Speed starts with simpler IT
Formula 1 makes the cost of delay impossible to ignore. Before every Grand Prix, McLaren Racing’s early setup crew turns an empty garage into a working technology environment. It runs roughly three and a half kilometers of copper cabling, installs engineering stations, pit-wall systems, communications equipment, and a mobile data center, then tests the setup before the wider team arrives. Once the setup crew moves on to the next venue, a handful of trackside IT specialists remain to support race-day operations. Meanwhile, 300 sensors on each car stream real-time data to more than 30 people in mission control. The lesson for enterprise technology leaders is straightforward: speed under pressure is built before that pressure is applied.
That principle applies well beyond racing. Businesses cannot move quickly when employees are slowed by recurring access problems, opaque approvals, or service tools that require months of configuration before producing value. McLaren needed enterprise-grade IT service management with efficient implementation. Freshworks' IT service management solution, Freshservice, gave the MMF1 team a way to establish useful workflows in weeks, expand them as needs became clear, and make their service experience frictionless for the people doing the work.
Start with the work that must not fail
McLaren uses Freshservice to turn race-weekend readiness into consistent, traceable workflows. Teams verify monitors, microphones, data links, communications systems, and other critical equipment before cars take to the track. The point is not to model every possible process from day one. It is to begin with work that is repeated, consequential, and measurable—and make that work reliable, fast, and productive.
For enterprise teams, that may mean onboarding, incident triage, access requests, change approvals, or business-continuity checks. Choose one high-impact service, map its delays and failure points, simplify the path, assign ownership, and deploy the first usable workflow quickly. A focused implementation creates evidence and confidence sooner than a broad transformation program. It also reduces the risk that a large suite becomes another source of complexity before users see a benefit.
Repeatability gives teams room to move
McLaren’s garage is rebuilt at a different location throughout a 24-race season, yet the result has to be dependable every time. Repeatable service processes make that possible. Each check leaves a record, each request has an owner, and each exception can be surfaced before race day. Standardization does not slow the team down; it prevents skilled people from wasting time rediscovering how routine work should happen.
The same operating model helps businesses balance pace and control. A common workflow can establish the required checks and decision points while still leaving teams flexibility in execution. Leaders gain visibility into bottlenecks and risk without forcing every service into an oversized process architecture. The goal is not uniformity for its own sake. It is enough structure to make good performance repeatable.
Use visibility to remove friction
Service management becomes more valuable when it does more than close tickets. McLaren’s unified platform gives aerodynamics, engineering, and racing operations teams a shared view of active requests. Across its global operation, the team manages about 2,000 service requests and more than 150 employee-lifecycle tickets per quarter. A shared view helps teams coordinate responses while revealing where demand grows, approvals stall, or recurring problems consume time.
Useful visibility depends on simple categories, trusted data, and clear ownership. Dashboards should answer operational questions rather than merely display activity. Which services create the most employee effort? Which incidents recur? When must skilled people wait on handoffs, and why? Connecting those measures to availability, employee experience, and time returned to productive work helps IT shift from treating symptoms to removing their causes.
Automate routine effort, then apply AI with purpose
Automation is most useful when it removes predictable effort from stable work. Routing, approvals, status updates, recurring checks, and routine fulfillment are logical starting points. McLaren also uses AI-powered service management to sort and prioritize tickets, helping a lean team focus attention where it matters most. But automation should follow simplification and optimization: automating unnecessary steps only makes a poor process run faster.
AI should likewise be grounded in real service data and measurable outcomes. Summarizing requests, identifying patterns, suggesting relevant knowledge, and routing work can save time when underlying records and workflows are reliable. Start with a narrow use case, explain when AI assists and when a person decides, monitor accuracy and workflow effects, and expand only when the evidence demands it. Human review remains essential for unusual security requests, major incidents, and sensitive employee issues.
Build momentum, not a monolith
McLaren’s experience shows that enterprise-grade service management does not have to begin with an enterprise-wide overhaul. A focused platform can be deployed in weeks, prove value in a critical workflow, and grow with the organization. That approach lowers implementation risk, shortens the distance between a decision and a useful outcome, and avoids locking teams into years of complexity before they can respond to changing needs.
Technology leaders can begin by asking which employee service creates the most friction, which failure carries the greatest operational risk, and which recurring task diverts skilled people from higher-value work. Establish a baseline, simplify that workflow, deploy it quickly, automate stable rules, and measure the result. Then move to the next service. Incremental delivery is not a compromise on ambition; it is how organizations create momentum while retaining control.
When IT removes friction, the business gains speed. When it makes readiness repeatable, the business gains resilience. And when it chooses technology that can deliver value in weeks rather than years, IT becomes a performance system rather than a support function. Read the McLaren Racing customer story to learn how Freshservice supports reliable operations from pit lane to mission control.