Foodservice Company Goes from Legacy IT Constraints to Scalable Growth

For a large foodservice distribution organization with over a century of history, technology reliability is inseparable from business success. Serving more than 100,000 customers nationwide and operating at massive scale, even small disruptions in IT systems created outsized operational risk. 

As the organization continued to grow, leadership recognized that its legacy IT environment could no longer keep pace. Fragmented tools, rising labor costs, and limited visibility were slowing teams down and creating friction across the business. To support long-term growth and deliver better service to employees, vendors, and customers, the organization set out to modernize its IT foundation. 

That journey required more than replacing tools. It required a new operating model built on consistency, integration, and scale. 

The Challenge: When Legacy Systems Limit Progress 

The existing IT landscape was built on outdated, siloed systems that were increasingly difficult to manage and expensive to maintain. While the organization had a strong strategic vision under new IT leadership, execution was constrained by the tools themselves. 

Several challenges emerged clearly: 

• Reporting on issues and performance was time-consuming and difficult to standardize 

• Resolving incidents and defects required heavy manual effort, driving up labor costs 

• Downtime increased as systems lacked visibility and meaningful integration 

• The existing ITSM platform was underutilized, functioning largely as a ticketing tool 

• Maintaining ITIL compliance demanded a constant and significant investment of staff hours 

Taken together, these issues made it clear that incremental improvements would not be enough. A foundational change was required. 

The Solution: A Planned Transition to a Modern ServiceNow Platform 

The organization partnered with CoreX to replace its legacy systems with a modern, scalable ServiceNow implementation anchored in the Common Service Data Model. The approach emphasized speed, stability, and long-term sustainability: 

• A prioritized roadmap was developed to retire legacy systems and avoid unnecessary licensing costs 

• The implementation focused on out of the box capabilities to simplify future upgrades 

• Key integrations were delivered in phases, including a milestone integration with SAP 

• Training and coaching were provided throughout pre and post implementation to ensure adoption and long-term success 

Rather than treating the project as a one-time deployment, the team focused on building a durable foundation that could evolve alongside the business. 

As one production assurance leader noted, the collaboration felt seamless, with CoreX and internal teams operating as a single, integrated group.  

The Results: Greater Visibility, Lower Costs, and a Platform for Growth 

The transformation delivered immediate and measurable improvements across IT operations. Key outcomes included: 

• Centralized applications that enabled predictable migration of multiple tools into a single platform 

• Faster and more efficient onboarding of new tools within ServiceNow 

• An early and well-defined CMDB foundation to support all current and future IT initiatives 

• Hands-on education that increased team confidence and platform adoption 

• Improved visibility through data and reporting, reducing downtime and lost revenue 

• Streamlined and automated major incident processes that reduced labor costs 

• Custom integrations with SAP that automated incident reporting and improved efficiency 

With a unified system of record and action in place, IT teams gained greater control, reliability, and confidence in their operations. 

The Transformation: Built to Lead, Built to Last 

What began as an effort to replace outdated tools became a broader transformation of how IT supports the business. Through disciplined planning, efficient execution, intelligent integration, and consistent coaching, the organization moved from fragmented legacy systems to an industry-leading ServiceNow foundation. 

Today, the organization is positioned not just to support growth, but to lead through it with an IT platform designed for scale, resilience, and continuous innovation.