In enterprise IT, progress rarely happens in straight lines. Teams launch ambitious digital transformation initiatives only to find themselves mired in backlog, struggling to maintain upgrades, and grappling with a platform that doesn’t quite match business needs.
Nowhere is this truer than in ServiceNow ecosystems, where the tools to solve these problems are right there, but the people and strategy to wield them effectively are often stretched thin.
Managed Services (done right) help bridge the gap between deployment and true optimization. And for most organizations, that bridge is more necessary than they may realize.
Most ServiceNow clients don’t struggle with vision. They know where they want to go. They’ve bought into the platform’s potential. But too often, the gap between roadmap and reality gets wider with every passing sprint.
“Everyone’s under pressure to do more with less,” says Tom Sweeney, Managed Services Practice Lead at CoreX. “A team may have just deployed HRSD or asset management, but the person running it is already juggling 15 applications. There’s no air in the room to do things well, let alone rethink or optimize.”
This is the core challenge managed services aim to address, not with temporary help or ticket-based support, but instead with embedded expertise designed to evolve alongside the business.
At its best, managed service teams fill the space between overwhelmed in-house teams and bloated vendor engagements. It's a right-sized, right-time resource model that offers flexibility, continuity, and strategic alignment.
At CoreX, for instance, the managed services offering (CoreXtend) is structured around four pillars: core operational support, process, advisory, and innovation. These aren’t interchangeable resources, but rather aligned pods of ServiceNow experts that work with regular client teams to build trust, deliver value, and drive real progress over time.
“Clients don’t want a rotating cast of faces,” Sweeney notes. “They want a consistent team who knows their environment and pushes back when something doesn’t make strategic sense.”
That pushback, he explains, is essential. “If something’s been in the backlog for six months, is it a priority or just noise? We help clients get out of their own way by reframing what matters.”
Managed services should not be synonymous with “keeping the lights on.” When executed strategically, these teams enable continuous improvement, without bloated headcount or vendor sprawl.
Managed Services engagements often start with backlog burndown, but rarely end there. Teams help guide platform upgrades, identify unnecessary complexity, and align ServiceNow workflows to business outcomes.
“ROI isn’t just about hours saved,” Sweeney says. “It’s about making sure we’re answering the question the client hasn’t thought to ask yet. What value have we shown today?”
To deliver this value, Sweeney and his team operate across four service tracks:
1. Core Operational Support
This is the foundation. The team handles backlog, platform maintenance, and upgrade readiness. And unlike some support vendors, CoreX tests patches and updates well in advance, often working directly with ServiceNow alpha and beta releases.
“We're testing new functionality before most clients even know it’s coming,” says Sweeney. “So when the upgrade hits, we’re already aware of the quirks and can help clients avoid early adopter issues.”
2. Process Optimization
More than half of what Sweeney’s team does revolves around helping clients avoid inefficiency. That might mean revisiting legacy workflows, aligning ServiceNow with actual business needs, or identifying work that no longer needs doing.
“If a ticket’s been sitting in the backlog for six months, you have to ask if you still need it,” Sweeney points out. “We help clients focus not just on getting work done, but getting the right work done.”
3. Advisory & Architecture
Some clients lack in-house ServiceNow architects. Others have architects, but lack the time to think strategically. Managed Services fills this void by offering guidance on integrations, scaling strategies, and technical debt mitigation.
“This is where the platform becomes proactive,” says Sweeney. “We’re not just reacting to issues, but are instead helping clients plan for what’s next.”
4. Innovation Enablement
Once the day-to-day is under control, the real value starts to emerge. The team often spots automation opportunities or recommends AI tools that eliminate friction and create lasting efficiencies.
Sweeney offers a favorite metaphor, “A traditional project is a roller coaster: fast, dramatic, intense. Managed services should feel like a merry-go-round. Steady. Predictable. But always moving. New implementations have enough ups and downs. Managed services teams offer reliable, reassuring support. ”
Managed services are also the ideal environment for spotting growth opportunities. Because teams are embedded and familiar with a client’s instance, they’re better positioned to identify inefficiencies, recommend automation, or suggest architecture changes, long before they become critical.
And those insights scale. Sweeney recalled a client request that began with simple backlog support and ended up seeing the team rebuilding an entire knowledge base, improving first-touch resolution, and dramatically lowering support costs over time.
“It’s not just about fixing problems,” says Sweeney. “It’s about asking, ‘Why does this keep happening?’ and building a better foundation.”
Many organizations want to jump to the shiny new initiative. Today, that likely means AI, machine learning, predictive analytics, etc. But this is often done without realizing that their platform foundation is shaky. To this, Sweeney offers another relevant metaphor.
“You don’t put a third story on a house with a cracked foundation,” he says bluntly. “And that’s what we help with. Stabilizing. Streamlining. Fixing the stuff that keeps you from scaling.”
That often means going back to basics: rationalizing duplicate forms, improving self-service portals, or rebuilding a neglected knowledge base.
One CoreX client, a major healthcare organization, handed over six months of help desk data. The team analyzed it, identified high-volume Tier 2 issues, and rewrote processes and documentation to push them down to Tier 1 or eliminate them via automation. The result? Happier developers, less wasted effort, and a much lower support cost per ticket.
“That’s ROI you can feel,” Sweeney says.
One often overlooked challenge in platform adoption is cultural trust, particularly between business units like HR and IT. Historically, many HR teams have been burned by bad implementations or tone-deaf tools imposed by tech teams.
“HR has a long memory,” says Sweeney. “There’s a reason they’re skeptical. We’ve seen platforms rolled out without their input, and then IT wonders why no one uses it.”
Because Managed Services typically sit outside the org chart, it can serve as a neutral party that partners with HR (or finance, legal, procurement) to deliver what they actually need without dragging them through red tape.
“This builds trust,” Sweeney explains. “HR doesn’t have to fight for what they need. We just get it done, and IT doesn’t have to play middleman.”
Value doesn’t always arrive as a report or dashboard. Often, it’s about making the invisible visible: reframing priorities, clarifying roadblocks, and aligning platform work with business outcomes.
“I challenge my team to always ask, ‘What value did we show today?’” Sweeney says. “If we can’t answer that, the client definitely can’t either.”
This focus on continual value realization helps clients avoid the trap of treating managed services like a cost center. Instead, it becomes a performance enabler that surfaces ROI incrementally through improved user experience, faster time to resolution, and reduced tech debt.
One of the most consistent pieces of feedback Sweeney receives is about consistency. Clients value having a steady team they know by name. And they appreciate not having to re-explain their environment every month.
But more importantly, they see the team as a partner, someone who pushes back, challenges assumptions, and says “no” when necessary.
“If we see a client driving into a brick wall, we stop them,” the ever-quotable Sweeney concludes. “That’s what a real partner does. Not just deliver what was asked, but figure out what should be delivered.”
That mindset makes the difference between keeping the lights on and moving the business forward.
The future of enterprise service management doesn’t belong to the biggest team or the flashiest implementation. It belongs to the organizations that treat the ServiceNow platform as a living system, one that needs care, tuning, and the occasional rethinking.
Managed services are the best way to ensure that happens, giving you a partner that understands your business, challenges your assumptions, and helps you build a platform that’s not just operational, but exceptional.