The three routes
HaloITSM — the depth successor. Full ITIL-aligned service management — incidents, problems, change, CMDB, SLAs — with all-inclusive per-agent licensing, cloud or on-premise deployment, and SQL-level control for the estates that customised Cherwell heavily and want that freedom again. Named a Challenger in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for IT Service Management Platforms. It's where CHC Helicopter landed when they left ServiceNow with us — at scale, with an estimated licensing saving of around 70%. HaloITSM migration →
Freshservice — the fastest safe landing. Clean, modern, quick to stand up and quick for agents to adopt — which matters more than usual when the calendar is the constraint. We're a long-standing Freshworks partner.
Jira Service Management — the Jira-estate play. If your organisation already runs a serious Jira estate and your engineers live in Atlassian, JSM makes the service desk part of a platform you already own. We've been implementing Atlassian service management since 2016, back when it was Jira Service Desk Server.
We partner across all three ecosystems, which is why the routing is honest: the assessment recommends by your organisation's shape — existing estate, appetite for administration, deployment constraints — not by our catalogue.
The migration shape that fits the deadline
The method is our standard one, and the deadline mostly turns one dial: configuration depth. How much to build before cutover depends on your target state, the scope of the switch, and what's critical to you. But when the calendar is tight, the biggest time sink is usually process redesign — and there's a legitimate fast path around it: reconfigure with your current system as the requirements baseline. Carry your processes across as they are — if, and only if, you're happy with them — land on a solid working configuration by the date, and redesign in live service afterwards, under PlatformCare if you want the capacity on tap. And if your processes genuinely need rethinking before the move, the assessment tells you early enough to plan for it.
Data scope is the second dial, and under a deadline it matters even more: some organisations start fresh and archive the old system, some bring only in-flight tickets, some need the history. Whatever you choose, the move itself is fixed-price for that scope, via our data-migration tooling partner, with an arithmetic acceptance test: what was in scope is now here. Then UAT, training, cutover — a short freeze window — and hypercare while configuration meets reality.
Is it too late?
For a baseline cutover: no. The data move is quick — that's what tooling buys — and a solid baseline configuration is measured in weeks, not quarters. What you genuinely can't do before December is a full process redesign — but if you're broadly happy with how you work today, you don't need one: carry it across, baseline by the date, redesign in live service. The assessment gives you the real calendar, built from your estate and your team's availability, before you commit to anything beyond the assessment itself.
Already past the date, or going to be? Running unsupported is a risk that compounds monthly, but the method doesn't change — it just starts sooner. Talk to us either way.
The reference point
CHC Helicopter, a global aviation business, moved platforms with BDQ at scale — from ServiceNow to HaloITSM, with an estimated licensing saving of around 70%. Different source, same discipline: assessment, configuration, fixed-price data move, cutover, hypercare. Read the case study →
Book a fixed-price Cherwell exit assessment: your estate mapped, the right destination recommended with reasons, and a migration plan that fits the calendar you've actually got.
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