How clearing away workarounds uncovered the true power of ServiceNow

Customization, complexity, and a lack of consistency

To move your business forward, sometimes you have to pause and take the time to honestly assess where you are today—and where you want to go. That was the reality facing our client, a global financial services company, as it struggled to improve the performance of its essential ServiceNow platform. The system was used by thousands of employees daily to request services, resolve issues, and manage their information technology (IT) and human resources (HR) needs. But years of customization across decentralized business units had steadily diluted the platform’s full potential. What began as a leading-edge tool for delivering employee services had devolved over several years into a patchwork of inconsistent user experiences, unit-specific workflows, and daily friction for administrators and employees alike.

The tipping point came with a large-scale acquisition that expanded the company’s products—and added still another highly customized ServiceNow instance into the mix. For the chief information officer (CIO) and team, maintaining the status quo was no longer viable. Platform complexity was dragging down performance and making it harder to deliver employee services at scale amid several entrenched and increasingly daunting challenges. These included:

• Inconsistent user experiences: Depending on their business unit or location, staff encountered vastly different support experiences for the same types of requests—a frustration for both employees and the IT and HR service leads overseeing the services.
• Mounting technical debt: Years of ad hoc development and staff turnover left critical logic undocumented, forcing teams to invest valuable time deciphering and triaging legacy code instead of delivering new value.
• Fragmented data and workflows: Without a common model or governance structure, many IT and HR services operated in isolation, with disconnected data, inconsistent processes, and custom code.
• Innovation barriers: The heavy customization and multiple instances made it difficult to easily deploy ServiceNow’s regular release enhancements—including automation and artificial intelligence capabilities—and connect the platform to other enterprise systems.
• Growing risk and cost: Maintaining multiple, incompatible instances was expensive and increasingly risky as the platform strayed further from baseline standards. 
• Dwindling productivity: Perhaps most important, the system was slowing everyone down. Employees spent more time chasing answers and waiting on resolutions, while IT and HR administrators were managing multiple versions of the same functions—adding effort, not value.

The company faced a fundamental decision: Replace the entire system? Or reset the platform, reimagine the architecture, and build forward from a strong, standardized baseline?

A “new” platform to move faster, serve better, and enable innovation

To help identify the best solution—and bring it to life—the company turned to KPMG. After a detailed assessment to start the project, it became clear that execution, not technology, was the fundamental issue. ServiceNow remained a strong fit for the company’s enterprise service delivery needs. But the years of decentralized ownership and siloed customization had eroded some of the platform’s efficiency and core strengths. The way forward wasn’t replacing the system—it was returning it to a scalable, sustainable baseline that could support innovation and unlock new capabilities.

To make that happen, KPMG helped lead an enterprise-wide transformation of the ServiceNow environment, working in close collaboration with client leaders across information technology (IT), human resources (HR), and shared services. Rather than simply merging multiple legacy instances, the company and KPMG made a more strategic decision: Rebuild the platform from the ground up using ServiceNow’s modern capabilities, guided by a clean, future-ready architecture.

The project was driven by a cross-functional KPMG team of more than 60 people, which included professionals from a wide range of our firm’s functions at various points in the work: CIO advisory, platform engineering, transformation delivery, data and automation, change enablement, and global services. The work unfolded over 17 months, flowing from an agile, sprint-based methodology that allowed the team to assess, design, configure, and test new services—first iteratively and then at scale. Key milestones included the adoption of the Common Services Data Model (CSDM) and a harmonized Configuration Management Database (CMDB), which replaced fragmented data structures and inconsistent workflows. This back-to-baseline methodology created a unified, modernized ServiceNow portal that launched in early 2024 and continues to support almost 50,000 employees worldwide.

The new platform has helped deliver wide-ranging improvements across the business:

• Unified employee services: One centralized portal now gives all staff consistent access to HR, IT, and other shared services, regardless of business unit or location.
• Streamlined service delivery: Standardized workflows and governance have replaced the patchwork of custom logic, which has reduced complexity and increased reliability.
• Improved scalability: With a modern architecture and reduced technical complexity, the platform can quickly incorporate ongoing enhancements at scale, including automation, artificial intelligence, and integration with other systems.
• Greater productivity and efficiency: IT and HR teams now invest more time delivering services and enhancements—and employees spend a lot less time waiting for resolutions.
• Stronger business alignment: Adoption of the CSDM and the harmonized CMDB improves visibility across services, infrastructure, and business outcomes.

Streamlined services, more efficient teams, and room to grow

Business is moving faster than ever. That’s why speed—how quickly your teams can scale, adapt, and deliver results—is a huge competitive advantage. But that kind of agility is hard to achieve if your people are stuck navigating complex resource systems, waiting on service requests, or working around tech that doesn’t work for them.

By taking a step back and returning to baseline, our client was able to fundamentally reset its employee services and build lasting momentum going forward. The streamlined, tightly governed ServiceNow environment makes it easier for employees to get support, easier for service teams to deliver, and easier for the business to scale what works—with confidence and consistency.

It’s also a reminder of something else: Not every transformation starts with chasing something “new.” Sometimes, the most powerful move is stepping back, taking stock, and unlocking more capabilities from the platform you already have.