KeenStack | Cranial Technologies
From Manual Chaos to Automated Scalability: Cranial Technologies’ ServiceNow Journey
900+ employees • 125 clinics
Tempe, AZ
Cranial Technologies
Founded in 1986 and headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, Cranial Technologies is the global leader in the treatment of infant head shape abnormalities. The company created and is the sole provider of the Doc Band®, a cranial helmet that helps improve a baby’s head shape. With more than 900 employees and 125 company-owned clinics across 38 states, Cranial Technologies has successfully treated over 400,000 babies.
Scaling IT Support During Rapid Growth
Shripathi Krishnan, IT Director and Security Official at Cranial Technologies, leads a ten-person IT team dedicated to improving internal services for Cranial employees, the company’s “IT customers.” One of Krishnan’s top goals is to support the organization’s rapid growth while ensuring each clinic operates smoothly and efficiently so clinicians can focus on helping babies and their families.
“ServiceNow is helping us automate every single touchpoint, capture metadata, and completely optimize our business process,”
Legacy Platform Creates Bottlenecks
When Krishnan joined the company, he quickly recognized that the existing service management platform couldn’t scale with the business. The workforce was steadily expanding and new clinics were opening regularly. This heightened the strain on existing systems and made it increasingly difficult to maintain required service levels.
Several key challenges were identified that created bottlenecks for customers and the IT team. The lack of a customer-facing portal meant that customers had no visibility into the status of their requests, resulting in frustration and dissatisfaction with the process. Customers often submitted tickets through email. This resulted in free-form text that was difficult to categorize, assess for urgency, or prioritize. It was impossible to differentiate between a request and an incident. All requests went into one bucket, which blurred the lines between routine needs and true emergencies.
The entire process was manual and subjective with primitive reporting capabilities. The absence of change control, reliable metrics, automation, and workflows was creating mounting fatigue for Krishnan’s team.
“The high call volume jammed phone lines for routine issues. If issues went unresolved, our clinics wouldn’t be able to operate efficiently. Although our current product was low cost, it also had low capability, which was unsustainable long-term. I knew we needed a more sophisticated and capable product, even if it cost more,” said Krishnan.
Turning to a Proven Platform
Krishnan began the search for a solution and drew from his past experience with ServiceNow, a robust IT Service Management (ITSM) platform he had used in the past to support a company with over 80,000 employees. He knew that ServiceNow had superior workflow orchestration and proven scalability, but wasn’t sure if the solution would work at a smaller scale. He reached out to KeenStack to learn more.
Phased Implementation Tailored to Clinic Needs
The rollout began with ITSM Pro and Hardware Asset Management Pro is scheduled for implementation shortly. Cranial chose a phased, module-by-module approach which aligned with the team’s availability, time, and resources. KeenStack provided customizations that aligned with Cranial’s clinic operating schedule rather than the system’s default 24/7 model.
KeenStack’s Partnership Approach Wins Confidence
“Although KeenStack was a newer company, what really helped gain my confidence was the investment they made in building out their team from day one. They focused on hiring the right talent and supported their employees to be ServiceNow-certified. This was a big difference from other startups that I’ve worked with where they wait to invest in their people until they reach a certain size. I knew these guys were here to stay,” said Krishnan.
“KeenStack went above and beyond and built a business case that helped us get budget approval for the implementation,” he continued. “It wasn’t just the technology, it was KeenStack’s willingness to build an ROI case first, their flexible approach, talent readiness, and depth of experience.”
“ServiceNow is helping us automate every single touchpoint, capture metadata, and completely optimize our business process. They helped us reach our goal of reduced call volume, increased customer satisfaction, and the scalability we needed to support rapid growth.”
Cranial Connect Portal Drives Success
Only a few weeks after going live, it was evident that the new customer-facing portal was a huge success. “Everybody is really happy with the new, easy-to-use portal, which we’re calling Cranial Connect,” said Krishnan. “Our customers can now look up the status of the tickets they’ve submitted as well as see updates and resolutions, which has greatly increased satisfaction.”
Improved Efficiency and Built-in Scalability
Early data shows a healthy shift in ticket type categorization. In just one month, roughly 40% of tickets were classified as requests instead of incidents, which allowed the team to focus urgent resources where they mattered most. Call volume started to drop as customers discovered how easy it was to submit a ticket through the portal instead of calling or emailing support. From a leadership perspective, Krishnan is already seeing the results he had hoped for.
As the company continues to grow, Krishnan is confident he can support customers and scale without expanding IT headcount. Looking ahead, the anticipated outcomes paint an even stronger picture:
36%
reduction in cost per ticket
20%
improvement in MTTR
90%
or higher CSAT score
Call wait times of
5 minutes or less
(90th percentile)
The success has expanded far beyond IT. The Facilities team, which takes care of the physical management of each clinic now operates within the same Cranial Connect portal. The same gateway works for all customers, whether they need help with Wi-Fi or a broken clinic door lock. Other departments, such as Recruiting and Clinical Support, have also expressed interest in using the platform during the next budget cycle.
“ServiceNow is helping us automate every single touchpoint, capture metadata, and completely optimize our business process,” noted Krishnan. “They helped us reach our goal of reduced call volume, increased our customer satisfaction, and the scalability we needed to support rapid growth. I highly recommend them for their flexibility, caliber of talent, cost structure, and commitment to making sure our customers are happy.”
Krishnan’s advice to other mid-market companies that may be using a system that no longer fits their needs, but feel better options are too expensive, is to do their own research. “If you feel in your gut that something is going to add value for you, spend the time and effort to prove whether it can or can’t work for you rather than assuming the cost outweighs the return.”
CHALLENGES
- No customer-facing portal
- High call volume
- Email tickets hard to prioritize
- No distinction between requests and incidents
- Manual processes and poor reporting
VALUE-CREATED
- Dramatically reduced call volume
- Scaled without adding headcount
- Increased customer satisfaction
- Clear request vs incident visibility
- Scaled operations without adding headcount
SOLUTIONS
- ServiceNow ITSM Pro
