Case Study: Yale University achieves ITIL-driven service improvement and reduced operating costs with ServiceNow

Adopting ITSM Technology to Support ITIL Initiatives

Yale University needed to become more service-oriented but faced limited visibility into IT work, departmental silos, and the overhead of maintaining an on‑premise HP Service Manager instance. Although incident and change processes were aligned with ITIL, the university wanted to mature IT operations further, reduce costs and staff time spent on infrastructure, and build a common language and measurable processes across IT.

Yale chose ServiceNow’s SaaS ITSM platform, deploying incident, problem, change, request fulfillment and knowledge modules in waves, supported by ITIL training for 350+ staff and designated local experts. The seven‑month project (six weeks to full rollout) was delivered on time and on budget, reduced maintenance costs, improved collaboration and MTTR, drove cultural change toward customer-centric service, and led to new roles such as major incident/problem manager and knowledge manager.

Yale University