ServiceNow Inc. today is rolling out a new version of its workflow platform that uses generative artificial intelligence to improve security and governance.

The company is also delivering new features for healthcare and finance companies as well as human resources departments.

The Now Assist family of generative AI agents is now included in the IT Service Management, Customer Service Management, Human Resources Service Delivery and Workflow Creator modules. Based on a domain-specific large language model that the company said is targeted at enterprises and optimized for accuracy and data privacy, Now Assist is now integrated into all ServiceNow processes and workflows and complies with the company’s controls for ethical and responsible development and use.

ServiceNow has been working with large language models for years, but the frenzy kicked off by last fall’s introduction of ChatGPT moved the issue on the front burner, said Jon Sigler, senior vice president of Now Platform at ServiceNow. Rather than adopting a general-purpose model, the company elected to train its own models for specific workflow domains.

“A general-purpose LLM is really good at summarizing history and answering general questions; we don’t need that in ServiceNow.” he said. “What we do need is a really good intent engine. That’s a much smaller LLM that’s cheaper to run and safer.”

Answers, not search results

ITSM workflows now include incident histories and live virtual agents that deliver answers rather than search results. Now Assist for ITSM can also create contextual summaries of incidents and resolution notes for faster issue resolution times and enforcement of best practices.

Generative AI assistance for CSM can automatically create summaries of cases and chats while allowing for improved customer self-service. HR professionals can get answers to questions more quickly and have instant access to summaries of case topics, previous chat history and resolution strategies.

Users of the Creator workflow design component can now convert natural language text prompts into executable code for the ServiceNow Platform and get completed lines of code from a few keystrokes. Now Assist for Creator is trained on code from ServiceNow engineering for quality, scalability and security.

Zero trust added

The company has been steadily improving security features in its platform with last year’s addition of native platform encryption and the introduction earlier this year of streamlined incident identification and management with intelligent automation and companywide views of vulnerabilities, issues and outages

This release, called Vancouver, adds zero-trust access to ServiceNow Vault, which is a set of security and privacy features that are built into the core platform. Organizations can now define access privileges available to a user in a session based on risk parameters like location, network, user risk and devices.

ServiceNow is also expanding third-party risk management features to improve visualization and management of security threats from outside organizations. It said third-party visibility has become more critical as 98% of organizations have experienced a breach tied to a third-party vendor in the last two years, according to SecurityScorecard Inc.

Third-party risk management provides a single view of third-party applications. New features include automated inherent risk questionnaires and due-diligence workflows along with enhanced executive reporting.

This release also introduces software bill of materials management capabilities intended to enable companies to process and ingest their inventory of software components, understand how they fit into applications, assess security risk and support response workflows. SBOMs have gained favor with the increasing use of open-source software in commercial applications and the difficulty that inclusion creates for security teams to identify and validate the security of the code.

Industry- and domain-specific features

For healthcare organizations, a new Clinical Device Management feature simplifies the process of installing, servicing and managing devices such as magnetic resonance imaging and X-ray machines. The software automates device upkeep and management, provides guidance on parts that need to be ordered and can identify the best technicians for device maintenance.

For financial professionals, ServiceNow said an Accounts Payable Operations enhancement to the company’s Source-to-Pay Operations procurement feature announced earlier this year is now generally available. The feature allows accounting teams to digitize the invoice receipt, reconciliation and payment process and reduce the average $16 cost of processing an invoice by up to 80%.

Employee Growth and Development, which uses AI to collect, validate and continuously update employee skills data, is now also generally available. Managers can use it to create customized and trackable growth plans for employees that align skills development to career goals. Employees can use it to explore career options and advance their skills through guided actions and training with AI-powered recommendations and prompts.

“Managers can create customized and trackable growth plans for employees that align skill development to career ambitions,” said Amy Lokey, senior vice president of product experience. “Employees can define their career aspirations, explore their options and drive career progression through guided actions and these AI-powered recommendations and proactive prompts create a more robust career conversation between managers and employees and empower employees to take ownership.”

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