From chaos to consolidated automations:
How a pharmaceutical company saves $11K in annual licence fees with ScriptRunner.
Background
Sngular, a next-generation technology provider based in Spain, work with a diverse range of clients to solve inefficiencies within their business processes and workflows. As an Adaptavist Platinum Partner, their team are ITSM and Cloud specialists with 95% of their client base already migrated to Cloud.
They partnered with a leading bio-health company whose team of nearly 24,000 people, distributed across 400 sites in 30 countries, provides life-saving medication to patients with rare and chronic diseases—some of which have no alternative treatments—to improve their health and quality of life.
The challenge: overcoming a fragmented Jira environment to enable scalability and standardisation
Sngular's client had spent years working across several highly customised Jira Data Center (DC) environments. This setup was cumbersome, difficult to maintain, and was hindering their ability to scale. They were ready to migrate to Jira Cloud, so they decided to take advantage of the migration planning process as an opportunity to reduce the overall complexity of their setup. They requested a Cloud setup that would unify their Jira instances and standardise their development processes.
Sngular identified three key challenges:
1. Complex industry regulations
Sngular needed to implement custom automations to align the client’s Jira processes in keeping with the extensive regulatory requirements that govern the pharmaceutical industry.
2. Fragmented automations
The client’s sprawling DC environment spanned several Jira instances containing 1,300 projects. In total, there were over 170,000 issues, 2,500 search filters, and 400 custom fields. Sngular needed to unify these fragmented automations while also consolidating the functionality of various apps.
3. Restrictive existing solutions
The client had a custom-developed solution to manage in-house reporting, however, it couldn't scale with their growth and was ultimately slowing them down. Sngular needed to replace this time-consuming process and consolidate its functionality into the wider solution.
ScriptRunner covers all necessary customer scenarios and all those functionalities that cannot be configured natively with Atlassian Cloud. It has become the backbone of this client's instance, acting as a toolbox and process unifier.
Álvaro Jardón
Technical architect of the project
The solution: reducing complexity with a single automation tool
To solve these challenges, Sngular's team of digital transformation experts searched for an automation tool that could handle the complexity of all of their client's automation needs today and as they scale in the future. By using a single, all-in-one app instead of many single-function apps, they could reduce the complexity of the setup, reduce time spent on admin and maintenance, and lower app costs for their client.
Sngular conducted extensive analysis into their client's DC environments to prepare for their migration, and found that all of their automation and customisation requirements could be handled by ScriptRunner for Jira Cloud.
Using ScriptRunner features such as Listeners, Behaviours, validators, and workflows, the Sngular team was able to create many automations, from simple to complex, to meet all the unique requirements within this project.
1. Compliance with industry regulations
ScriptRunner for Jira Cloud helped align the client’s workflows with their industry regulations by simplifying the logging and retrieval of reporting, audit trails, and governance requirements.
For example, the client prioritises projects using a bespoke internal matrix that evaluates Severity of Harm and Business Value. ScriptRunner enforces adherence to the matrix by automatically displaying correct values. This eliminates human error, guarantees that priorities are assigned correctly, and gives the team confidence that they are working on the most impactful projects.
ScriptRunner is also used for error detection. Given their development team's speed of operation, with frequent releases of updates, it’s crucial that tasks are accurately linked to their respective software versions. ScriptRunner’s Behaviours feature was used to create a system of transitions and validations that act as a built-in auditor, ensuring every task is correctly assigned to its appropriate version. Therefore, there are no errors in the versioning, and errors detected in each version are correctly grouped.
2. Unified automation and customisation
From a huge DC environment spanning several Jira instances and multiple tools, Sngular simplified the client's setup by consolidating everything into one Cloud instance and moving all of their automation and personalisation needs into ScriptRunner for Jira Cloud. This reduced app proliferation, reduced time spent on tool management and admin, and also eliminated paid licences for a range of apps, all while retaining the functionality of all of their use cases.
3. Freedom from obsolete legacy tooling
Finally, ScriptRunner for Jira Cloud was used to replace a custom solution for in-house reporting. The client had a custom development in Bitbucket for reporting in PowerBI that had become obsolete. Using Jobs and Listeners in ScriptRunner for Jira Cloud, dozens of fields are now fed into, and manipulated through, PowerBI reports. The process is simpler to manage and information travels automatically, so their reports are ready when they need them.
ScriptRunner for Jira Cloud was selected for this project as its wide-ranging functionality brought all of the automation and customisation requirements into one app. ScriptRunner was also favoured for its long history in the Atlassian ecosystem, which gave Sngular’s Solution Engineers confidence that it would continue to be supported and maintained in the future.
Thanks to the robustness of the ScriptRunner application, and the maturity in the market, it was very easy to make all the necessary configurations and to have the right support when needed. This makes the process much easier for us as consultants, but also for our customers in terms of later maintenance and updating of scripts. In this case, the simplification of applications also made the migration process itself easier.
David Osteso
Functional architect of the project
Results: a unified solution and cost savings
By replacing multiple apps with ScriptRunner, Sngular saved their client $11,500 per year in licensing fees alone. Consolidation of their workflows has also simplified their auditing and maintenance processes, saving their team countless hours every month. Finally, the governance and administration of their Cloud instance is made easier with fewer apps to maintain, track, and upgrade.
With ScriptRunner, Sngular delivered outstanding results in a highly complex and challenging project. Not only did Sngular complete the client's migration, but they also brought alignment and calm to previously chaotic processes, securing client satisfaction and a long-term partnership for the future.
Watch what Diego Rodriguez Cuervo at Sngular said about this project when interviewed by Adaptavist's Elena Bergamaschi.
More about Sngular
Sngular is a global technology partner that helps companies worldwide design and explore new realities accelerated by tech. With a strong global presence in the US, Spain, Mexico, and the Middle East, they don't just solve inefficiencies, but engineer smarter, more resilient workflows.
With an approach built on decades of innovative projects, and driven by a strong commitment to building a better future through sustainable, human-centric technology, they tackle every challenge with the humility to always learn something new, backed by the professionalism required to solve the most complex problems.