Helping to meet the hybrid work challenge

ServiceNow has introduced the Now Platform Rome release. The latest version of the Now Platform delivers hundreds of innovations designed to empower organisations to adapt to the hybrid work era – evolving business models, managing the employee fatigue crisis, and scaling automation and app development across the enterprise.  

With a customer base representing nearly 80% of the Fortune 500, ServiceNow helps organisations across industries and geographies meet the challenges and opportunities of a new world of work. As the global economy expands at its strongest post-recession pace in 80 years, the Now Platform Rome release gives organizations the tools they need to quickly create agile work environments, deliver compelling customer and employee experiences, and accelerate innovation, so they can thrive in a new economy.  

“The rapid onset of hybrid work has accelerated the digital imperative and forever changed 21st century business models,” said Chirantan “CJ” Desai, chief product and engineering officer at ServiceNow. “Our customers need digital platforms that enable seamless, compelling employee and customer experiences in any environment, and help them stay agile, resilient, and productive. With our latest release, ServiceNow is workflowing solutions to help businesses navigate work moments that matter in a new economy.” 

Reducing employee fatigue with simple, engaging experiences  

With the Now Platform Rome release, new employee-focused solutions delivered via a unified employee experience platform allow organizations to create simple, engaging employee experiences from anywhere, so employees can navigate work moments that matter with ease and confidence. New and enhanced solutions include:  

• Employee Center serves as the digital command center for the hybrid workforce. It provides a single, connected interface for employees to quickly and easily find personalised information, complete tasks, get help and request services across departments – including IT, HR, facilities, procurement, and legal – all in one place. Employee Center reduces the time it takes employees to look for help and reduces application fatigue by integrating necessary information in one place. Organisations can easily curate information and services into dynamic, personalised topic pages that make it easy for employees to find the answers they need. Employee Center will also integrate with Microsoft Teams to meet employees where they are. 

• Employee Journey Management guides employees through the moments that matter with connected experiences for cross-departmental journeys like onboarding, work transitions, and offboarding. It also empowers HR teams and managers to personalise resources, plans, and needs – all on the same platform. 

In today’s increasingly challenging talent environment – 3.6 million Americans quit their jobs in May 2021 alone, with fatigue a likely factor of departures – digital transformation is no longer only a driver of growth and productivity. It is an imperative to help employees find better balance in the hybrid world of work and keep them creative, productive, and engaged. 

"In the transition to hybrid work, organisations will be tasked with making the holistic employee experience efficient, frictionless, and collaborative, which will in turn spur engagement and productivity increases," said Phil Carter, GVP and WW CIO Suite Tech Agenda Lead at IDC. "Simplifying the employee experience will be vital in achieving this, making sure employees have access to work solutions in one place, from anywhere, and in multiple ways. We anticipate that ServiceNow’s new solutions will offer more resources for employees in an effort to make their lives easier for a new era of work." 

Accelerating automation across the entire enterprise  

The shift to hybrid work, compounded by widening talent shortages, are accelerating automation across the enterprise. Automation at scale will be an imperative for 21st century businesses to alleviate employees from managing mundane tasks and free them up to focus on projects that drive business value. 

With the Now Platform Rome release, ServiceNow brings powerful new AI and automation capabilities that empower IT teams to work smarter, simpler, and more efficiently from anywhere: 

• Automation Discovery identifies the top ten opportunities for automating work from more than 180 topics with ServiceNow applications, such as Virtual Agent, Auto Routing, and Agent Assist. 

• Health Log Analytics Enhancements helps detect issues before they occur and impact users, as well as automates issue resolution, by using ITOM Predictive AIOps. This extends ServiceNow ITOM Predictive AIOps – previously launched with the Now Platform Quebec release – and is built on Loom Systems’ innovative technology. 

Enabling rapid development of modern, on-the-go mobile experiences  

Every company is now a software company, reinventing and creating new business models with digital products and services. In the hybrid world of work, employees and customers need access to critical business apps from anywhere via mobile. 

To address the needs of an increasingly on-the-go workforce, ServiceNow is introducing Mobile App Builder, allowing developers to rapidly build and configure engaging mobile apps for iOS and Android with a single intuitive interface, enhanced functionality, and guided experiences. 

Creating seamless customer experiences that solve issues quickly 

Organizations must be able to scale service operations to deal with heightened customer expectations and requests, providing customer service agents and teams with the information they need to resolve customer requests quickly, from anywhere and on one platform.  

The Now Platform Rome release helps businesses across every industry solve issues fast and deliver better customer experiences, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty. The new Customer Service Playbooks: Focused Layout enhances the user experience and allows agents to resolve issues fast, so they can focus on key process tasks and data that drive better business outcomes. 

What customers and partners are saying about the Now Platform Rome release: 

"We use ServiceNow to provide twenty-first century services to citizens in the way that they need them today, especially post-COVID when digital customer service is key," said Joseph Cevetello, CIO, City of Santa Monica. 

“Our organization continues to drive greater agility, while simplifying and standardising workflows across the globe to offer 350,000+ employees a central place to access everything they need. The significant increase in hybrid work has only accelerated the need to address complex business processes. Employee onboarding and return to workplace are great examples of how the Now Platform is helping to transform our employee experience while providing tangible benefits,” said Stephen Mansfield, CIO Deloitte Americas. “ServiceNow is enabling us to consolidate siloed employee systems and processes, transforming work into digital workflows and creating great experiences for our people and for our clients, ensuring they too are delivering personalized experiences and keeping their employees connected across the enterprise.” 

“The new capabilities for monitoring our Instances Health have been instrumental in helping me identify discrepancies, issues and to enhance the awareness and how to follow ServiceNow best practices for our ServiceNow developers,” said Christian Ring, ServiceNow Technical Platform Architect at DnB Bank. “A task that previously took hours and involved a large amount of manual work on my part is now an automated process and a part of our developers' workflow. This enhances the quality for future implementations and strengthens our ServiceNow instances overall health. The Now Platform Rome release will give us additional opportunities to automate our development pipelines within ServiceNow, something that I’m very excited about.” 

“In the last few years, ServiceNow has become one of the main platforms to drive digital transformation and to consume digital processes at Mercedes-Benz,” said Mishel Podolskis, Head of the Mercedes-Benz ServiceNow Platform. “The user experience of our employees is of central importance for a goal oriented, efficient transformation. Employee Center will take us to a new level of evolution and allows employees a single view to consume a variety of company services.” 

“At Kiwibank, our purpose is to make Kiwi better off. We live this by focusing on creating insanely simple experiences for both our customers and our own employees. This can be complex with disparate systems and manual processes,” said Nathan Hopkins, Product Manager, Digital & Technology at Kiwibank. “We’re seeing significant value from the Now Platform as we continue to streamline, standardize and digitize processes across the organization, and are redistributing saved productivity minutes into higher value activities daily with ServiceNow. We’re looking forward to ServiceNow’s continued investment in Playbooks and our future use of these, especially in Customer Service Management to help drive growth, increase productivity and strengthen business resilience.” 

“The COVID-19 pandemic presented an enormous challenge and opportunity for SnapNurse. We are proud to provide greater access to education and COVID vaccines through our SnapClinics in underserved urban and rural communities in the U.S.,” said Cherie Kloss, founder and CEO of SnapNurse. “The ServiceNow Platform and ServiceNow Vaccine Administration Management solution has helped us manage scheduling, inventory and reporting of COVID vaccinations, ensuring the flow of data is secure, consistent, and up to date. We see ongoing value in the ServiceNow Platform to continue to deliver healthcare to citizens across the U.S.”