ServiceNow has had a busy week. Monday it announced the acquisition of MoveWorks, a front-end AI assistant that augments core CRM, HR and other key business processes. Today, the company announced the next phase in its agentic AI roadmap, wherein it is embedding more agentic AI capabilities into nearly every aspect of its platform. These agentic AI advancements are part of the company’s latest release dubbed Yokohama.
ServiceNow’s agentic AO story is all about workflow - which makes sense, as AI agents are essentially workflow ready applications that can perform tasks semi-autonomously or fully autonomously. The AI agents are weaved into the core workflow engine, and new tools have been added to better create and manage these agentic flows. The company’s AI Agent Studio enables the lo/no code creation of new AI agents. An AI Agent Orchestrator enables users to manage how the various agents and how they interact.
The Orchestrator is interesting as it not only enables the management of multi-agent flows for core Ai agents built inside ServiceNow, but the tool can also be used to track and manage multi-agent agentic flows between ServiceNow and other systems, such as an ERP or HR system.
“Our AI agents have the ability to connect to other systems. So, our ServiceNow platform is able to have integrations with any system in the enterprise. The same applies to our AI agents. So if you want to, as part of a flow, connect to Workday to submit a PTO request, or if you want to connect to JIRA to pull some information, we can do that. We actually do some of it with our existing early adopters. So…when we say [our AI agents] are able to access every corner of the enterprise, we mean it. We're launching more than 50 different integrations for our AI agents as part of the Yokahama release, and you're going to see more of that come in in the upcoming releases,” Dorit Zilbershot, ServiceNow VP of AI Experiences said in a recent analyst briefing.
The Moveworks deal adds significant AI tools to the ServiceNow portfolio. Namely, new front-end conversational AI assitants and AI-powered search that can streamline CRM use cases, but also expand the access and value of CRM insights to more individuals both inside and outside of a company. In short, the addition rounds out both ServiceNow’s AI strategy but also its deeper investments into the CRM space.
For ServiceNow users, the good news is that these AI advancements seem fairly seamless, presented as tools that can be accessed quickly and provide quick wins against any AI strategy. In addition, the Moveworks acquisition makes ServiceNow a tool that users should be advancing into their CRM initiatives in more ways than simply help desk and case management. The ability to leverage AI assistants and agentic flows to aid sales and order management means ServiceNow can augment legacy sales automation tools - allowing the company to coexist with Salesforce, oracle and others in the enterprise but still providing value for dollars spent.
And, it should be noted that ServiceNow is becoming a compelling choice for companies looking to standardize on a CRM platform. The company has built up its sales capabilities, and AI agents and the ease of building new workflows makes ServiceNow a modern, flexible choice for process automation around key sales and support processes. However, the marketing automation side of the equation is still light. It will be interesting to see how either agentic AI or another timely acquisition like the Moveworks deal moves the needle in this department.
