Modernizing a legacy ServiceNow landscape to enable AI-powered enterprise agility

HCLTech modernized a global nutrition, health and beauty leader’s aging ServiceNow platform into a standardized, scalable and GenAI-enabled ecosystem—accelerating automation and improving user experience.
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Overview

A global leader in nutrition, health and beauty operating in more than 60 countries with over 30,000 employees relies on digital workflows to power their enterprise operations. Following a major merger, the organization required a unified, scalable platform capable of supporting global standardization, innovation and expansion into new digital domains.

However, their ServiceNow environment was built on a 2009-old blueprint with extensive customizations. While functional, the platform had become increasingly complex, difficult to upgrade and not aligned with evolving enterprise requirements.

To enable long-term agility and modernization, the organization partnered with HCLTech to re-architect their ServiceNow ecosystem leveraging out-of-the-box best practices, large-scale migration expertise and GenAI-powered automation and AI/ML-driven capabilities to create a resilient, future-ready platform.

The Challenge

Legacy service management systems with outdated architecture, heavy customization and limited scalability

  1. A 2009-old platform blueprint with heavy customizations increasing maintenance complexity and technical debt
  2. Limited alignment with ServiceNow out-of-the-box best practices restricting upgrade flexibility
  3. Fragmented service management processes across ITSM, HR and custom apps
  4. Lack of unified employee experience and inconsistent portal interfaces
  5. Disparate processes, catalog structure, workflows and non-standard offerings were being used in legacy companies post-merger
  6. Legacy integrations tied to Remedy and other systems requiring migration and re-architecture, including process migration
  7. Massive historical data footprint requiring secure, accurate migration
  8. Limited AI-enabled self-service capabilities and automation maturity

Without modernization, the platform risked becoming a bottleneck to enterprise expansion and innovation.

The Challenge

The Objective

Establishing a standardized, AI-enabled and scalable enterprise service platform across organization

To enable long-term growth and digital transformation, the organization set out to redesign their ServiceNow ecosystem around scalability, standardization and automation.

Key objectives included:

  1. Transform and migrate to the latest ServiceNow release aligned with best-practice architecture
  2. Reduce technical debt by rationalizing customizations and adopting out-of-the-box capabilities
  3. Standardize ITSM, HRSD and custom app environments across global operations
  4. Create a unified, branded and intuitive employee experience
  5. Migrate enterprise integrations and Remedy-based catalogs and processes post-merger to a modern ServiceNow schema
  6. Execute secure, large-scale historical data migration without business disruption
  7. Introduce GenAI-powered self-service capabilities with AI/ML-driven conversational intelligence and automation skills to improve resolution rates and user engagement
  8. Enable a future-ready platform supporting App Engine, custom apps and enterprise workflow expansion
The Objective
The Objective

The Solution

1. Re-architecting the platform using out-of-the-box best practices

Together, we conducted a detailed variance analysis and early-stage assessment to identify customizations, redundancies and architectural gaps. The platform was redesigned to align with ServiceNow best practices reducing complexity while preserving critical business functionality.

Core IT Service Management (ITSM), HR Service Delivery (HRSD) and custom apps frameworks were standardized creating a consistent, scalable process framework.

2. Creating a unified and intelligent employee experience

The transformation introduced Employee Center Pro (Next Experience UI), Search Intelligence and a fully branded enterprise portal to deliver a seamless, consumer-grade experience.

More than 600 catalog items were rationalized and standardized with 350+ catalogs built and 250+ record producers established—aligned to out-of-the-box design principles. This included uniform processes and catalog structure along with standard taxonomies post-merger improving governance, usability and service consistency.

3. Migrating integrations and executing large-scale data transformation

We successfully migrated 7+ enterprise integrations from Remedy and legacy systems to the new NOVA platform using ServiceNow schema architecture, including integration and process consolidation following merger and acquisition.

A large-scale historical data migration was completed in under 20 workdays including:

  • 10M+ transactions
  • 56.5M worklogs
  • 9.9M attachments

This ensured continuity, compliance and data integrity without disrupting operations.

4. Enabling AI-driven self-service and productivity acceleration

The transformation introduced GenAI-powered Virtual Agent (Now Assist) enabling intelligent Q&A and multi-turn conversational catalog ordering powered by advanced AI/ML models and contextual learning capabilities.

AI Assistance capabilities enhanced agent productivity through intelligent recommendations, automated summarization and guided resolution workflows, while omnichannel support through Microsoft Teams integration and Agent Chat improved collaboration, approvals and resolution speed.

Multilingual Advanced Work Assignment queues were configured to support global operations and improve routing efficiency.

The Solution

The Impact

1. A standardized, future-ready service architecture

The redesign and rationalization of the service management platform drove a more consistent and structured employee experience. A simplified and well governed service catalog reduced fragmentation, improved usability, and strengthened overall process governance.

Over 300 catalog items were streamlined and standardized, with 180+ new catalogs rebuilt and aligned to best practices, including consolidation of legacy and merged entity catalogs.

150+ record producers were established to simplify and accelerate request fulfillment. More than 2,000 knowledge articles were migrated and restructured, dramatically improving search accuracy, discoverability and first-contact resolution.

2. Precision-led migration at enterprise scale

Together, we executed one of the most critical phases of the transformation with speed and precision migrating over a decade of operational history without business disruption.

More than 10 million transactions, 56.5 million worklogs and 9.9 million attachments were successfully transitioned in under 20 workdays.

Seven+ enterprise integrations were modernized and migrated from Remedy and legacy systems to a streamlined ServiceNow schema architecture, including post-merger system consolidation.

The result: continuity, compliance integrity and a clean foundation for future scalability.

3. AI-powered self-service driving higher engagement and resolution

The introduction of GenAI-powered Virtual Agent fundamentally changed how employees interacted with support services, leveraging AI/ML-driven conversational intelligence and continuous learning capabilities.

Self-resolution rates reached 56%, significantly reducing dependency on manual intervention.

With an 88% adoption rate, the Virtual Agent demonstrated strong user trust and engagement, accelerating ticket deflection and improving service responsiveness across the enterprise.

GenAI skills have improved user experience and productivity in IT, HR, and customer service. Incident and Change Summarization monitors user acceptance rates of 174% and 627% within three months of period.

The “Resolution Notes Generation” skill saves an average of 843 minutes of writing time daily, with each record saving 3 minutes and each user saving 5 minutes per day within 3 months of implementation. This brings value to organization by boosting productivity and efficiency. Also ensures accuracy by generating detailed resolution notes upon closing a case, capturing crucial knowledge without manual documentation efforts.

4. Stronger collaboration and global operational consistency

Omnichannel support through Microsoft Teams integration and Agent Chat enabled faster approvals, improved communication and seamless cross-functional collaboration.

Standardized workflows across ITSM, HRSD and custom apps strengthened governance, improved process consistency and enhanced service delivery across global operations.

Overall, the transformation not only modernized the platform but established a scalable, AI-enabled service management ecosystem capable of supporting enterprise growth, innovation and operational excellence.

The Impact

Conclusion

This transformation reflects the organization’s commitment to building a standardized, innovation-led and scalable enterprise platform aligned with their global growth ambitions. By combining deep domain understanding with proven large-scale ServiceNow transformation expertise, we delivered a structured, outcome-driven modernization program. The result is a best-practice, AI-enabled service management ecosystem that reduces technical debt, enhances employee experience and accelerates enterprise-wide automation.

Together, the teams transformed a heavily customized legacy environment into a future-ready digital workflow platform positioning the organization to scale innovation with confidence.

DFS Unified Service Management Case study Modernizing a legacy ServiceNow landscape to enable AI-powered enterprise agility