Reclaiming a heavily customized ServiceNow platform to cut costs and accelerate delivery

Overview

Industry

Location

Software and IT services

Netherlands

Technology Used

ServiceNow ITSM

Project overview

Our client inherited a heavily customized ServiceNow platform run by a global systems integrator, which, over time, entailed severe vendor lock-in, premium run costs and a six-month change backlog. To restore operational agility and lower costs, we took over the run, maintenance and development of the platform. By establishing clear governance, accelerating delivery times and reducing the custom code footprint where feasible, our team stabilized the infrastructure and secured a lower-risk technology foundation. This rapid takeover freed up critical budget and resources, creating the exact operational headroom needed to undertake a full operating-model transformation.

Client background

A provider of secure managed cloud services for organizations with high security requirements. The company’s offer, including cloud solutions, modern workplace, managed hosting, Pentesting, Red Teaming and Agile Security, supports government agencies, municipalities and financial institutions with their digital transformations.

Goals

The project’s objective focused on breaking a restrictive vendor lock-in and reclaiming control over a business-critical platform. This involved taking over the platform’s run, maintenance and development from the incumbent while reducing the custom footprint where feasible. The concrete goals were to regain ownership of the backlog, restore the ability to upgrade the system safely and significantly bring down the costs.

Results

Over 30% lower run costs

Platform operational costs were slashed by over a third. The client now pays less and ships changes faster, proving cost reduction did not come at the expense of delivery.

Change lead time cut from 6 months to 2–4 weeks

The deployment pipeline was fully optimized, compressing the change lead time from request to live production from around six months down to a matter of weeks.

85%+ reduction in open change backlog

Operational transparency was completely restored by clearing out a massive queue of over 100 pending requests, leaving fewer than 15 actively managed tickets.

Upgrade cycle cut to 1–2 weeks

By minimizing the platform's custom footprint, upgrade windows dropped from multiple high-risk weeks to a low-touch process consisting mostly of controlled testing.