ServiceNow expands footprint in APAC, doubles down on AI

Broader business transformation

In its engagements with customers, ServiceNow is going beyond its stronghold in IT service management (ITSM), positioning itself as a platform for broader business transformation. The company’s portfolio now spans various functions, including HR, customer service, and governance, risk and compliance (GRC).

In the area of GRC, Chia said ServiceNow’s platform can help organisations streamline regulatory compliance processes and improve their overall risk posture. This is done by integrating risk management workflows around enterprise risk, IT risk, vendor risk, business continuity and audit management on a single platform, providing a consolidated view of the organisation’s risk profile.

As an example. Chia said ServiceNow’s GRC capabilities have helped Malaysia’s GXBank, a subsidiary of Singapore’s GXS Bank, to demonstrate to the country’s central bank that it is able to orchestrate and automate risk management processes for compliance and control, enabling it to become the first digital bank to launch operations in the country.

He also discussed ServiceNow’s move into security operations, one of the fastest-growing areas for the company, noting that the ServiceNow platform can integrate with various security tools and orchestrate remediation workflows.

By correlating asset data from the ServiceNow Configuration Management Database (CMDB) with vulnerability information, Chia said the platform can help organisations prioritise and address the most critical vulnerabilities, particularly those affecting mission-critical systems.

Like almost every technology company, ServiceNow has been doubling down on AI, specifically generative AI (GenAI), to help customers streamline workflows and processes.

For example, in customer service, GenAI can be used to provide more accurate and personalised responses to customer enquiries by understanding the context and intent behind the requests. This helps reduce the time and effort required by agents to resolve customer issues, leading to improved customer satisfaction.

It can also assist with tasks such as summarising incident details, enabling agents to quickly understand the context and take appropriate actions. Additionally, the platform can route cases to the most suitable agent based on their skills and availability, further enhancing the efficiency of service delivery.

Besides powering its GenAI capabilities with large language models (LLMs) and domain-specific models that are tuned for service management to improve accuracy and remove bias, ServiceNow recently announced that it would let customers bring their own models to the platform.

While ServiceNow customers will have to pay more for GenAI capabilities because of the costs involved in serving the models, Chia believes that in most cases, the productivity improvements will justify the investment by customers.

“We have a lot of conversations with customers to help them identify the value, which will then justify the cost, but if it doesn’t, then it may not be the right solution for them,” he added.