Benefits of ITSM workflow automation for companies

Automating IT requests sounds like an easy investment to justify. Your team spends less time on repetitive tickets, employees get help faster, and IT can focus on bigger projects.

But when the proposal reaches your CFO or CEO, those benefits need numbers behind them. How much time will automation actually save? What are those hours worth? And will the savings outweigh the cost of another tool?

Broad promises of productivity gains won't answer those questions. You need realistic estimates backed by numbers your finance team can verify.

Below, we'll look at four benefits of IT service management (ITSM) workflow automation, the metrics you can use to demonstrate each one, and real customer results to support your business case.

TL;DR

• Vague promises of productivity gains won't get your business case approved. Back each benefit with numbers finance can verify.
• A higher auto-solve rate lowers your cost per ticket. Only requests resolved with no human involved should count toward it.
• Automating repetitive requests means fewer interruptions for IT, which reduces burnout and the risk of losing staff.
• Automating approval routing and reminders can shorten employee wait times. Track approval delays separately from the time employees are actually blocked from working.
• Automation lets support scale without headcount growing at the same rate. Track employees supported per IT team member.
• Software access requests make up the largest share of request volume, so they're the best place to start automating.

Why "productivity gains" won't get your business case approved

If you're asking finance to approve a new IT automation tool, you'll need more than an estimate of how much time it could save.

Start with the numbers you can verify. How many tickets does your team handle each month? How long do routine requests take? What software are you already paying for?

Then separate the financial benefits into two categories:

• Hard savings: Costs you can remove, such as retiring an existing chatbot or reducing overlapping software licenses.
• Soft savings: Time employees regain because they spend less time waiting for IT support. This has business value, although it doesn't directly reduce spending.

IT labor savings need careful treatment, too. If automation frees 25 engineer hours per month, calculate the value of that time. But if your team stays the same size, those 25 hours are now available for other work. 

You can also reduce costs by replacing existing tools. For example, Hazel Health replaced Jira Assist with Risotto, which reduced the number of tools its IT team had to manage.

Once you've established your current costs, you can calculate ITSM automation ROI using realistic assumptions about the requests automation will resolve and the effort required to maintain it.

No baseline yet? Start here

If requests currently arrive through Slack DMs, emails, or informal conversations, start by recording them as tickets.

Track how many requests come in, how long IT spends handling them, and how long employees wait for resolution.

Make sure automated requests create a ticket too. That gives you a consistent record for comparing automated and human-handled work.

Benefit 1: A higher auto-solve rate lowers your cost per ticket

Every routine request your team resolves manually carries a labor cost: an engineer's handle time, paid at their hourly rate. When automation resolves those requests end to end, that handle time comes off the queue and the cost behind each ticket falls.

To show that to finance, you need to measure requests that automation resolved fully.

Many IT teams already have chatbots that answer questions or point employees toward knowledge articles.“Deflection” reduces incoming tickets, but the employee may still need IT to complete the request, so a deflected ticket doesn't reliably save IT any time.

Measure auto-solve rate instead. A request counts as auto-solved when the system resolves it with no IT agent involved. That might mean answering a question completely or carrying out an action in a connected system, such as granting approved software access, and closing the ticket.

Set the bar strictly. One large consumer tech customer only counts requests where 'no human was involved at all.'

As your auto-solve rate climbs, IT spends fewer paid hours on routine tickets. The team stays the same size, and those hours move to project work.

How to calculate the savings

Start with the number of tickets auto-solved each month and multiply that by the time an engineer would otherwise spend resolving them.

For example, suppose your team receives 750 tickets monthly and automation resolves 20% without IT intervention. That's 150 auto-solved tickets. If each would normally take 10 minutes of an engineer's time, automation frees 25 hours per month.

Multiply those 25 hours by your team's hourly rate. One fintech customer rejected a vendor's savings estimate because it was built on a fixed $100 hourly rate they couldn't change to match their own.

Then account for the time your engineers spend configuring, testing, and maintaining the automations. A workflow that saves 10 hours but takes 10 hours to build delivers little immediate value. One large software customer told us he won't build '25 different use cases' if, together, they only bring a 0.5% gain.

There are also savings on tickets that still reach IT. When AI handles triage, routing, and context gathering, engineers can start investigating without repeating that initial work.

Metrics to track: Auto-solve rate, average manual handle time, and labor cost per ticket.

What it looks like in practice

At ThoughtSpot, a handful of IT staff supported more than 1,000 employees and handled roughly 50 to 60 support requests daily.

After implementing Risotto, approximately 20% of incoming tickets were auto-solved. Another 30% received AI assistance through knowledge retrieval and routing, though those requests still needed a person to wrap up the ticket. At the team's existing volume, roughly 11 requests each day no longer needed an IT agent.

Ironclad provides another example. Its help desk was handling 100 to 150 tickets per week, many involving software access. Risotto now auto-solves 91% of access-related requests across 40 to 50 applications.

Benefit 2: Fewer interruptions lower the risk of losing IT staff

For many IT teams, the hardest part of repetitive requests is how often they interrupt other work. One digital health IT lead calls it 'DM hell for my IT staff.' 

An engineer might be working on an important project when someone DMs them for access to a tool. They resolve the request, return to their project, and get interrupted again by an employee who's locked out of their Google account. Each request takes only a few minutes, but the constant context switching makes it hard to concentrate.

Automating these repeatable requests reduces those interruptions. Employees get help through their usual support channel without messaging an engineer directly, and IT gets longer stretches of uninterrupted focus time.

Fewer interruptions also matter for keeping your team. A steady stream of small, repetitive tasks pulls engineers away from the work they were hired to do, and that workload can lead to burnout. 

And burned-out people are more likely to leave: the 2025 Eagle Hill survey found they were nearly three times more likely to plan to leave their employer within the following year. That was a general workforce study, not IT-specific, but on a small IT team, one engineer leaving takes a large share of the team's capacity with them.

Automation also protects you when someone is away. When only one person knows how to handle a request, that work stops when they're out. 

One IT leader described what his two weeks of leave would mean: 'two weeks of new hires who get locked out.' Automating that process with a runbook means new hires still get their access while he's away.

Metrics to track: Hours spent on routine tickets each week, plus support interruptions through DMs, messages, and other informal channels.

What it looks like in practice

Before implementing Risotto, Hazel Health described its IT team as the company's 'human search engine.' Engineers spent so much time answering repetitive questions that they struggled to focus on strategic initiatives.

Their previous automation setup resolved relatively few requests and took substantial effort to maintain. After switching to Risotto, their automation rate increased from between 3% and 5% to over 20%.That meant fewer interruptions for IT, and employees could get answers around the clock without waiting for an engineer to come online.

Jobber faced similar pressure. As Mike Smith, IT Operations Manager at Jobber, explained:

'Historically, ticket work overshadowed strategic project work. We were spending our days trying to keep the wheels on.'

With Risotto handling routine requests, Jobber is shifting more of the team's capacity toward strategic initiatives.

Find out which of your team's repetitive requests Risotto can take off their plate. Book a demo.

Benefit 3: Faster resolution gives employees hours back

When an employee can't access an application or gets locked out of their account, the cost extends beyond the time IT spends resolving the request. The employee may be unable to keep working until someone helps them, and every wait chips away at the employee experience.

Most companies never count that cost. As one global services firm put it: 'They don't look at how much time a partner wastes waiting for an issue to get resolved and all that lost productivity.'

Often, the longest delay comes from someone outside IT. An access request might sit in Jira waiting for a manager or application owner to approve it. If that person rarely checks Jira, they may overlook the notification, leaving IT to follow up manually.

One payments company we spoke to had approximately 60 access requests waiting for approval. The IT team found that approval emails frequently went unanswered, while a Slack message was 'very hard to ignore.' 

Expectations have shifted, too. One IT team told us that employees who once accepted a 30-minute to one-hour wait for access now expect it immediately.

Automating approval routing and reminders reduces that delay. The approver receives the request where they already work, and once approval is granted, the system completes the access change without another manual handoff.

This is especially useful for distributed teams. An employee submitting a request outside IT's working hours can still get support without waiting until the next morning. As one IT leader working across time zones put it: 'if they've not got a buddy, they've got an AI buddy.'

Faster resolution isn't always the strongest business argument, though. If your IT team already meets its service-level agreements (SLAs) consistently, lead with handling more requests without additional staff, or with round-the-clock support.

For your business case, measure the time employees can’t work, not how long the ticket stays open.

Metrics to track: Average resolution time for routine requests, split into time waiting on IT and time waiting for approval.

What it looks like in practice

At Jobber, employees previously had to navigate different support channels depending on which team they needed. After introducing Risotto, Jobber reported 2,747 hours saved waiting for ticket resolution.

At ThoughtSpot, software access requests used to take days because of manual approvals and back-and-forth. Most now complete within 24 hours, with automated follow-ups so nothing slips. 'Risotto takes away the telephone tag we had to play,' says Jason Huey, Senior IT Systems Administrator.

Benefit 4: Support scales without headcount growing at the same rate

As your company grows, so does the volume of IT work. New employees need accounts and devices. More applications bring more access requests, and expanding departments create their own support needs.

Without automation, handling those requests eventually requires more people. ITSM workflow automation gives the existing team more capacity by resolving repeatable requests without manual intervention. When the company hires another 100 people, the extra access requests they bring are resolved automatically, without adding to the team's workload.

Some IT buyers target a ratio of one IT hire per 800 to 1,000 employees when evaluating automation investments. Treat that as an ambitious planning target. Your ideal ratio depends on the systems you manage and the responsibilities your team owns.

Start by calculating your current ratio, then consider how much more volume the team could support if more requests were resolved automatically.

Automation also changes which roles you hire for. With routine requests handled automatically, you can postpone adding another support role, or put your next hire on more strategic work.

Metrics to track: Employees supported per IT team member, monthly ticket volume, and auto-solve rate.

What it looks like in practice

Gusto had an eight-person IT team handling approximately 3,000 support requests every month. The company already used a chatbot, but expanding its automation depended heavily on its vendor. Gusto wanted more control over its workflows as demand increased.

After implementing Risotto, the team supported twice the ticket volume without growing. Today, Risotto auto-resolves an average of 55% of Gusto's tickets, across 11 departments with 157 access rules and more than 50 runbooks.

Callout card: 2x ticket volume handled by Gusto with the same eight-person team.

Where the benefits show up first: ITSM workflows to automate

You'll see these benefits soonest on high-volume requests that follow a repeatable process, because that's where automation saves the most IT hours and employee wait time. Software access is the biggest of these.

Across all the companies we've spoken with, access work makes up 80 to 89% of request volume at every company size. That makes access request management the natural place to start. 

Access requests also involve multiple steps, from identifying the right approver to granting access and updating the ticket. Here are the workflows worth prioritizing, starting with access:

• Software access requests and approvals. Check eligibility, get approval, grant access through the connected system, and close the ticket.
• Approval routing and reminders. Send requests to the correct manager or application owner and follow up automatically when approval is outstanding.
• Onboarding and offboarding. Create accounts, provision applications, and remove access when employees leave. Keep an audit trail of every action, including who approved it.
• MFA re-enrollment and account lockouts. Verify the employee's identity and complete the recovery steps without an IT agent stepping in.
• ITSM incident management workflows. Triage incoming incidents, route them to the right team, and alert on-call responders when human intervention is needed.

You don't need to automate everything at once. Review your recent tickets, find the ones automation could resolve, and start with the apps people request most. One team we spoke to found 480 tickets it could automate, then started with its ten most-requested applications before expanding.

Turn ITSM workflow automation into measurable results with Risotto

To justify ITSM workflow automation, show finance how each benefit translates into measurable results:

• Lower cost per ticket: Track auto-solve rate, manual handle time, and labor costs.
• Fewer interruptions for IT: Track time spent on routine tickets and support interruptions.
• Shorter waits for employees: Track resolution times and how long employees are blocked from working.
• More capacity without matching headcount growth: Track employees supported per IT team member.

Risotto helps deliver these benefits by resolving routine IT requests automatically. It combines a service desk and an automation engine in one system, by handling requests, approvals, and actions in connected applications through Slack and Teams.

For requests that need human intervention, Risotto's Tier-2 Assistant investigates the issue and proposes a resolution for an engineer to review and approve. It can also suggest runbooks to automate similar requests in the future.

Risotto works alongside existing ticketing systems such as Jira Service Management, Freshservice, and ServiceNow, so you can start automating without replacing your current ITSM.

At ThoughtSpot, Risotto was up and running in less than a week and now auto-solves around 20% of incoming tickets.