ServiceNow ITSM Implementation | Major US City

Breaking Free from Cherwell Constraints: How Moving to ServiceNow Transformed Service Management for a Major US City

The Client

This city, one of the largest in the United States, employs nearly 7,000 IT personnel within its centralized IT service provider, the Bureau of Technology.

The Challenge

While initially happy with Cherwell, over time, disillusionment set in for The City’s IT leadership. Simply, as the broader technology landscape evolved over the years and The City’s needs became more sophisticated, Cherwell’s capabilities stayed largely the same. From its cumbersome interface to its inability to support City departments beyond the Service Desk, frustration grew.

Cherwell wasn’t cutting it for them anymore.

These issues prompted The City to take a good, hard look at its ITSM technology–what they were limited to with Cherwell vs. where their strategic vision was guiding them. They needed a more mature and robust platform: ServiceNow ITSM.

The Engagement

Every city deserves to have modern technology that enables public servants to efficiently meet the needs of citizens.

The City needed to transition from Cherwell to ServiceNow without disrupting service delivery or the larger business. To do it, they needed a partner fluent in both platforms who could guarantee a smooth migration. Having previously collaborated with Beyond20 on service catalog design and Cherwell implementation, The City turned to us again to for our expertise in both Cherwell and ServiceNow.

Beyond20 began with a series of 14 process design workshops with The City’s key stakeholders. These sessions fostered collaboration and provided insights into critical areas such as:

• Incident Management
• Service Request Management
• Service Catalog Management
• Self-Service Portal
• Change Enablement
• Knowledge Management
• CMDB
• IT Asset Management

Using an agile approach, Beyond20 captured requirements as user stories, developing prototypes to ensure alignment with The City’s needs. Key areas of impact here include:

• Streamlined Project Intake and Approval: Beyond20 automated the project intake process and integrated a comprehensive approval workflow, expediting decision-making.
• Real-Time Asset Management: Replacing the cumbersome asset tracking system, Beyond20 designed and implemented a CMDB that updates in near real-time, ensuring accurate and current asset information.
• Enhanced Knowledge Management: Over 7,000 knowledge articles were migrated from Cherwell to ServiceNow–including attachments. Beyond20 updated and streamlined these articles, removing outdated content and ensuring a useful, Knowledge-Centered Service-centric (KCS) knowledge repository. This part of the project was completed with lightning speed with the help of our Built with ServiceNow Cherwell migration offering, which automates what would otherwise be a time consuming manual task.
• Change Enablement: We implemented processes to manage and track changes efficiently, reducing downtime and improving service reliability.

Beyond20’s support extended beyond the initial go-live, including comprehensive end-user training and documentation to ensure a smooth transition to The City. Our ServiceNow and ITIL experts offered ongoing architectural guidance to maintain data integrity and optimize database schema, minimizing customizations. To further empower The City’s team, Beyond20 held regularly scheduled “Architect open hours” for ongoing support and training of City staff. 

The Result

Since going live, the City has seen notable improvements in employee experience and customer satisfaction. There’s been a 25% rise in user self-service thanks to an intuitive, user-friendly service catalog, and a 40% increase in the accuracy of ticket assignments.

Configuration Management has also seen significant enhancements, with incident tickets now associated with configuration items (CIs) rather than merely functional assignment groups. Moreover, the new capability to track CIs and their relationships in near real-time using ServiceNow’s dynamic CMDB has resulted in reduced failed changes. The City’s new KCS-based approach to Knowledge Management has also led to better adoption and higher satisfaction rates.

With a modern platform built for true Enterprise Service Management, The City, no longer limited by the constraints of Cherwell, is able to execute on it’s biggest, most aspirational goals and provide unprecedented levels of service to its citizens.