Customer Spotlight: How Armstrong World Industries Transformed IT Service Delivery with Itential

At AutoCon 2 in Denver, Eric Anderson, Senior Infrastructure Architect at Armstrong World Industries, delivered a presentation every IT team can relate to: a growing backlog of IT service requests that put strain on infrastructure teams and slowed down time to value for key business processes.

As a market leader in an industry involving complex supply chains and global operations, Armstrong’s network and IT infrastructure is complex and growing—and driving efficient operations across this infrastructure is crucial to success. As backlogs grew and infrastructure consumers waited around for services to be fulfilled, it became increasingly clear that traditional, manual processes weren’t cutting it.

Eric explained how the Armstrong team tackled this challenge head-on by adopting Itential’s platform, streamlining IT operations, and delivering services faster than ever before and achieving transformative benefits for the business.

“We were dealing with a never-ending backlog of service requests. Tasks would sit in queues for days before being fulfilled, often requiring engineers to step in manually.”

With requests flooding in for a wide range of infrastructure services, they knew they would need to change their approach. At first, they built a homegrown Python-based orchestration solution to coordinate automation jobs and streamline operations. While they saw initial success, they ran into challenges over time. As the solution grew, managing higher transaction volumes and a variety of complex workflows became challenging. In addition, the solution required a high degree of expertise, leaving them reliant on a few key SMEs with a large knowledge gap for most personnel.

Faced with a decision to either continue facing these challenges head-on or adopt a more robust solution, Armstrong chose Itential. This decision was driven by Itential’s ability to address key challenges:

• Event-Driven Automation: Itential replaced the need for manual responses to routine services with real-time API-triggered workflows.
• Pre-Built Integrations: Out-of-the-box compatibility with tools like ServiceNow, GitLab, and Office 365 streamlined setup and scaling.
• User-Friendly Interface: Drag-and-drop workflows simplified the process of designing and managing complex automations.

“Itential allowed us to automate the entire lifecycle of service requests — from submission to fulfillment — without relying on manual intervention.”

With Itential, Armstrong completely reimagined how IT service requests were handled. Here’s the streamlined process:

• Request Submission: A user submits a request in ServiceNow.
• Automation Trigger: Once approved, Itential retrieves task details via API, including specifics like the type of request and any associated variables.
• Task Fulfillment: Itential workflows handle downstream tasks, integrating with tools like Office 365 and GitLab, and completing the request end-to-end.
• Notifications: Users receive automated updates, and the request status is logged in ServiceNow.

“What used to take five days now happens in just 10 minutes. It’s a massive improvement for us.”

Beyond speeding up service delivery, Armstrong focused on measuring and showcasing the impact of automation. By integrating Itential with Splunk dashboards, the team captured two critical metrics — productivity savings for the network team, and delivery time improvement for infrastructure services.

“Management loves the tangible data we’re able to show with Itential—time savings, faster delivery, and overall productivity gains. It’s helped us get buy-in for further automation investments.”

Before adopting Itential, infrastructure teams at Armstrong were in a position that might sound familiar: requests piling up, infrastructure getting more complex by the day, and a high barrier to entry for automation and orchestration. If your team is in the same boat, Armstrong’s story shows a path forward with integration and orchestration. Automating routine tasks saves time, and orchestrating complex services to deliver them at scale enables your team to clear the backlog and really create value for the organization by accelerating key business processes.

As Eric summed up in his AutoCon 2 presentation, “it’s not just about time savings — it’s about demonstrating how automation directly impacts our business goals.”

Watch his full presentation below.

Ready to transform your IT operations? It might be time to take a page from Armstrong’s playbook. Schedule some time to chat with our experts about how you can achieve the same results.