ServiceNow ITAM & HAM Implementation | Professional Sports League

Getting a Handle on Hardware: How a Major Professional Sports League Brought Order to Asset Management

The Client

A major professional sports league operates one of North America’s most recognizable athletic organizations, supporting dozens of teams, employees across multiple corporate offices, and a global fan base in the hundreds of millions. Behind every season is a complex operation that depends on technology working reliably, whether it’s the laptops employees use every day, the mobile devices that keep staff connected, or the hardware supporting business operations behind the scenes.

After partnering with Beyond20 to improve its use of ServiceNow FSM through backlog refinement and platform optimization, the organization was ready to tackle its next priority: building a more effective approach to hardware asset management.

The Challenge

As the League’s corporate footprint grew, hardware processes hadn’t kept up. Different teams tracked assets in different ways, and procurement ran through separate, disconnected workflows. That led to duplicate purchases, software licenses nobody was using, and a general lack of clarity about what technology the organization actually had.

Without real-time visibility into what hardware existed, where it was, and when it needed to be replaced, planning ahead mostly came down to guesswork. Refresh cycles happened reactively, after something broke or fell out of warranty, rather than on a schedule. Manual warranty checks and maintenance took up time the IT team needed elsewhere. On top of that, unmanaged hardware created real compliance exposure, especially with standards like NIST SP 800-53 and SOC 2 requirements in play.

The Engagement

Rather than try to build every workflow at once, Beyond20 recommended a phased approach: get a solid, working foundation in place first, then add complexity in a second phase. That let the League start seeing value early while building something that could support more advanced automation later on.

Phase 1 focused on a few key areas:

• Core lifecycle workflows. Working closely with the League’s Service Desk, we built out processes covering the full hardware lifecycle: procure/order, request, transfer, receive, refresh, reserve, retire, and dispose. This covered laptops, mobile devices, and communications hardware used across the organization.
• Upfront education. Before configuration started, Beyond20 walked the League’s team through the core data structures behind ServiceNow HAM Pro, so they understood how the system worked and could maintain it themselves after go-live.
• Documentation before every session. We gave the League detailed process documentation ahead of each working session, so meetings started with the right information already in hand instead of losing time getting everyone up to speed.
• Weekly working sessions. Recurring calls kept requirements, stories, and process documentation current in a shared, living document, so nothing fell through the cracks between meetings.
• Recommending simplicity. Beyond20 advised sticking with out-of-the-box ServiceNow HAM functionality rather than heavy customization. That kept the project on schedule and avoided the technical debt that custom builds tend to leave behind.

The result was a complete Phase 1 implementation delivered in just seven weeks, providing immediate operational improvements while establishing a roadmap for continued growth.

The Result

With Phase 1 live, the organization transformed how it manages hardware assets across its corporate IT operations:

One consistent process. Hardware now follows a standardized lifecycle from order through retirement. End-to-end workflows for procurement, requests, receiving, transfers, refreshes, reservations, retirement, and disposal have replaced the team-by-team processes that once made assets harder to track and manage.

Better visibility across locations. Dedicated stockrooms at the League’s key corporate offices give IT teams an accurate, location-specific view of available inventory, making it easier to understand what is on hand and where it is needed.

A smoother procurement process. Advanced shipping notifications and fulfillment tasks are now built directly into the procure-to-order workflow. IT and Procurement can coordinate within the same process, reducing manual follow-up and helping equipment reach employees faster.

Cleaner, more reliable data. New hardware model reports and filters that identify duplicate records give the team a repeatable way to improve data quality. Instead of treating cleanup as a one-time effort, the League can maintain more dependable asset information over time.

Clear ownership at every stage. ServiceNow assignment groups connect each asset management task with the stakeholders responsible for completing it. Requests are routed to the right people, responsibilities are easier to follow, and fewer tasks are left waiting for someone to take action.

Phase 1 was designed as a starting point. The League and Beyond20 are already planning Phase 2, which will bring more advanced workflows, on-call scheduling, and the next stage of Major Incident Management.