Written by Brian Lawton
Hello! My name is Brian Lawton and I serve as the Director for the Enabling Applications Delivery team.
I started as a Design Manager nearly 17 years ago with WashU IT, where I worked on our Research Administrative applications. Over the years I have managed different areas within Enterprise Applications such as our Data Warehouse team and in Middleware development.
My wife Tasha and I live in the Wildwood area of St. Louis County and have two kids, ages 10 and 13, and two dogs.
Outside of work I enjoy spending time with my family, playing video games, hiking, bicycling or playing soccer, tennis, or golf.
In my role as Director of the Enabling Applications Platform team I work with our team’s Asst. Director Daniel Hammoud to oversee the platforms and systems of Enabling Applications.
While the Enabling Application team has 3 major areas and teams within our group, which are:
- Common Good Management
- Learning and Specialized Management:
- Purchasing, Time, and Document Management
The fourth area of Enabling Apps that I focus on as well and that is involved in the Asset Management Program is:
- ServiceNow
- Team Members:
- Sr.Engineer/Product Owner: Troy Weatherburn
- Application Lead: Kevin Peppers
- Business Analyst: Moreena Tiede
- Application Developer: Mohan Kolli
Every day I am grateful to have the opportunity to work with the entire Enabling Applications team, but for the Asset Management Program, I’ll be focusing on the ServiceNow Team and our plans with the platform.
Like our other platforms in Enabling Apps, a unique aspect ServiceNow is that it is considered cross-domain, meaning it is not aligned with a specific business domain but instead is leveraged by different user bases across WashU. ServiceNow is SaaS-based and supports numerous business services across campus through the use of catalogs and request items through the portal found here: https://wustl.service-now.com/sp
Via the portal users across WashU can report if something is broken (known as an incident), or make requests through the services catalogs. Users can also track and get updates on their incidents and requests via the portal.
While the ServiceNow team manages and assists with daily operations involving incidents and requests, it also oversees projects to enhance the system and bring in new functionality. One of the team’s major initiatives this year is the Asset Management Program. This program will introduce hardware and software asset management along with IT operations management modules. This will allow us to better manage the lifecyle of hardware and software, and allow for service owners and stakeholders to better visualize how hardware and software impact their services ecosystem, as well as support our information security, disaster recovery, and service costing initiatives.
The ServiceNow teams aim is to help bring initiatives like Asset Management and others on the horizon to fruition and maintain them operationally as we help to move WashU forward with service access and asset management provided by the platform.