ServiceNow Looks Beyond IT Service Management with Now Platform Utah Release
Now Platform Utah moves beyond ITMS with workforce optimization and process automation.
March 29, 2023
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Channel Futures: What does the Now Platform Utah mean to partners?
ServiceNow’s Erica Volini: One of the things I’m really excited about is this focus on automation. We already have existing automation within the platform right now. But we’ve expanded that automation capability way past traditional IT service management, to other workflows. And we’re doing it in two major ways. One is focused on process optimization and the other is focused on workforce optimization. Both are huge opportunities for our partners.
CF: How does the platform help deliver process automation?
EV: Process automation basically means providing the ability to go in through the ServiceNow platform and using AI to find where all the inefficiencies that exist within work processes, which we know there are many. It uses our robotics process automation and our workflows to optimize those inefficiencies and help cut costs and improve customer satisfaction. And that’s basically what our partners are trying to do with their customers.
CF: It centers on your RPA tool?
EV: Yes, it’s through both AI and our AI and automation services, and then we’re able to implement automated workflows, but in particular through the RPA that we’re bringing into the platform.
CF: But RPA isn’t new to ServiceNow.
EV: It’s been there, but it’s now able to be used across all aspects of the platform, not just IT.
CF: Are partners who are typically accustomed to implementing ITSM, looking to move into process automation outside of IT? 3
EV: Yes, our partners use this today for ITSM. But the reality is, most inefficiencies exist beyond IT. Most process inefficiencies occur when you’re crossing functional boundaries and you’re crossing different parts of the enterprise. That’s where the real value comes in, because we’re going to uncover the bigger inefficiencies that are out there.
CF: But these are partners who are dealing with providing IT services, are they looking to expand into other functions like HR processes?
EV: That is our fundamental partner strategy. Our partners want to expand across the enterprise. That’s why they love ServiceNow. It’s not about the IT play; it’s about IT as an entry point. They can use the ServiceNow platform to expand across every area of the enterprise, from the front office to back office. Honestly, I think that’s the biggest reason why our partners love our platform, is because the land-and-expand opportunities are endless.
CF: How does the Utah platform address process automation?
EV: We’ve implemented this ourselves. We looked at about 900 business processes at ServiceNow. And we discovered more than 70 inefficiencies using this process optimization. For example, we discovered that 74% of submitted HR cases were being recategorized. That created a huge delay in getting back to the employee who was submitting that case to begin with. By identifying and fixing that, what we would call hidden inefficiency, we sped up resolution time by 40%, gained productivity about 30% and increased the employee experience. It doesn’t have to be this enormous, multiyear transformation.
CF: What about the workforce optimization?
EV: If you think about a shared services organization, oftentimes we’ll go into a company, and they’ll have different shared services in different functions. And it’s hard to understand holistically, how do you drive scheduling? How do you make sure you’re balancing your team appropriately maximizing quality of work? And how do you do that across all those different teams that exist in all those functional areas? Workforce optimization actually gives HR managers a centralized place to understand their full employee base and figure out how they move people around across the enterprise to optimize that workforce and what they’re doing, which I think is huge, especially in today’s world, where headcount is limited.
In the following pages, Volini discusses some of the new features. First, she explains AI Search.
EV: In our last release, we introduced our “Next Experience,” which is all about … elevating the user experience… AI search basically helps service delivery workers find the information they need to do their jobs more efficiently and resolve customer issues faster. It includes features, like auto-complete suggestions and it allows users to go directly to a record to identify the relevant materials more quickly. It’s all about just enhancing the ability to do search, and to bring AI capabilities into that search functionality. So it’s just easier and quicker to find what you need.
EV: Document intelligence is going to allow customers to automate AI enabled text extraction from documents. It streamlines the user experience so you can easily build, personalize and monitor all your document processing. It can also pull huge amounts of data from these long tables and documents with things like invoices and purchase orders. It allows you to automatically … pull that data so that you could get what you need over to finance, to payroll, to procurement processes. It gives you the ability to scan through a large complex of documents, and pull the information you need very easily, so that you can get that information over to folks.
EV: If you think about the workspace right now, this provides a centralized location. It’s easier to report and resolve workplace safety incidents and assign corrective action. It helps manage incidents by doing proactive reporting and understanding how to create a safer workplace environment, which I think is critical.
[Also], we’ve made it simpler with things like theme builder, which has customized branding technology, so you can create a totally personalized branded look and feel for the customer, which I think elevates the consumer experience of the platform.
EV: If you think about the workspace right now, this provides a centralized location. It’s easier to report and resolve workplace safety incidents and assign corrective action. It helps manage incidents by doing proactive reporting and understanding how to create a safer workplace environment, which I think is critical.
[Also], we’ve made it simpler with things like theme builder, which has customized branding technology, so you can create a totally personalized branded look and feel for the customer, which I think elevates the consumer experience of the platform.
ServiceNow is enabling partners to deliver robotic process automation (RPA) and workforce optimization with its new Now Platform Utah release. The semiannual spring platform update, now available, also offers AI-based search, document intelligence, and health and safety incident management.
Now Platform Utah also offers a theme builder that lets partners customize the user experience for their clients.
“New innovations in the Utah release arm organizations with tools to protect the future of business and improve the ways they serve their teams, customers, and partners,” wrote ServiceNow senior VP of platform Jon Sigler.
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Erica Volini, the recently promoted lead of ServiceNow global channels, discussed the new platform with Channel Futures. According to Volini, the Utah platform lets partners deliver services beyond IT service management (ITSM).
Time to Value
ServiceNow’s Erica Volini
“It’s all about increasing time to value and letting our clients drive net new innovation, but also transform their business models to get to greater efficiency,” Volini said. “The Utah release is all about bringing much more automation and bringing AI to the forefront so that clients can understand where the issues in their organizations are, dive deep into them and fix them,” she added. “This will help them move along their digital transformation journey, but also gain efficiencies along the way.”
Futurum Research principal analyst and founding partner Shelly Kramer believes the new capabilities will indeed help ServiceNow accomplish its goals.
Futurum Research’s Shelly Kramer
“The expansion of ServiceNow’s Now Platform Utah platform beyond IT service management and customer service to other workflows such as human resources will enable a company to identify inefficiencies across the organization and fix them,” Kramer wrote. “That will be music to the ears of current ServiceNow customers and provide incentive for non-ServiceNow customers to start paying attention to what’s possible.”
Volini shared some of the benefits the new ServiceNow Platform Utah release to partners, which appear in the slideshow above.
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