ServiceNow Inc. today introduced an array of new artificial intelligence tools aimed at helping companies automate repetitive business tasks, fix technical issues and train employees.

The feature additions made their debut at the company’s Knowledge 2023 event in Las Vegas. They’re rolling out for ServiceNow’s namesake cloud platform, which helps companies manage the parts of their business that involve delivering a service. The platform streamlines tasks such as fielding technical support requests and onboarding new employees.

Generative AI in focus

ServiceNow has expanded its partnership with Microsoft Corp. to build a new tool called the Generative AI Controller. It allows companies to integrate their deployments of ServiceNow’s platform with large language models from OpenAI LP. The tool can also connect to the Azure OpenAI Service, which provides access to OpenAI models via Microsoft’s public cloud.

ServiceNow envisions customers applying Generative AI Controllers to a variety of use cases. The company says the tool can be used for, among other tasks, answering support requests and summarizing business documents. It will provide “pre-built actions” based on generative AI software to help customers more easily deploy the technology.

As part of its effort to ease AI adoption for customers, the company is rolling out a feature called Now Assist for Search. It uses the Generative AI Controller to let users quickly fetch data from a company’s internal systems with natural language queries. The feature can retrieve information for both a company’s employees and its customers.

“By augmenting the Now Platform with powerful new generative AI features and including access to Azure OpenAI Service, we are giving customers a built‑in action layer of intelligence,” said Chief Operating Officer CJ Desai.

Built-in observability

In 2021, ServiceNow spent an undisclosed sum to acquire a venture-backed observability startup called Lightstep. The company is now making the startup’s technology available in the form of a new tool called ServiceNow Cloud Observability. It can help companies identify and troubleshoot application malfunctions such as a sudden latency jump. 

Cloud Observability incorporates technology from not only Lightstep but also Era Software, a startup the company bought last year. The tool uses Era Software’s technology to analyze system logs for troubleshooting purposes. Besides logs, Cloud Observability also ingests metrics and traces, the two other types of technical data that companies collect to inform troubleshooting efforts.

“With a unified, scalable cloud‑native observability solution connected to the Now Platform, we are helping digital businesses seamlessly integrate observability into their most essential operations,” said Ben Sigelman, the general manager of Cloud Observability.

Automating business tasks

Cloud Observability and ServiceNow’s new generative AI feature made their debut alongside several tools designed to speed up repetitive business tasks. Each tool focuses on a different set of use cases.

The first new offering is called APO, or Accounts Payable Operations. It uses AI to reduce the amount of manual work involved in paying a company’s suppliers. ServiceNow says APO can automate tasks such as checking if a supplier delivered the goods or services for which it’s seeking to charge a company.

Another new tool, Clean Core ERP with App Engine, focuses on helping organizations optimize their back-office software.

Companies perform key business tasks such as accounting and procurement using ERP, or enterprise resource planning, platforms. Such platforms have large feature sets that make them architecturally complicated. That complexity, in turn, makes the software difficult to maintain.

Clean Core ERP with App Engine aims to ease the task. According to ServiceNow, it can help companies identify inefficient or malfunctioning parts of an ERP platform that should be replaced. Additionally, companies can use the tool to find ways of optimizing the user experience for employees. 

As part of today’s platform update, ServiceNow is also rolling out a tool called Employee Growth and Development. It can analyze business data from a company’s systems to identify skill gaps within its workforce. Organizations can use the data surfaced by the tool to inform their employee training initiatives. 

Image: ServiceNow