IndustryServiceNow for Energy & Utilities

The Grid Is Changing. Your IT Operating Model Has to Change With It.

Renewable integration, OT/IT convergence, and a retiring generation of engineers are creating simultaneous pressure on infrastructure, security, and institutional knowledge. ServiceNow sits at the center of every one of those problems.

4.2×Increase in ICS/OT cyberattacks since 2020
43%Of utility engineers eligible for retirement this decade
$2.9MAvg. cost of unplanned ICS downtime
The Numbers Behind the Pressure

The Operational Reality No One Puts in the Annual Report.

Energy and utility IT teams are managing the most complex infrastructure convergence in a generation — while simultaneously facing talent attrition, regulatory escalation, and adversaries who have specifically targeted their sector.

4.2×
OT/IT cyberattack surge

ICS and SCADA attacks have quadrupled since 2020 as operational technology becomes Internet-connected without commensurate security tooling (Dragos ICS Threat Report 2024).

Industry exposure84%
43%
Workforce retirement cliff

Nearly half of skilled utility engineers and tradespeople are within 10 years of retirement — taking undocumented knowledge, vendor relationships, and institutional process with them (CEWD 2024).

Industry exposure72%
$2.9M
Avg. ICS downtime cost

A single unplanned industrial control system outage costs the average utility $2.9M when accounting for restoration labor, regulatory notifications, SLA penalties, and customer impact (ARC Advisory Group).

Industry exposure68%
68%
No unified OT asset inventory

68% of utility operators report they cannot produce an accurate, real-time inventory of their OT assets — a NERC CIP audit trigger and a basic prerequisite for incident response (Claroty 2024).

Industry exposure68%
Trending Now

What's Breaking — Before It Becomes an Outage.

These aren't theoretical risks. They're the operational and security challenges that utility IT and OT teams report as active, unresolved, and getting worse every quarter.

Critical+67% YoY attack volume
1 in 3
utilities had OT network breach in 2023

OT/IT Convergence Security

SCADA and DCS systems were designed for air-gapped environments. Grid modernization and remote monitoring have eliminated that isolation without replacing it with adequate security architecture. Most OT environments have zero visibility into lateral movement. When an adversary crosses the IT/OT boundary, the first sign is typically an incident.

High+12% annual attrition
10 yrs
until 50% of utility skills leave the workforce

Workforce Knowledge Cliff

The engineers who built your substations, configured your SCADA integrations, and know why certain processes run the way they do are retiring. That knowledge is not in any system of record. When the next critical failure happens, the people who would have known the fix instinctively will be gone.

High+28% DER integration volume
900+
new DER connection requests per large utility per month

Grid Modernization Complexity

Every distributed energy resource — rooftop solar, battery storage, EV charging infrastructure — adds a new integration point, a new data stream, and a new failure mode to manage. The operational complexity is scaling faster than the tooling to manage it. Incident response built for centralized generation doesn't work for distributed architecture.

Platform in Practice

Where ServiceNow Changes the Equation.

Not theoretical capability — specific platform modules mapped to the operational problems energy and utility teams are actively trying to solve.

No unified visibility across IT and OT assets
CMDB + Discovery
60% faster incident responseSingle asset registry across IT, OT, and field devices — NERC CIP audit-ready
NERC CIP, TSA directive, and NRC compliance tracking
GRC
80% reduction in audit prep timeAutomated evidence collection, continuous control monitoring, audit trail generation
Field crew dispatch and work order management
Field Service Management
35% reduction in mean time to repairOptimized crew routing, mobile work orders, parts availability integration
Knowledge retention before workforce retirement
HR Service Delivery
40% of critical knowledge formalizedStructured knowledge capture workflows, mentorship program management, skills gap tracking
The Platform

Six ServiceNow Capabilities. One Platform. Built for Utility Scale.

Energy and utility environments require both the breadth to span IT and OT and the depth to handle critical infrastructure compliance. These are the modules that do the work.

CMDB + Discovery

Unified asset inventory spanning IT infrastructure, OT endpoints, field devices, and smart grid components. The foundation for NERC CIP asset documentation and incident impact analysis.

SecOps

Threat detection and response workflows designed for OT/IT convergence environments. Integration with industrial security platforms (Claroty, Dragos) to route OT alerts into a single response workflow.

Field Service Management

Field crew scheduling, mobile work orders, and parts management for transmission, distribution, and generation maintenance teams — with real-time dispatch and SLA tracking.

GRC

Compliance management for NERC CIP, TSA cybersecurity directives, NRC regulations, and state PUC requirements. Continuous control monitoring with automated evidence packages for audit cycles.

ITSM

Incident, problem, and change management for NOC operations — configured for critical infrastructure change windows, emergency change protocols, and 24/7 operations workflows.

HR Service Delivery

Knowledge capture, structured succession planning, and workforce transition management — built to document institutional knowledge before it walks out with a retiring generation of engineers.

Proven Results

What Utility Organizations Report After Deployment.

Outcomes from energy and utility ServiceNow engagements measured at 12 months post-implementation.

60%Faster OT incident response
80%Reduction in NERC CIP audit prep time
35%MTTR improvement for field crews
100%OT/IT asset visibility achieved
Built for Energy & Utilities

Your Industry Has Specific Problems.
We Have Specific Answers.

Thirty minutes with our team and you'll walk away with a concrete view of what ServiceNow can do for your specific environment — no generic pitch, no recycled slides.