and informal channels, and THG’s account managers had to bear the brunt of these requests, capturing details manually. 

This all changed when THG started to use ServiceDesk Plus in conjunction with Zoho Desk, Zoho’s customer support software, integrating the two with Zoho Flow. Client requests raised in Zoho Desk now get logged automatically into the service desk, where internal teams handle execution. ServiceDesk Plus remains the system of action, with all status updates and ticket closures automatically synchronized back to Zoho Desk, so clients stay informed without account managers switching tools. 

Quicker and error free joiner, mover, and leaver workflows 

With a workforce of over 2,000 employees, joiner, mover, and leaver (JML) workflows are critical to day-to-day operations; the HR team alone handled close to 4,000 HR requests in a span of little over a year. Moving away from the emails and spreadsheets that had made this tedious and time consuming, THG streamlined its JML workflows. Employee onboarding is now enhanced end to end, from automating Active Directory user account creation and preparing hardware assets to provisioning the right access and privileges from day one, reducing manual errors and giving new hires a consistent onboarding experience. 

Finessing their way through the festive frenzy 

During the festive season, the sheer volume of requests and incidents can naturally spike, making efficient incident response more important than ever. When high-priority tickets such as P1 or P2 incidents arrive, a custom script automatically creates a problem record and links all the related incident tickets. Relevant Senior Leadership Team (SLT) members are pulled into the problem record to review and approve the IT team’s post-incident reports, and if a report isn’t approved, the workflow notifies the relevant team members. 

Change requests follow the same discipline, routed to the relevant approvers and implemented stage by stage through structured workflows. But during peak trading periods such as Black Friday, even small changes, if not carefully managed, can open a whole new can of worms and trigger cascading issues. To mitigate this, THG has configured conditions that prevent any changes from being approved without SLT review during these scheduled windows. 

The team has also given itself room to experiment, using the platform’s code generator to create low-code scripts for custom functions without heavy development effort. 

Looking ahead 

By improving visibility and accountability, THG has shifted from reactive service management to a structured, proactive approach that supports the diverse needs of teams from IT and HR to warehouse and facilities. 

THG runs its service operation on ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus. To see how it supports service management at scale, visit servicedeskplus.com.