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Use cases/Break-fix swap
Use case · break-fix swap

When the laptop dies. The replacement is already waiting.

Smart Collect® turns break-fix into a self-service swap inside your ServiceNow tenant. The employee drops the broken device into one locker, collects a replacement from the next, and the incident closes itself — without dispatching an engineer.

SERVICENOW INCIDENT ! Laptop broken Auto-routed to swap SMART COLLECT® Reserves replacement · Issues swap code DROP BROKEN HERE DROP LOCKER Broken device in COLLECT REPLACEMENT COLLECT LOCKER Replacement out
The problem

A broken laptop stops one employee. A broken break-fix process stops the whole IT team.

Today, when a device fails, the response is the same as it was twenty years ago — log a ticket, wait for an engineer, watch productivity stall. The cost shows up in three places at once.

The employee

Stops working the moment the device dies. Loses the day to a queue. Sits idle while the ticket waits for an engineer to be free, then waits again for the engineer to drive across town.

The IT engineer

Gets dispatched. Diagnoses on site. Drives back for a spare. Drives back to deliver. Half a day on one ticket, every time — when the same swap could have happened in 60 seconds at a locker.

The asset team

Loses sight of the broken device. Doesn't know what to RMA, what to write off, what's sitting in someone's drawer. The break-fix audit trail breaks the moment the engineer leaves the office.

How it works

Drop the broken. Collect the replacement. One visit, sixty seconds.

Smart Collect® turns break-fix into a closed-loop ServiceNow workflow. Same ticket from start to finish, with the broken device routed automatically to RMA.

Employee raises incident

Standard ServiceNow incident workflow — through the portal, the agent workspace, or the mobile app. Smart Collect® picks up break-fix incidents automatically; no separate process for the employee to learn.

Actor: Employee · ServiceNow
Smart Collect® reserves a replacement

The platform identifies a pre-staged spare in the nearest locker matching the employee's role and device profile. A one-time swap code is generated and emailed to the employee's ServiceNow-registered address.

Actor: Smart Collect® · ServiceNow
Drop & collect in one visit

Employee scans the code. The "drop" locker opens — broken device goes in. The "collect" locker opens — replacement comes out. Sixty seconds, total. The ticket auto-updates to "swap complete."

Actor: Employee · Smart Lockers
Broken device routes to RMA

Smart Collect® flags the broken device for IT's RMA workflow. Asset record updated, repair ticket created, chain-of-custody intact. IT picks up the locker contents on its next regular round — no emergency dispatch.

Actor: IT · Smart Collect® · RMA workflow
Form factors involved

Lockers do the swap. Kiosks handle diagnosis. Vending handles the small stuff.

Break-fix is a Smart Locker–led workflow. Kiosks and vending handle the supporting cases.

Smart Lockers · primary

Drop the broken. Collect the replacement.

The whole swap happens in two compartments — one for the broken device coming in, one for the replacement going out. Same one-time code authenticates both halves of the transaction against the same ServiceNow incident.

  • Laptop swap (most common)
  • Phone swap
  • Headset / peripheral swap
  • Dock / hub swap
Smart Lockers
Smart Kiosks · diagnosis

For "I'm not sure if it's actually broken."

Many "broken" devices aren't. The Smart Kiosk lets the employee connect to remote IT through video and USB-C KVM — so the agent can diagnose remotely, run a fix, or confirm that yes, this one needs a swap.

  • Remote diagnosis via video
  • USB-C KVM device access for the agent
  • Triage before locker handover
  • Walk-through fixes for software issues
Smart Kiosks
Smart Vending · accessory swaps

When the issue is a cable, not a laptop.

Half of break-fix tickets aren't device failures — they're a frayed cable, a dead mouse, a lost dongle. The vending machine handles those with a self-service workflow, ticket auto-created on dispense.

  • Cable replacements
  • Mouse / keyboard swaps
  • Headset replacements
  • Dongle & adapter swaps
Smart Vending
What you should expect

Hours instead of days. Engineers on real problems.

Across Velocity customers, break-fix swap is the workflow with the most dramatic measurable impact in the first 90 days.

Hours
MTTR on break-fix — replacement-in-hand within hours rather than days, without engineer dispatch.
500%+
Throughput uplift — measured by Velocity's pharma customer across break-fix and fulfilment workflows combined.
60%
On-site ticket reduction — measured by Velocity's nuclear-energy customer across distributed sites.
100%
Audit chain — broken device tracked from drop to RMA to write-off, end-to-end.
PRE-AI: These outcomes were delivered with traditional Smart Collect® workflows — before AI was driving the workflow. As Now Assist matures, break-fix incidents triage and dispatch the swap end-to-end through the agent, with the locker as the physical handover endpoint.
Ready to scope this for your environment?

How much of your IT team's day goes to break-fix dispatch?

A 60-minute discovery workshop with a Velocity ServiceNow architect maps your current break-fix workflow, sizes the locker footprint for your incident volume, and identifies the operational baseline you'll measure improvement against.