A handful of Veracity experts were among the 24,000 members of the ServiceNow universe who descended on Las Vegas for three days of a jam-packed Knowledge 2023 conference. It was, at least in our view, one of the best Knowledge conferences we have attended.
Here are some of the biggest themes and takeaways we heard, saw, and gleaned from Knowledge 2023.
The RiseUp with ServiceNow program, which was initially unveiled in October of 2022, was a major focus of the keynote. RiseUp is a global initiative working to train one million people on the ServiceNow platform by next year.
This discussion, along with what we will get to next, showcase where the company is focusing on moving in the future. And it’s an encouraging message for those of us who are strong partners in the ecosystem.
ServiceNow has historically become entrenched in the battle of business versus IT, often being pigeonholed in the IT group.
But the company spent time during its keynote address to reiterate that it is a platform for the entire enterprise. ServiceNow is striving to be a software company that can connect that divide between business and IT by bringing all areas of the business together under its suite of solutions.
One of the areas where this was discussed was in the government space. ServiceNow is modernizing state government services with one-stop-shop customer and constituent portals, which will leverage automated virtual-agent chatbots. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, a single constituent record allows full visibility into customer interaction history.
Another is with ITSM, where ServiceNow is focusing on bridging the gap between IT Service and Operations and having them work together for a purpose-built workspace that ServiceNow will be calling Service Operations.
ServiceNow made sure to call out that it has been incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) for years now. And as AI is arguably the most talked about aspect of business – and culture – of course it was a focal point of Knowledge. ServiceNow is looking at integrations with OpenAI and AzureAI to drive efficiency within its platforms.
One area where this is taking place already is in Now Assist. The vision, using generative AI, is fascinating. The chat interface provides users with a way to easily request new reports and charts and drag them to their dashboards. The idea is that users will be able to request a task and AI will create the flow needed to do it. Users can then activate the flow and submit it for deployment. Or they could request that a new app be built and Now Assist will use AI to ask all the questions needed to create the app. Then it can be modified using Now Assist in conversational mode to tweak it to their liking.
We’re biased, but one of our favorite aspects of the conference was seeing all of the coverage around the work we’ve done with our client USDA. Not only were we able to demonstrate how we used Automation Engine to make the USDA’s electronic Warehouse & Commodity Management Division system (eWCMD) more efficient, and the USDA also took the stage to talk about its hyper-automation journey using ServiceNow.
Are you back home from Knowledge with an overflow of ideas and strategies but unsure what to do with them? The right partner can help you bring these strategies to life, and we’re ready to help.
Isaac Torkelson, Director of ServiceNow Delivery; Joe Walters, ServiceNow Architect; and Brian Prosser, SVP of Business Development, all contributed to this article.