Industrializing support for 7,000 users
Hexafret, a rail freight subsidiary of SNCF, runs support for 4,000 employees and around 7,000 internal and external users while helping the country avoid the emission of more than 1 million tonnes of CO2 and over 1 million long-distance trucks on the road every year. Behind that operation, the support once ran on scattered emails and a rigid ticketing tool that made every small change expensive.
In an exclusive video interview, several members of Hexafret's user environment team — including Fabienne, Head of the User Environment division, Maxime, User Support Manager, and Frédéric, from the same team — explain why they moved to GLPI and what changed for their day-to-day support operations.
The initial challenges: scattered requests and a costly, rigid tool
Before GLPI, Hexafret's teams faced two separate problems that both slowed down support.
- Requests handled by email: some departments, like the CSPHA, tracked support requests through email with no central record and no easy way to see where a case stood.
- A rigid, expensive legacy tool: other teams relied on an older ticketing platform that was far more complex to configure — any change required going through an external integrator, and the cost of evolutions was, in the team's words, extremely high.
- No industrialized process: as the team in charge of making sure every employee has the hardware and software to work properly, the user environment division needed one robust, centralized tool everyone could rely on.
Why GLPI? Autonomy from external integrators
With GLPI, configuration changes no longer depend on an outside integrator. Maxime, who manages user support at Hexafret, is close enough to the tool's setup to respond to user needs quickly — a direct contrast with the previous platform's costly evolutions.
"Before, we had another, more complex ticketing tool. We had to go through an integrator, and evolutions cost extremely high amounts. Now, with GLPI, we have the advantage of having Maxime, who is very competent, and thanks to him we can respond to user needs very quickly."
— Sandrine, Assistant to the HR Director and President at Hexafret
Key project metrics
- ~7,000 users supported, internal and external combined.
- ~10 technicians handling first-line support, backed by around 50 people across level 2 and level 3.
- ~11,000 tickets migrated from the previous tool with no loss of continuity.
A single source of truth: everything happens in the ticket
The switch to GLPI came with a full migration of Hexafret's existing ticket base — close to 11,000 tickets carried over so teams could keep working the way they were used to, with a smoother tool underneath. Day to day, the team relies on GLPI's search engine and custom filters to sort through requests, and on a simple ticket creation and response workflow that keeps the full history of a case, and every team member's contribution to it, visible in one place.
"Everything is handled via the ticket. We have all the information, we have the history, we know exactly where we stand, and that’s a real advantage. We have a reliable, cost-effective tool that works."
— Frédéric, User Environment team, Hexafret
Conclusion: a reliable, low-cost tool the team can run itself
Hexafret's experience shows that an in-house team, without a permanent dependency on an external integrator, can run a large-scale support operation on GLPI — ergonomic and intuitive enough that, in the team's own words, no heavy training is needed to get started. As Maxime puts it, for him GLPI is simply the ideal tool.
Looking to industrialize your own IT support process without depending on costly external development cycles?
- Discover GLPI's Helpdesk features: https://www.glpi-project.org/en/helpdesk-software/
- Find a GLPI partner near you: https://www.glpi-project.org/en/partners/
- Explore GLPI pricing: https://www.glpi-project.org/en/pricing/
📺 Watch the full video testimonial
