Straight talk from the people who've done it. What you need to prepare, how long it really takes, what to migrate and what to leave behind — and what good looks like on the other side.
5
weeks — up to 25 agents
Fixed
price, every plan
0
lines of code required
The honest answer
Most ITSM platforms ship as empty frameworks — you buy the licence and then spend months building a service desk from scratch. Halo ships with sensible defaults built in. You configure, not build.
The ServiceNow experience most people know
The Halo implementation reality
The key insight: The speed advantage isn't because we rush. It's because Halo ships ready to configure — not ready to build. Your team gets a working service desk in weeks, not a platform that requires months of development before anyone can use it.
What we've learned
After delivering Halo implementations across organisations of all sizes and sectors, the same three factors determine whether a project lands well or struggles.
Factor 1
The most common cause of delay is arriving at design without a clear picture of what services you deliver. We can help structure and refine your catalogue — but the raw material has to come from you. If you can list your top 20 request types before kick-off, the project starts at a run.
Preparation tip: Export your current ticket categories from your existing system before the kick-off call.
Factor 2
Implementations stall when configuration decisions require committee sign-off. You need a named owner — someone who can say "yes, that's right" or "no, do it this way" without waiting for a meeting. This person doesn't need to be technical. They need to know the business and have the authority to decide.
Preparation tip: Identify your project owner before you sign. Changing mid-project is the single biggest cause of delays.
Factor 3
Every organisation has a wishlist. The temptation is to build everything before going live — advanced automation, full CMDB, every integration, every report. Resist it. The organisations that go live fastest are those that agree a tight scope for day one and treat everything else as phase two. Phase two happens faster than you think.
Preparation tip: Agree what "done" means for go-live before build starts. Write it down. Refer to it when scope creep arrives.
The journey
Regardless of scope or timeline, every implementation moves through Discover, Build, and Go Live. The length of each phase depends on your complexity — the structure never changes.
Phase One
We understand your organisation before we touch the platform. What services you deliver, how your teams are structured, what your current system does well and where it falls short.
Output
Signed build specification — the contract between your organisation and Allied ESM on exactly what gets built.
Phase Two
We configure Halo to your spec. Workflows, forms, SLAs, integrations, automation rules, user roles, and the self-service portal — all built to the agreed specification, not improvised.
Output
A fully configured Halo environment that your team has tested, approved, and is ready to use in production.
Phase Three
Cut-over to Halo with Allied ESM present. We train your agents, support your first week of live operation, and hand over to your team with confidence that everything is working as expected.
Output
Your team is live on Halo. Tickets routing. SLAs enforcing. Portal in use. Allied ESM available for questions.
Migration
One of the most common anxieties about switching ITSM platform is the data question. Years of ticket history, asset records, knowledge articles — what happens to all of it?
The honest answer: most of it doesn't need to move. And the data that does migrate is simpler than people expect. Here's the reality, based on what we've seen across real implementations.
The golden rule: Don't migrate bad data. If your current system is full of inconsistencies, outdated records, and messy categorisation — Halo is the opportunity to start clean. We'd rather you go live with accurate data than carry forward years of technical debt.
What to migrate — and when
Open tickets
In-flight work that needs to continue in Halo
Users and contacts
Usually imported via Active Directory / Entra ID sync
Asset / CMDB data
Migrate if clean. Otherwise, import fresh from RMM / Intune
Knowledge articles
Migrate articles that are accurate and still relevant
Historical closed tickets
Rarely worth migrating — reporting resets at go-live anyway
Legacy system configuration
Workflows, forms, categories — always rebuilt in Halo from scratch
After go-live
Go-live is the start, not the finish. Every organisation goes through the same maturity curve — the timeline varies, but the steps don't. Here's what to expect over your first six months.
The organisations that mature fastest are those who commit a named admin to Halo ownership — someone who's curious about the platform and has time to explore it. Your platform will be upgraded automatically, so there's always something new to turn on.
Day One
Core service desk live
Tickets routing, SLAs enforcing, portal accessible. Your team is handling real work in Halo.
Month One
Team confident, first data visible
Agents comfortable. Reports running. First SLA performance data giving you visibility you didn't have before.
Month Three
Automation reducing repetitive work
Routing rules, approval workflows, and automated responses handling the tasks your team used to do manually. Knowledge base growing.
Month Six
Full operational maturity
CMDB populated, ESM expanding beyond IT, AI features active, and a team that knows the platform well enough to keep improving it themselves.
No spin. If something is hard, we say so.
Implementation plans
All three plans are fixed-price. You know the full cost before work begins.
Micro
Core ITSM — incident, service request, knowledge, and portal. Ideal for organisations with straightforward requirements and up to 25 agents.
View plan → Most commonStandard
Full ITSM suite with integrations, change management, and reporting. Covers most mid-market organisations up to 50 agents.
View plan →Complex
Enterprise deployments with ESM, complex integrations, multi-department rollout, and deep change management. For organisations where getting it right matters more than getting it fast.
View plan →Not sure which plan fits? Talk to us — we'll tell you honestly.
Accredited Partner
One of only a small number of partners exclusively dedicated to the Halo ecosystem globally.
Allied ESM has delivered Halo implementations for organisations of all sizes. Fixed price, clear timeline, and a team that's done this before.