Forget the doom-and-gloom predictions — artificial intelligence isn’t here to steal jobs; it’s here to reshape them. Accenture PLC and ServiceNow Inc. are partnering to harness AI-driven automation as a powerful tool for boosting productivity, simplifying business complexity and enabling employees to focus on tasks that truly matter.

Through strategic initiatives, both companies view AI as an ally — freeing employees from repetitive tasks, so they can spend their energy on innovation and growth. Central to their approach is empowering teams across the organization to leverage AI-driven solutions, enhancing everyday experiences and unlocking human potential.

TheCUBE digs into putting AI to work with experts from Accenture and ServiceNow.

“We’re going to put AI to work for people,” said Dave Kanter (pictured, left), senior managing director, global lead of the Accenture ServiceNow Business Group at Accenture. “What I love about that is everything that we’re doing with this technology is about making this work for all employees, for customers to have a more delightful experience in what they’re doing every day; but, in particular, to let the employees across the organization in every corner of the office use their brains and strengths to grow their business and drive innovation.”

Kanter and Paul Fipps (right), executive vice president of worldwide sales at ServiceNow, spoke with theCUBE’s Savannah Peterson at the “From Vision to Reality: How AI is Transforming Work Now” event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed AI-driven automation and the continued evolution of AI’s role in business transformation, with the next frontier including fully autonomous agents capable of handling multi-step processes without human intervention. (* Disclosure below.)

AI-driven automation as a platform for business transformation

Today’s organizations grapple with the increasing complexity of their IT and operational systems. Companies have built massive infrastructures over decades, layering new solutions to address emerging needs. However, this has led to unwieldy, convoluted architectures that demand significant management resources.

“We just think about all of the different systems that have been built over the past 50 years,” Fipps said. “If you think about the technology that customers have put in, and then between the pandemic and now, all of the point solutions that have been added on top of that architecture. Many of our customers are just swimming in a sea of complexity, and the investment is there.”

ServiceNow and Accenture aim to simplify this complexity through AI. The ServiceNow platform serves as a central hub, optimizing and integrating workflows across IT, HR, finance and other business functions. By reducing inefficiencies, companies can reallocate resources toward AI investments that drive meaningful change. This shift is especially critical in a post-pandemic world where businesses must operate with agility and resilience, according to Kanter.

“I feel like what’s happened over the last four or five years, especially coming out of the pandemic, we’re putting more and more in our people every day and the hours are getting longer,” he said. “And this is an opportunity here to apply these agents to take care of that highly repetitive administrative work that matters. But I want to get to all of our team members — that’s the goal. And I think agents are going to allow us to get there a lot faster.”

Realizing the automation promise for businesses

In late 2023, a defining moment for AI emerged — often referred to as the “big bang” for the technology. AI’s role shifted from advanced analytics and forecasting to real-time engagement, process automation and transactional intelligence. Recognizing the immense potential, ServiceNow and Accenture launched AI Lighthouse, an initiative dedicated to making AI tangible for enterprises.

“‘This is a workflow platform for the future’ — that was the thought,” Kanter said. “Through that business group formation, we have regular cadence top-to-top. And we have this very special program that also formed in late 2023 known as AI Lighthouse through an idea, through our discussions with our CEOs where we looked at the conversations we’re having with our customers.”

The AI Lighthouse program was designed to help businesses move beyond pilot projects and exploratory use cases into large-scale AI deployments that deliver measurable ROI. ServiceNow and Accenture work closely with organizations across industries such as financial services, manufacturing and technology to identify high-impact AI applications and accelerate their adoption, Fipps added.

“There’s just enormous amounts of [potential] productivity gains across all functions, all industries,” Fipps said. “We wanted to figure out how to come together and give some of our customers first-mover advantage. This is very early days, and at ServiceNow, we were very early with production-level capabilities with generative AI in the platform. In fact, 10 months after in November 2023, we launched our first set of in-production generative AI capabilities.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the “From Vision to Reality: How AI is Transforming Work Now” event: 

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the “From Vision to Reality: How AI Is Transforming Work Now” event. Neither ServiceNow Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE