ServiceNow has launched the latest version of its Now Platform, which includes several new AI-based capabilities focused on automating and streamlining a range of internal business processes.
Codenamed Utah, the new version offers improved business process optimization, including field service management that identifies hidden inefficiencies using the company’s AI-powered process mining capabilities. The new features not only improve process speed and performance, but also provide users with tangible actionable insights to troubleshoot problem areas.
The new offering also offers enhanced workforce optimization capabilities that better support IT service management and customer service management, including the ability to provide HR departments with a central location from which to optimize their workforce. It also better enables managers to maximize the quality of work their people, teams and departments are engaged in and keep costs down, ServiceNow said.
“This release is all about automating processes and streamlining digital transformation projects,” said Jon Siegler, vice president of platforms at ServiceNow. “For us, process automation is just the beginning. We will continue to invest in this area until it’s more about automating processes behind the workflow to identify bottlenecks and tell you how to fix them.”
We have a full AI team and work with large language models. With ChatGPT progressing so quickly, we are laying the groundwork in Utah to get it working.
Jon SieglerVice President, Platforms, ServiceNow
The company also introduced Impact Value Accelerators, designed to achieve faster return on investment in digital transformation and reduce the time it takes to deploy dashboards. The accelerators are designed to give C-suite executives more visibility into ongoing digital transformation projects, enabling faster value realization, Siegler said.
Another AI investment made in Utah focuses on improved search capabilities. The improvements are primarily intended to increase productivity by providing more accurate links.
“We have a full-fledged AI team in place and we’re working with big language models, as evidenced by the NLU (Natural Language Understanding) offerings that we have out there,” Siegler said. “Given how fast ChatGPT is progressing to around 100 million users, we are laying the groundwork in Utah to be able to work with it. You will see how we get a foothold there in the next release.”
Stephen Elliot, group vice president at IDC, said he believes AI capabilities in Utah are well timed as companies look to move to cloud-based technologies and quickly see ROI on those investments.
Stephen Elliott
“This ongoing migration can help users achieve faster results and faster time-to-value through improved automation and increased agility,” he said.
ServiceNow has also made improvements in Utah to mitigate both operational and security risks. A new capability called Health and Safety Incident Management helps managers create a culture of wellbeing and productivity with a collection of tools to report and resolve safety incidents, and take corrective and preventive actions.
Another feature, Workplace Lease Administration, aims to enable facility managers to better track contracts and make informed decisions about available office space. This capability gives managers more flexibility to adapt to the evolving role of the physical office as trends in the hybrid work world change, ServiceNow said.
Finally, the company updated the Next Experience portion of the Now platform with a new workspace called Security Incident Response. The extension provides security analysts with a central location to quickly analyze the data that occurs across a variety of different security events. It also allows users to analyze reports within a workspace and leverage the company’s Process Automation Designer to manage multiple workflows with no-code playbooks, the company said.
As Editor At Large for TechTarget’s News Group, Ed Scannell is responsible for writing and reporting breaking news, news analysis and features focused on technology issues and trends affecting enterprise IT professionals.
Stephen Elliott