About
Restaurant Growth Services is a Nashville-based shared services organisation affiliated with O’Charley’s, 99 Restaurants, and the Underground Chuck’s concept, supporting teams across the eastern United States.
The Challenge
Restaurant Growth Services had been using an enterprise ITSM platform for several years. After bringing infrastructure and support back in-house following an outsourcing arrangement, it became increasingly difficult to justify in day-to-day use.
The platform required a dedicated administrator to manage, despite the team only using roughly 10 to 20 percent of its overall functionality. The system also struggled to extend beyond IT, where restaurant managers and non-IT teams found it difficult to navigate. Logging a ticket wasn’t intuitive, and users often didn’t know where to begin, particularly across payroll and HR.
Costs added further pressure. The platform was highly modular, and functionality that had previously been available began requiring additional licenses. Even users who only needed basic access, such as viewing tickets or adding notes, were suddenly tied to paid licenses, making costs harder to predict and control.
Reporting was technically available, but difficult to run. Pulling meaningful data required unnecessary effort, limiting how easily the team could review response times, resolution performance, or recurring issues.
As a result, Restaurant Growth Services struggled to justify continuing with a system that was hard to manage, hard to extend, and increasingly expensive.
"We inherited the system, and we probably didn’t use 10, 15, maybe 20% of the product — but you still needed a full-time person just to administer it.”
- Kevin Forsberg, SVP of Information Technology
The Solution
Restaurant Growth Services approached the migration with a clear priority: replace their existing ITSM platform without disrupting day-to-day operations, while putting control of the system back in the hands of the internal team.
The organisation moved to Halo during a period of wider internal change, with limited time to transition. The goal was not to recreate every element of the previous system, but to establish a foundation that could be managed internally and expanded over time.
The initial focus was on core IT support. Restaurant managers and internal users were given a clear entry point for raising issues, removing the uncertainty around how and where to log a ticket. Structured request paths replaced generic submissions, helping issues reach the right team more quickly.
At the same time, Restaurant Growth Services reduced reliance on external administration. Configuration, reporting, and workflow changes could be handled internally, allowing the team to adjust the system as needed without long turnaround times.
The platform was also positioned for wider use beyond IT. While the initial rollout centred on technology support, the structure put in place made it possible to bring other teams, including facilities, payroll, HR, and finance, into the same system, rather than managing requests through email or phone calls.
Despite the pace of the transition, the move was completed smoothly, giving Restaurant Growth Services a platform that was usable from day one and flexible enough to grow into.
The Results
Together, the move to Halo gave Restaurant Growth Services a platform that was easier to use, easier to manage, and better aligned with how teams across the business actually work.
- Faster response and resolution, with average speed of answer reduced from just over one hour to around 30 minutes, and average resolution time reduced from around three days to closer to two.
- Lower and more predictable costs, including a 40–50% reduction in monthly ITSM spend and licensing aligned to real usage through a mix of named and concurrent licenses.
- Higher engagement across users, as restaurant managers are able to log and track tickets without guidance and use self-service knowledge articles to resolve issues independently.
- Greater ownership for IT, with configuration and reporting managed internally and far less reliance on external administration for changes and updates.
"We have a lot of great plans and a roadmap for what we’re excited to expand upon, which just weren’t options in the past.”
- Jerred Long, Supervisor of IT Retail Support & Systems Administrator of HaloITSM
With the foundations in place, Restaurant Growth Services is now focused on expanding the platform to additional teams, building on a roadmap that simply wasn’t possible with their previous system