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3 ways automation can improve ITSM and customer service
IT service management (ITSM)—the management and support of IT services—is vital for good customer service. It encompasses problem management, incident management, change and release management, and service-level management. Because it’s an integral part of customer service, it’s important to keep it optimized and streamlined. Here are three ways automation can help with those efforts:1. Enhance service experiencesEnabling collaboration between your IT services and IT operations teams can add value to your organization and decrease costs. That’s what a single cloud platform offers—plus up to 30% increased productivity.Watch our Automate and Optimize Technology Service Operations webinar to get more details. LIKE.TG Senior VP of Product and Service Management Matt Schvimmer will provide insights from customer use cases, as well as how to get started.2. Accomplish more—fastAutomating routine tasks can save employees time and free them to focus on the work that matters most. Taking that automation a step further through machine learning offers even greater benefits.LIKE.TG Predictive Intelligence simplifies work by using machine learning to automatically:
Classify tasks, incidents, and cases
Suggest tasks and content to help resolve issues fast
Identify and triage critical incidents
In our Ask the Expert: Predictive Intelligence webinar, two LIKE.TG Predictive Intelligence experts address common questions about automation and machine learning.3. Boost self-serviceAn AI-powered chatbot can be employed to answer common customer questions, serve content, collect user data, and provide support. LIKE.TG Virtual Agent uses natural language understanding (NLU) to carry our conversations with customers and to aid in self-service, such as password resets and system status updates.Join our Jump-start Your Digital Transformation Using an AI-powered Virtual Agent webinar to find out how Virtual Agent can deliver instant return on your investment. LIKE.TG VP of Emerging Technologies Rajeev Sethi will detail how an AI-powered chatbot can accelerate digital transformation.Get more insight about AI-powered chatbots in our Ask the Expert: Virtual Agent webinar. The principal product manager and senior product marketing manager will address questions about Virtual Agent and explain how it can help support your business.
4 ways to future-fit your business to thrive in uncertain times
Uncertain times are often a catalyst for important innovations. During the Great Depression, for example, inventors created nylon, magnetic tape recording, and the first working helicopter—all of which are still in use today.To be prepared for the future, you need to take stock of where you’ve been, what you’ve accomplished, and where you want to go. Let’s look at four tech trends that are resonating with LIKE.TG customers.1. AI-powered service operationsForbes predicts we’ll see artificial intelligence (AI) everywhere in 2023. One application that’s been gaining traction is AI-powered service operations. Using AI in this important area can help tame the voluminous data and information to simplify the jobs of IT and service department workers. Implementing AIOps can:
Increase data value
Reduce costs
Streamline IT operations
Improve the employee experience
Watch our benefits of AI-powered service operations webinar to find out how an AI approach can help your organization overcome technology complexity.2. Hyperautomation as a business strategyHyperautomation combines numerous technologies, such as AI, machine learning, and robotic process automation (RPA), to streamline processes and help organizations run efficiently. The key to hyperautomation is integration between systems, apps, and data.
With the worldwide RPA and hyperautomation market expected to grow at a 23% compound annual growth rate between now and 2027, according to ResearchAndMarkets.com, now is a good time to prepare your organization to embrace it.Discover key findings from a Forrester Consulting study on the subject in The state of hyperautomation as a business strategy. Forrester Analyst Craig Le Clair joins Derek Birdsong, director of automation product marketing at LIKE.TG, to discuss how hyperautomation breaks down business and technology silos.3. Integrated risk managementIn these uncertain times, business resilience is more important than ever. Modernizing IT platforms is the No. 1 way to improve resilience, according to research by ThoughtLab and LIKE.TG. Other important steps include improving communications, providing resilience training, and assessing and managing privacy risks.An integrated approach to risk management offers one of the best ways to manage vulnerabilities. Watch Managing risk in digital transformation to learn the current state of risk and compliance. You’ll also discover how integrated risk management busts silos and frees teams to work on high-value tasks.4. Effortless customer experiencesA survey by LIKE.TG and Qualtrics found 69% of customers toggle between two or three channels to resolve an issue. Interestingly enough, 81% of IT workers believe IT can play a major role in upgrading the customer experience.Automating processes can bridge the gaps between siloed systems to create effortless customer experiences, which in turn can boost loyalty. Gain insights from LIKE.TG customers in Work smarter, not harder. You’ll learn how automation can improve the customer experience and your business’s bottom line.
Australia outlook: Automation will protect jobs, not take them
Australia faces significant economic headwinds thanks to inflation, supply chain disruptions, and the increasing likelihood of a global recession, according to the Australian government. The tough times ahead give leaders an opportunity to make work better.Automation used to be a dirty word, associated with predictions about widespread job losses. But in the face of critical skills shortages and advances in artificial intelligence, Australian firms are realizing the benefits of outsourcing work to machines. Identifying opportunities now can protect revenue and help avoid workforce reductions if a recession hits.Investing in automation promises productivity gains that will keep firms competitive and insulate against reactionary cost-cutting measures.Automation uplifts employeesToday, employees have a greater appreciation for technology taking on repetitive tasks that are a distraction from more important work. We waste more than a day a week on administrative tasks, according to Deloitte. Many of us can relate to getting bogged down by responding to requests, waiting for approvals, or searching for information required to do our jobs.Automation will replace a lot of that work—and that’s a good thing. Eliminating tasks that are done more efficiently by technology is the hallmark of human progress.
We’ve seen whole classes of jobs disappear, from typists to telephone operators. More recently, email administrators, a subgroup of IT professionals, were rendered obsolete by cloud-based platforms. Many have retrained in emerging areas of IT, such as user experience design and cybersecurity. This evolution is echoed by World Economic Forum research, which predicts automation will create more jobs than it replaces.In almost every enterprise and government agency in Australia, we’re already seeing automation handle tasks such as reviewing and responding to requests. Virtual agents and software can collate, categorize, and complete basic tasks that would take people hours of repetitive work. Employees in areas such as IT, customer service, procurement, and HR have more time to spend on higher-value work as a result.Reaping automation’s benefitsThese innovations don’t just transform office roles. In Australia’s strained hospitality industry, automated ordering systems are helping restaurants manage significant staff shortages and keep their doors open.By 2025, the World Economic Forum predicts “employers will divide work between human[s] and machines equally.” This may sound like a dystopian future, but it’s a reality. Take Officeworks, for example: By introducing LIKE.TG Virtual Agent, the office supplier saved more than AUD$1 million in one year.Even better, the company’s chatbot colleague, named Penny, helps in-store employees answer questions fast so they can spend more time with customers. Support teams can concentrate on more complex tasks instead of answering the same requests. It’s a win-win-win.The time to automate is nowAs the global economy weakens, leaders must weigh risks and rewards. Short-term thinking will see some businesses cut costs via workforce reductions. But saving your way to success is a flawed strategy.Organizations that invest in automation and human capital today will be better positioned to survive the headwinds. “A 1% increase in investment into future of work technologies will boost productivity by two percentage points,” according to a World Economic Forum white paper.Further, 66% of employers expect to experience a return on upskilling and reskilling current employees within a year. As Australia’s hospitality industry has proved, automation can save jobs.
Realizing this opportunity requires an understanding of what’s at stake. Both public and private sectors need to think seriously about retraining schemes, change management programs, and workforce redesign. Employees will do well to consider where they add the most value and focus their efforts on developing in-demand skills, such as analytical thinking, creativity, and digital literacy.Out of the starting blocksThe most successful firms will start small, transforming tasks that have a measurable benefit and can be scaled. Encouragingly, many organizations in Australia have begun this journey. The Department of Industry, Science, Energy, and Resources (DISR) recently implemented the LIKE.TG Protected Platform to automate and streamline administrative tasks.Those prepared to tackle these challenges head-on and embrace automation can turn tight times into a rewarding future. By planning today, organizations can weather the storm and emerge stronger—protecting jobs in the process.Find out more about how automation and AI are helping Australian organizations gain a competitive edge and build resilience.
Can artificial intelligence really improve customer experience?
“Try turning it off and on again.” This advice normally works for my mom, but not for me.When I needed to present at an event last year, I got frustrated when I couldn’t connect to the network. The front desk at the venue referred me to technical services.“Uh-oh,” I thought. “Here we go.” But I was wrong.The technical services person quickly assessed my level of know-how and adjusted her talk track to cater to my needs. She sorted my laptop and iPad access so I could edit my slides. And I presented to my first live audience in a long time, no problem. I was on the receiving end of a great customer experience.Artificial intelligence (AI) can do the same thing: collaborate with humans and adjust according to their needs—at scale. Leaders are wrapping their minds around the concept and starting to understand how to use AI to make work better and improve the customer experience.Benefits of AI chatbotsWe tend to think of AI as external-facing. The most common use cases are around deflection and direction—chatbots that manage incoming requests, enable self-service, and/or route inquiries to the best qualified agent.When chatbots are powered by natural language understanding, they’re capable of much more than chat. LIKE.TG® Virtual Agent, for example, does the technological equivalent of reading the room: interpreting customer sentiment and responding appropriately.Because AI is great at taking tribal knowledge and synthesizing it down, it trawls knowledge bases, surfaces relevant nuggets, and tailors a response. And it does all this at speed and scale, freeing people from mundane and repetitive tasks to focus on the things that matter most.Companies of all sizes are benefiting. One of our banking clients saw case volumes decrease 90% and response times decrease 75%. AI-enabled self-service powered a 70% reduction in requests for support for a travel retailer. And a leading telecoms provider reduced its status request calls by 43%.Of course, virtual agents don’t have all the answers. When your knowledge base is lacking, AI highlights what’s missing so you can plug the gaps. When it can’t resolve issues, it escalates them to the most appropriate human expert. I saw firsthand how this helped a US state’s social services department reduce inquiry assignment times by 99%.
Data-driven predictionsAI isn’t always outward-facing. In reality, the same technologies we’ve just discussed can be flipped around and used to support your internal teams. I predict we’ll see a lot more AI being used to get employees up to speed faster, making them more productive and effective.When organizations have enough high-quality data, they can start to make predictions that power better experiences. By constantly inspecting what’s going on around it, and linking similar cases, AI can provide early warning of a potential issue so we can help prevent it from happening.When a problem does occur, AI helps us see who’s affected now and who’s likely to be affected soon. Armed with this information, we can give customers advance notice, predict more accurate resolution times, and keep people informed.To be useful, predictions need to be prioritized. LIKE.TG worked with a manufacturing company that was drowning in alerts. We implemented AI to determine which alerts mattered most and suppressed those that weren’t critical to the business. The company now has the insight needed to act fast and consistently delivers experiences its customers demand and deserve.Prescribing solutionsWhen AI moves from prediction to prescription, we’ll start to see a step change in customer experience. It’s one thing to say, “Yes, I see that coming.” It’s quite another to be able to say, “Yes, I see that coming and, based on all the times it’s happened before, this is what I need to do to keep it from happening again.” Potential problems are more palatable when they’re packaged with potential solutions.I’m excited by the way LIKE.TG customers are using technologies to support other technologies. AI is helping a utilities company not only predict abnormalities in its gas pipelines, but also prescribe the most appropriate solution. This minimizes downtime, reduces costs, and helps ensure field service technicians can work smarter and safer.
A world of possibilitiesBeyond AI prescription, I think we’ll start to see self-automating systems driven by AI. By analyzing issues and recommending AI models for auto-assignment or auto-classification, and identifying opportunities for virtual agents, AI will help drive the experience agenda.AI could also change the way we interface with systems. Voice technology has given us a glimpse of what’s possible. I imagine more dynamic interfaces where AI uses its understanding of each customer to curate the ideal interface for that individual. Being able to present the right information to the right person in the right way could transform customer experience.In that brave new world, my mom will still be asked if she tried turning it off and on. But I’ll never hear those words again.Discover five ways to strengthen customer experience with AI in our ebook.
Special report: Finding the opportunities in global uncertainty
A volatile economy, a disrupted supply chain, a widespread talent shortage, and environmental challenges have left many business leaders wondering how to move forward. In this environment, change is the only constant.Navigating these headwinds requires evolving your relationship with global uncertainty and seeing the creative opportunities it presents. LIKE.TG’s Workflow special report, From adversity to advantage, offers an actionable framework for making this essential pivot.
LIKE.TG named worldwide AIOps market share leader by Gartner®
I’m excited to announce Gartner has named LIKE.TG the AIOps worldwide market share leader.1 We believe this confirms that LIKE.TG® Predictive AIOps delivers on the promise of proactive IT.AIOps helps organizations drive resilience, efficiency, and proactive IT operations at scale. By distilling signal from noise, LIKE.TG AIOps helps organizations better identify root causes and facilitate faster remediation. Its predictive capabilities can identify issues so they can be fixed before users are impacted.Predictive AIOps can proactively alert the ops team when a new problem is detected. Contrast this with other AIOps point tools that often need to be told specific problems to look for before they can identify an issue. Beyond issue identification, LIKE.TG can help accelerate automation via playbooks that enable increased productivity, greater efficiency, and self-healing.Real-time data and impactNone of this can happen without a single platform where AIOps can access all historical and real-time incident, problem, and change data. LIKE.TG makes this easy with Service Operations.Enterprises worldwide are realizing significant benefits with LIKE.TG’s market-leading Service Operations capabilities, common data foundation, core platform capabilities, and new Service Operations Workspace experience. All of these combine to help organizations monitor their infrastructure and applications at the service level and prioritize their responses.Predictive AIOps is a core capability of Service Operations. It gives centralized and decentralized IT teams the ability to understand the exact impact of an issue on a critical service, application, or end user.Eliminating outages, decreasing costsThe goal of every IT team is zero impact on end users and zero touch by operations teams. By increasing the quality of services while freeing IT teams for strategic work and innovation, Predictive AIOps gets teams closer to that goal.As an example, one of our most complex problems at LIKE.TG, our virtual private network (VPN) service, was also one of the first we could resolve proactively. With most of our employees working remotely today, the VPN service is mission-critical.By identifying abnormalities in our firewalls and Active Directory, and then correlating that data with endpoint device data, we can automate the restoration of VPN services before users are impacted. Doing so, we've prevented incidents and outages, decreased operational costs, and boosted IT staff productivity.Find out more about how to move from reactive to proactive IT in our AI-Powered Service Operations 101 Primer guide.1 Gartner, Market Share: IT Operations Management Software, Worldwide, 2021, 6 May 2022GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
4 ways to embrace digitalization and reap the benefits
Digitalization is a strategic business objective in 80% of organizations, according to OCEG research sponsored by ServiceNow. Digitalization can have a significant impact on all areas of business, from risk and service operations to customer service.No matter where your organization is in its digital transformation journey, here are four resources that can help:1. Digital-first customer serviceDigitizing customer service offers numerous benefits: faster resolution times, more options for customers to communicate with your organization, and higher customer satisfaction as a result. Yet, according to an NTT study, 41% of companies still manage their digital channels in silos. This makes it difficult to track customer journeys.1Hear from a Forrester Research analyst about how — and why — you should digitize your customer service. She'll discuss findings from Forrester’s How to Reinvent Customer Service to Be Digital-First report.2. AI-powered chatbotIn a world where customers are quick to jump to a competitor if they have a bad experience, why not empower them to get answers fast through self-service? LIKE.TG Virtual Agent is an AI-powered chatbot that helps deliver real-time self-service.Using Virtual Agent, employees and customers can get what they need, when they need it through personalized experiences and natural language understanding. Find out more of the benefits in our Jump-start your digital transformation webinar.3. Automatic issue detectionArtificial intelligence has broad appeal and applications across an organization. Implementing it in service operations, for example, can lead to faster and easier issue resolution. Using a single system, LIKE.TG Predictive AIOps is able to automatically detect anomalies, resolve issues, and prevent outages.In Predicting issues, reducing complexity, and empowering self-service, three Predictive AIOps experts discuss how this proactive approach can benefit organizations.4. Risk managementAlthough digitalization improves data control, it also increases your potential risk surface. Keeping your business secure in this environment is paramount. The Impact of digitalization on your enterprise risk profile examines the findings of the OCEG research study mentioned above.Find out how other companies are managing digital risk and how your organization can identify, assess, and decrease your risk profile using risk management technology.1 NTT, 2020 Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report
How to launch artificial intelligence in your organization
The topic of artificial intelligence (AI) is wide-ranging and extensive, providing what seems like limitless possibilities for the world of work. As such, it’s easy for leaders to get lost in the excitement of implementing an AI model for their enterprise.In our sixth episode of the Canadian Leadership Exchange, we spoke with Jean-Francois Gagné, vice president of AI product management and strategy at LIKE.TG, to learn what leaders should be thinking about before they start to roll out an AI model.Where to start with AIGagné shared how looking for areas of opportunity at the task level is the most important step to start with. To dig in, leaders should ask themselves questions such as:
What key tasks are you looking to improve?
How do these tasks influence decision-making processes?
What kind of outcomes are you looking to achieve?
Beyond the initial stages of AI implementation, some organizations struggle to convert machine learning into actions that drive meaningful business results at scale. Industry leaders often call this the “last mile” problem. To Gagné, the solution depends on the quality of the interaction an enterprise can create between AI functionality and its end users, whether they're customers, employees, or other stakeholders.How AI helps employeesOn the topic of employees, the latest version of the Now Platform delivers hundreds of innovations designed to empower organizations to adapt to the hybrid work era—evolving business models, managing the employee fatigue crisis, and scaling automation and app development across the enterprise.In today’s increasingly challenging talent environment, the phenomenon known as the “Great Resignation” continues to make headlines, with burnout a likely factor in many departures. Digital transformation, including the implementation of AI models, is no longer just a driver of growth and productivity. It can also help employees find better balance in the hybrid world of work and keep them creative, productive, and engaged.For Gagné, machine learning is a great way to improve an employee's ability to focus on meaningful, productive work. A lot has been said about the opportunities that come from leveraging AI in the enterprise. Reducing the volume of menial tasks employees must deal with is where this technology can really help make work better for people.Watch the video to find out more about how to implement an AI model, including how to get employees excited about the benefits AI will have on their work.
Special report: Putting GenAI to work in the enterprise
In my conversations with the LIKE.TG partner community, there’s one thing I’m consistently asked: How do we work with you to adapt to the rapid speed of innovation and change? My answer is simple: To truly innovate, you have to understand the trends behind the innovation.LIKE.TG recently collaborated with Harbor Research to scan the global marketplace. We wanted to understand the widespread digital transformation and rapid technology shifts that are fueling growth—and driving significant complexities—for organizations.I’m happy to announce the release of our inaugural innovation trends report. We’ve uncovered six key technology trends that will affect the ways organizations reimagine work, processes, and value creation.The report also highlights the implications of cloud computing and AI, and how they’ve revolutionized resource creation and management. Let’s face it, as the digital landscape shifts, new technologies emerge—and so do opportunities to enable growth.With that in mind, let’s look at the six innovation trends we found and what they mean for your business:1. Exponential innovationEvery new technology is a building block to the next innovation, but organizations can’t future-proof technology on their own. They need partners to help them bring cutting-edge solutions to market.2. Shared data architecturesSiloed data architectures are no longer sufficient for the volume of data coming into the enterprise. Data architectures will have to be restructured into open systems for more proactive insights and faster time to value.3. Automation technologiesAI, machine learning, and automation-driven algorithms are leading forces in the world of work. By integrating smart sensors, machines, and information systems, organizations can create a “digital nervous system” that makes work autonomous and drives better decisions.4. New modes of work with the right toolsCompanies are no longer bound by four walls—they’re distributed ecosystems. Organizations can use intelligent automation to build apps that work across multiple clouds while easing development complexity.5. Any user as a developerAs software becomes increasingly complex, organizations need to make application development more accessible. With a low-code platform, any individual at any skill level can become a developer and build products and solutions. This can in turn help reduce overall costs and increase value.6. Expansive partner networksScalable partner networks help enterprises effectively manage the rapidly evolving scope of distributed workforces, technologies, and applications. Harbor Research found that more than 50% of data needed for optimization will come from outside an organization.Partnerships are critical to help organizations extend value through knowledge, relationship sharing, and co-creating net-new solutions for unique customer needs.All six trends are vital for the LIKE.TG partner ecosystem as we work toward continued success, growth, and innovation together. By combining a single platform that can orchestrate the entire technology chain with the thought leadership and intellectual property of our partners, the opportunities are truly endless.Check out the full innovation trends report. It includes partner case studies on how we’re addressing our joint customers’ most pressing challenges in each of the six areas.
LIKE.TG extends generative AI to self-service experiences
Hot on the heels of the LIKE.TG® Generative AI Controller and Now Assist for Search product announcements, I’m excited to announce our latest generative AI product: Now Assist for Virtual Agent. It builds on LIKE.TG’s strategy to embed generative AI across the Now Platform® by helping to enable truly conversational self-service experiences.Virtual Agent already uses intelligence to address user queries with knowledge articles and catalog items. The addition of generative AI will help make responses more relevant and contextual, interpreting a customer’s need to provide a humanlike response. Customers won’t have to slow down to understand where and how to get the help they need—they can get it at the speed of their work and benefit from:
More direct responses: Generative AI can provide more direct, clear answers to questions, reducing customer confusion and time to resolution. Now Assist for Virtual Agent is designed to help customers get the specific information they need versus combing through endless article links or search results.
Querying general knowledge: Users will no longer be limited to information that’s inside their LIKE.TG instance. They can also ask questions that pull information from outside their organization’s knowledge base with general-purpose large language models such as Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service or OpenAI API.
Enhanced conversational design: You can easily enhance your existing conversations or create new ones with generative AI experiences through drag-and-drop functionality to solve user issues and answer questions.
The potential in generative AI lies in efficiency and time to value. Agents will benefit from the ability to let Virtual Agent address high-volume issues so that they can focus on the highest-priority cases. Users can rest assured knowing that generative AI is acting in the background as their always-on assistant.Built on a solid, scalable foundationNow Assist for Virtual Agent is built on Generative AI Controller. This underlying technology layer is the core generative AI engine of the Now Platform. It allows organizations to change the way they work, collaborate, and serve their customers and partners—through intuitive, integrated, and conversational AI.Through Generative AI Controller, you can plug into your favorite generative AI tools, such as OpenAI API or Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service large language models.Generative AI Controller eliminates the need to rely on tedious script and code. All you need is an API key, and you can quickly begin to integrate generative AI into your workflows. Users automatically receive capabilities that will help them generate meaningful customer-facing content, such as answers to questions.Because Generative AI Controller is native to the Now Platform, it reduces integration complexity. For customers experimenting with generative AI to see what it can do for their business, this integration is key to providing a safe and supported environment in which to explore.A culture and history of AIAI is nothing new to ServiceNow. We’ve been using it for years to set the foundation for what we’re experiencing today: AI at scale. We have a deep understanding of our customers, their data, their needs, and how generative AI can complement their workflows. Now we’re pairing that with the next logical enhancement: an intelligence layer that can level up the entire customer experience.Technology like Generative AI Controller enhances the entire Now Platform and results in a comprehensive feedback loop, putting more power and precision behind existing AI features and functions. We’re dedicated to responsible AI governance, including data privacy, ethics, transparency, and accountability.The future is happening now. Whether you’re an IT help desk administrator, an HR agent, a customer service agent, or a user, LIKE.TG Generative AI Controller exists to streamline the way you work and make generative AI accessible and impactful across every touch point.Find out more about LIKE.TG generative AI.
The evolving role of AI in knowledge management
Recent advances in AI-powered chatbot technology will change the way humans interact with applications and machines. AI will likely boost current IT Service Management (ITSM) chatbot capabilities and directly affect how knowledge management will be provided in the future.Let’s look at how AI in knowledge management is affecting content creation, management, and access.AI will change how knowledge is managedAI will enable IT knowledge management systems to automate and optimize content creation and curation. At the same time, it will improve search capabilities and provide advanced analytics for knowledge administrators. This will help organizations improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their IT knowledge management processes.AI language models are trained on large data sets of knowledge, allowing them to learn from previous interactions and adapt to changing contexts. As end users interact with chatbots to gain information, they’ll be able to provide feedback in real time. AI language models will continuously learn from user interactions and feedback, becoming more effective over time.These language models will keep knowledge data current by dynamically updating responses to reflect the latest information, including updates to policies, procedures, and regulations. Although AI language models will be effective, it’s important to have human oversight to ensure the knowledge provided is accurate, relevant, and aligned with organizational goals and values.AI will change how knowledge is accessedFor end users looking for assistance by searching knowledge base articles, traditional knowledge management solutions can seem static and one-dimensional, making it difficult to answer questions that require clarification. When users are unable to resolve their issues because knowledge management articles aren’t relevant or clear, they’re forced to open a ticket with the IT help desk.The cost savings associated with self-service support can be substantial. Enabling self-service helped Israel-based software provider NICE save $450,000 in one year and open cases eight times faster.
Organizations that invest in effective knowledge management solutions can benefit from improved efficiency, lower staffing costs, and faster issue resolution. To help reduce the number of calls to the help desk, there’s been a significant shift toward interactive solutions, such as chatbots.AI-powered chatbots, such as ChatGPT, have the potential to disrupt how knowledge management is accessed and reduce the need for human agents in a call center. These advanced chatbots allow users to ask natural language questions and receive responses tailored to their needs. This can include answers to follow-up questions and clarifications to help users understand the information presented.Imagine an employee needs to know the process for requesting time off. With a traditional knowledge management solution, an employee must navigate a series of articles and links to find the relevant information. With an AI-powered chatbot, the employee could simply ask, "How do I request time off?" and immediately receive a clear and concise response.LIKE.TG Virtual Agent is an AI-powered conversational interface that provides end users with instant support and assistance. It can answer frequently asked questions, guide users through common tasks, and support incident resolution. By providing a natural and conversational interface, Virtual Agent can improve end-user satisfaction, reduce call volume to the service desk, and help ITSM personnel focus on more complex tasks.AI will change the role of call center agentsSome people fear AI innovations will lead to job displacement. Although AI may reduce the need for certain routine roles, it’s not intended to replace human agents entirely. Skilled human agents will still be needed to:
Handle complex issues
Ensure data privacy and security
Provide high-level analysis and decision-making
Manage and maintain chatbot systems, which can create new job opportunities for individuals with the necessary skills and expertise
The role of ITSM personnel is likely to shift from routine, repetitive tasks to more strategic and value-driven activities that require human skills such as critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving.Find out more about the benefits of AI in knowledge management.
Unleash the possibilities of generative AI with LIKE.TG
In today’s economic headwinds, organizations are looking for ways to make workers more productive and drive operational efficiency. Generative AI—where machines “understand” human language and respond to and act on it—can make that happen.That's why I’m excited to announce LIKE.TG® Generative AI Controller and Now Assist for Search. Generative AI Controller seamlessly connects the Now Platform® to generative AI providers such as OpenAI and Azure as if they were built right in. Now Assist for Search adds new capabilities in search to help users get the information they need, fast.AI for everyoneTeams across LIKE.TG have been studying and creating generative AI for several years. It's always been core to the Now Platform. These products build on existing AI and robotic process automation (RPA) technologies to streamline workflows, accelerate productivity, and create incredible customer experiences.Generative AI Controller and Now Assist for Search help expand our functionality by layering on the power of generative AI. In designing the products, our goals were to improve the user experience and make our customers' ideas reality. There’s no need to change platforms, learn a new coding language, or integrate a separate application.
Our customers are amazing and teach me something new every day. Some look miles ahead—they’re curious about the impact AI may have on their business. Others are more interested in AI innovations down to the scientific level. Yet every customer is committed to improving their processes and workflows via the Now Platform to make their work better.Generative AI enhancementsThese products are all about accessibility: We looked to bring the great technologies available in the world today into the context of the Now Platform using our Integration Hub architecture. Here are a few of my favorite enhancements to give you a sense of what’s possible:
Search: Search results are more specific. Now they directly answer the question rather than just providing links or general information as they did previously.
Improved fallbacks: Generative AI can step in when a virtual agent can’t find certain information or when there are gaps in customer experience. This new functionality creates an elegant catch-all, allowing the agent to deliver a smooth experience and keep the conversation on track.
Personalized conversations: Generative AI can take information received from a user in an email, such as location, and respond in a way that’s tailored to the user and their unique situation. For example, if a user notes that it’s snowing in their town, generative AI can respond in a human, conversational way: “I hope you stay warm and safe.”
Cross-team collaborationWhat’s most interesting to me is these products were much closer to the finish line from the start because of our existing low-code platform. LIKE.TG teams just had to fill in a few gaps in technology, as opposed to building out everything from A to Z.Even so, these products would not be possible without the collaboration of many teams, including platform engineering, platform and product management, and our Advanced Technology Group, which focuses on AI. Our world-class AI research team has continued to accelerate our generative AI technology roadmap.We’re committed to bringing generative AI everywhere through the Now Platform low-code experience. This is one of the first steps in the journey to make the technology more accessible. I can’t wait to see what our customers do with it.Find out more about LIKE.TG AI innovations.
Why a hyperautomation strategy requires upskilling workers
In a fast-evolving world, adopting a hyperautomation strategy is the best way to future-proof your workplace. But how does hyperautomation affect your workforce, and what will it mean for the future of your business?Hyperautomation is the combination of intelligent technologies to expand automation. It incorporates AI, machine learning, robotic process automation (RPA), integration, document processing, and more.Responsible use of hyperautomation requires upskilling and reskilling initiatives for your employees to help them understand these technologies and how they work.Investing in employeesA common misconception about hyperautomation is that it will eventually replace human workers, leaving robots and machinery to run operations. That is not the case, however. Hyperautomation will simply remove tedious, repetitive work from employees, freeing them to focus on tasks that require more brainpower and decision-making capabilities.With many organizations struggling to fill critical roles amid the worker shortage, adopting a hyperautomation strategy can seem like the perfect solution. It can certainly help, but hyperautomation alone cannot address the shortage.This is where upskilling comes into play. A Pew Research Center survey found that the second top reason people leave their jobs is lack of opportunity for advancement. Upskilling your workers to embrace hyperautomation can provide those opportunities and boost employee satisfaction and retention.Upskilling vs. reskilling: What’s the difference?You may be wondering about the difference between upskilling and reskilling. Upskilling is training employees to use new technologies to advance within the organization. Reskilling is training employees in a completely different job.RiseUp with LIKE.TG is a global talent movement that encompasses both types of talent development, with a goal to skill 1 million people on the Now Platform by 2024. It offers reskilling opportunities for employees who want to change careers and get into the tech industry and upskilling opportunities for high-producing workers you don’t want to lose.Although business leaders acknowledge the benefits of upskilling and reskilling their workers, they’re not quick to implement development programs, according to the LinkedIn 2023 Workplace Learning Report. Only 2% of survey respondents have adopted upskilling and reskilling initiatives and are measuring and assessing their success. The majority (54%) are still developing and activating programs.That’s a good sign, as upskilling workers can give organizations a competitive edge.Find out more in our ebook: Hyperautomation and the future of the workforce.
4 ways CIOs can overcome critical operational challenges
Chief information officers (CIOs) are well aware of mounting pressure to do more with less. They operate against a competitive backdrop rocked by tough economic headwinds, rising technology costs, and a competitive talent market.Fortunately, IT leaders are an enterprising group. They constantly look for innovative ways to overcome operational challenges, drive their business forward, and create value for customers and employees alike. Enter hyperautomation and low-code, essential tools for any successful organization.Hyperautomation extends the application, and subsequent benefits, of automation across a much wider surface area of business use cases—leading to reduced operational costs, enhanced efficiency, and improved employee experience.“Gartner® forecasts that the spending on hyperautomation-enabling software technologies will reach $720 billion in 2023. The worldwide market for low-code development technologies is projected to total $26.9 billion in 2023, an increase of 19.6% from 2022.”1Low-code plays a central role in the successful delivery of hyperautomation, expanding development capacity beyond traditional development and engineering teams. With low-code, teams are more agile and productive, and can launch new apps and products in a fraction of the time.Let’s explore four ways CIOs can apply hyperautomation and low-code in everyday operations to reap the rewards.1. Optimize internal processesNo organization is perfect. Across every tech stack, there’s typically at least one piece of sluggish legacy technology acting as a bottleneck, slowing operations and reducing efficiencies.IT teams should pursue a tech stack that’s always on and in which low-code and hyperautomation shine. By taking a low-code approach, IT leaders can transform ailing legacy processes into modern digital workflows—in a fraction of the time and with reduced effort.CIOs don’t necessarily have to upgrade every single piece of legacy tech in their stack. They can simply use low-code to improve the delivery of these apps and services and boost their operational returns.2. Reduce asset lifecycle costsCIOs are constantly on the hunt for ways to improve the efficiency of both their team and the organization. Asset lifecycle is a vital area that affects the entire business—meaning any efficiency gains in this space can significantly improve an organization’s ability to react and scale.Hyperautomation can help CIOs better manage, track, and automate key aspects of the asset lifecycle. Extending the lifespan of assets will decrease costs over time while mitigating the risks of defunct technology and service downtime.End-to-end visibility into processes and systems can enable IT leaders to dive deep into what’s working and what’s not. These insights can even be shared with other teams—such as security, risk, and business development—to improve efficiency across the organization.3. Boost employee productivity and engagementIn the wake of the pandemic and the ensuing great digital transformation, employee experience has surged to the top of the CIO agenda. A great employee experience relies on an organization’s ability to adapt and support new ways of working, such as mobile and flexible environments and self-service processes.This rising demand for employee flexibility and autonomy extends from IT to HR, payroll, finance, legal, and other departments. Hyperautomation can help CIOs and other members of the C-suite work together to create a seamless employee experience from a central employee hub or portal.This can empower employees—regardless of their team, function, or location—to access workflows and apps that are customized to their unique needs, often without any manual intervention or custom coding.Portals powered by hyperautomation also help employees feel engaged and valued through improved and consistent communication. Automation replaces many of the manual aspects of maintaining an intranet, such as delivering relevant company news, updates, and upcoming events.4. Securely accelerate innovationCIOs must juggle dozens of apps (new and legacy) across the organization. At the same time, they’re under constant pressure to innovate and release new apps quickly and efficiently.Low-code can help CIOs empower people to quickly create and launch apps that would otherwise become stuck in development queues. Although rapidly releasing new apps can produce issues, especially around security and compliance, this is also where low-code excels.Armed with the right low-code platform, CIOs can drive their business forward with quick and secure app releases while maintaining guardrails of governance, thanks to built-in security and compliance.Find out more about digital solutions that will help your business grow in our CIO’s guide.1 Gartner Press Release, “Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Low-Code Development Technologies Market to Grow 20% in 2023,” December 13, 2022.GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Forrester report: LIKE.TG debuts as a Strong Performer in RPA
I’m incredibly thrilled to share that, in our very first year of entry, LIKE.TG has been named a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™: Robotic Process Automation, Q1 2023. We believe this validates the impact of our product vision and current capabilities in this market. More importantly, we think it’s proof that our customers are reaching their business goals.Automation: A competitive advantageIn the current economic environment, organizations are investing more in operational efficiency and enhanced experiences for their customers and employees. The need to accelerate automation across the enterprise has created more demand for technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA) to streamline manual work and improve the bottom line as well as the employee experience.The RPA market continues to evolve at a rapid pace. We're proud to be a next-generation RPA provider that sees this important capability as part of a broader platform that orchestrates automation tools to work together seamlessly to unify a customer’s hyperautomation landscape.
Seamless orchestrationForrester evaluated LIKE.TG Automation Engine and solutions from other top providers across three categories: current offering, strategy, and market presence. The 26 criteria included data integration capabilities, low-code/no-code capabilities, and vision. The report also incorporated feedback from customer interviews.In our opinion, our approach to innovation in this space, with a special focus on unifying the hyperautomation landscape for more seamless orchestration, has received recognition from analyst firms and customers alike. Our in-platform integration and automation solution helps organizations quickly connect or automate any system, document, or task with minimal code.Since the Now Platform San Diego release, we’ve seen rapid adoption of Automation Engine to drive digital transformation initiatives across multiple industries, such as financial services, technology, and retail. At the heart of our hyperautomation strategy is people and their experiences:
Automating tasks and processes through a single lens
Applying document intelligence with AI
Optimizing existing processes with recommendations
Discovering new automation opportunities
The Now Platform offers all of these in one experience, including visibility into the enterprise’s often-siloed automation vendor landscape.To be recognized by a respected analyst firm such as Forrester is both gratifying and incredibly humbling. I have our team and our customers’ trust to thank. You can continue to count on our innovation, and we’ll keep watching what you build with excitement and awe.Find out more about why LIKE.TG was named a Strong Performer in RPA in the complimentary Forrester Wave™ report.
Delivering on the promise of innovation: A chat with LIKE.TG and EY
Innovation drives growth. Companies that can seize the promise of innovation gain a competitive advantage—while those that don't risk falling behind.The hype around new technology can be misleading. It’s not always clear what impact new technology can truly have on your organization. To become more agile, leaders need to look past the hype to uncover the realities of innovation.In a recent episode of EY’s Think Ecosystem podcast, host Paul Webb, EY global alliance leader for LIKE.TG, invited leaders from EY and LIKE.TG to discuss innovation and how to operationalize it.Imagining the possibilities in 3 areasWhen you’re caught up in the excitement and possibilities of new technology, it can be hard to separate the buzz from the benefits. But a few innovations stand out as potential game changers that will transform the way companies work in the future.1. Generative AIRecent developments in generative AI have accelerated the hype around this capability. But there is often a gap between the perception of its potential and the reality of its current state.According to LIKE.TG Chief Information Officer Dave Wright, this of-the-moment technology is poised to “fundamentally change the way knowledge gets consumed.” Businesses may have terabytes of data that can inform AI, giving it the potential to surface this information in a way that’s easy to access and understand. This can enable people to gain knowledge and insights without sorting through data and documents.However, people often overestimate the abilities of generative AI. It can easily perform tasks such as creating summaries, agenda items, and structures. But it isn’t yet great at answering questions. In fact, it can “hallucinate” by providing blatantly inaccurate information as facts.Generative AI could affect many different industries and fields of play. The technology has limitations, but it’s changing rapidly. The improvement in accuracy in the models that came out in recent weeks—compared to those that came out 100 days ago—is remarkable.Amy Lokey, senior vice president of product experience at LIKE.TG, adds that businesses should orient their use of AI in relation to their desired outcomes. “Generative AI is not an end in itself,” she says. “It’s a faster means to an end. What is the distinct value that we offer, and how can generative AI accelerate those pathways?”
2. Augmented realityAugmented reality (AR) has the potential to provide an omnichannel experience as we move through the world, Webb says. By allowing multiple sensory inputs, AR gives users the ability to speak and gesture rather than typing commands using a keyboard or touch screen.Across different types of devices, AR can allow users to experience technology using the best interface for them in that moment, Lokey adds. This will create different ways of engaging for people with different abilities and preferences, enabling the right device at the right moment for how each person wants to engage.3. Quantum computingAnother innovation that has received a great deal of attention is quantum computing. A quantum computer would use quantum mechanics and specialized hardware to solve problems vastly more quickly than traditional computers.While there are still some physics problems that need to be solved before actual quantum computers become a reality, this technology could transform our lives and the ways we do business.Experts expect quantum computing to have a huge impact on cryptography in particular. “Once quantum’s mainstream, you can kiss everything you know about security goodbye,” Wright shares. If quantum computing becomes a reality within the next few years, after decades of continued research, it will have a substantial ripple effect on business areas such as compliance.The takeaway? Businesses should be preparing now for the implications of this technology, thinking through what actions they might need to take to get the benefits without exposing themselves to avoidable risks.Operationalizing innovationHow can businesses actually move forward with leading-edge technologies? EY and LIKE.TG leaders suggest three focus areas:
The experience: Wright and Lokey agree that user experience is key to adoption. It’s not enough to replicate existing processes in a digital format—you have to create an experience that’s better than what you had before. When innovation can improve the experience of doing work, that’s when you can boost productivity, adoption, and engagement.
Continued testing: It’s not about transforming once. In today’s world, we’re constantly changing. These changes have to be applied to the whole company, not just one business function. It’s important to keep testing new technologies and experimenting to discover what will work in your organization.
Prioritized outcomes: Wright advises leaders to define their desired outcomes before implementing a new technology. “How can you take these innovations and use them to deliver the results you want? If you start with the outcome, you can apply the best technology to achieve it,” he says.
Find out more about how LIKE.TG and EY are working together to push the reality curve of innovation.
5 considerations for building generative AI trust
Katie Schmidt, senior manager of AI/machine learning user experience research, contributed to this blog.Years of user experience (UX) research and customer feedback have shown that building trust is integral to success with AI. With generative AI (GenAI), trust is more important than ever.At LIKE.TG, we know that when using GenAI capabilities, moments of potential trust touch all personas—from admins setting it up to developers using CodeAssist to agents using it to eliminate manual repetitive tasks and requesters seeking fast solutions to problems.For example, agents use the Now Platform to help them solve tickets for requesters. There’s a tremendous opportunity to use GenAI capabilities to help agents work more productively and reduce mundane, repetitive tasks (that often lead to high turnover).No one likes to feel like their purpose at work is to deal with frustrated, angry people or to copy and paste from a knowledge base article into a chat because a customer couldn’t find what they were looking for. GenAI has the potential to help agents focus on more meaningful work.One way we’re making that reality is through expanded use cases for GenAI across all workflows. Using GenAI, our new case summarization solution automatically recaps IT, HR, and customer case information to help accelerate resolution times, minimize manual processes, and boost agent productivity.Keeping humans front and centerDespite its many benefits, GenAI presents heightened concerns about security, regulations, data access and privacy, and cost, as well as overreliance on it in lieu of critical human oversight.That’s why it’s imperative that we design and develop products using human-centered and responsible AI guidelines. Prioritizing human experience will produce the desired GenAI impact for organizations’ employees and customers.AI should augment and enhance how people work—but not fully automate their tasks or replace them. Based on UX research we’ve conducted with GenAI, we’ve come up with five key considerations to guide a human approach. These all tie into the broader goal of helping people build trust and feel in control.1. ExplainabilityAssume people are uncertain about AI. Manage expectations, explain concepts and terms, and use experiences that are familiar to people where possible. People need to be able to understand and interpret predictions made by AI, particularly in the context of their work, where they’re accountable for the output. AI shouldn’t be “magic.”2. TransparencyOverall, workers are very receptive to trying out AI at work but want to know when AI is the source. Clearly identify when AI is present. Users need to understand what AI did and why, and when necessary, users should be able to figure out how it works (e.g., data sources).3. Ability to provide feedbackHumans recognize that AI isn’t perfect, but it’s important to be clear on its limits. This allows people to stay in control, provide feedback, and review the outputs from GenAI for accuracy. Let people mute, emphasize, or redirect AI and its predictions. Make it easy to stop AI or to undo its actions quickly and with minimal to no harm.4. Onboarding and building confidenceYour AI strategy should include onboarding, as change management is needed. Some onboarding and confidence building may be designed into the product, but the business offering the new UX must set expectations and take steps to help people adapt to it. Businesses should focus on quick wins to see early value.5. Varied user acceptanceIn our journey with AI at LIKE.TG, we’ve seen the change in people's comfort, acceptance, and reliance on it over time as they build trust and confidence in it. More people in various roles and industries can try to potentially benefit from GenAI, but they must see the value in it early on.Recognize that people will approach the use of AI with different mindsets, characteristics, beliefs, and levels of willingness to use it, particularly in work versus in their personal lives.At LIKE.TG, we always put people first. GenAI is no exception. We’re committed to learning and growing with our customers and providing human-centered AI best practices that prioritize building trust as we navigate this future.As LIKE.TG CEO Bill McDermott says, “Trust is the ultimate human currency. It’s earned in drops and lost in buckets.” We make sure our AI products continue to help build that trust, one drop at a time.Find out more about LIKE.TG generative AI. And sign up to participate in our AI user research.
6 innovation trends and what they mean for your business
In my conversations with the LIKE.TG partner community, there’s one thing I’m consistently asked: How do we work with you to adapt to the rapid speed of innovation and change? My answer is simple: To truly innovate, you have to understand the trends behind the innovation.LIKE.TG recently collaborated with Harbor Research to scan the global marketplace. We wanted to understand the widespread digital transformation and rapid technology shifts that are fueling growth—and driving significant complexities—for organizations.I’m happy to announce the release of our inaugural innovation trends report. We’ve uncovered six key technology trends that will affect the ways organizations reimagine work, processes, and value creation.The report also highlights the implications of cloud computing and AI, and how they’ve revolutionized resource creation and management. Let’s face it, as the digital landscape shifts, new technologies emerge—and so do opportunities to enable growth.With that in mind, let’s look at the six innovation trends we found and what they mean for your business:1. Exponential innovationEvery new technology is a building block to the next innovation, but organizations can’t future-proof technology on their own. They need partners to help them bring cutting-edge solutions to market.2. Shared data architecturesSiloed data architectures are no longer sufficient for the volume of data coming into the enterprise. Data architectures will have to be restructured into open systems for more proactive insights and faster time to value.3. Automation technologiesAI, machine learning, and automation-driven algorithms are leading forces in the world of work. By integrating smart sensors, machines, and information systems, organizations can create a “digital nervous system” that makes work autonomous and drives better decisions.4. New modes of work with the right toolsCompanies are no longer bound by four walls—they’re distributed ecosystems. Organizations can use intelligent automation to build apps that work across multiple clouds while easing development complexity.5. Any user as a developerAs software becomes increasingly complex, organizations need to make application development more accessible. With a low-code platform, any individual at any skill level can become a developer and build products and solutions. This can in turn help reduce overall costs and increase value.6. Expansive partner networksScalable partner networks help enterprises effectively manage the rapidly evolving scope of distributed workforces, technologies, and applications. Harbor Research found that more than 50% of data needed for optimization will come from outside an organization.Partnerships are critical to help organizations extend value through knowledge, relationship sharing, and co-creating net-new solutions for unique customer needs.All six trends are vital for the LIKE.TG partner ecosystem as we work toward continued success, growth, and innovation together. By combining a single platform that can orchestrate the entire technology chain with the thought leadership and intellectual property of our partners, the opportunities are truly endless.Check out the full innovation trends report. It includes partner case studies on how we’re addressing our joint customers’ most pressing challenges in each of the six areas.
Quickly get started with generative AI on the Now Platform
There’s no doubt that generative AI and the productivity it promises have captured the world’s imagination. We’ve talked about applying AI to just about everything—from those soul-crushing tasks we never want to do again to dreams within our grasp for the first time.Goldman Sachs estimates that generative AI could add nearly $7 trillion to global gross domestic product (GDP) in the next decade. While the potential for generative AI to improve human productivity seems almost limitless, the industry buzz is distracting, which makes it challenging to get started, especially with enterprise scale and reliability.How to get started with generative AILIKE.TG has made significant, strategic investments in AI in the past six years, including nearly a dozen acquisitions and a specialized AI development environment for our engineers to quickly build and test AI capabilities.Our focus on AI has been purposeful and long term, so we can uniquely meet our customers’ needs in this moment. Customers see the impact of these investments. For example, BT forecasts $31 million in savings by leaping toward AI-led operations with ServiceNow.Since May, we’ve launched multiple AI capabilities that allow customers to use both general-purpose large language models (LLMs) and domain-specific LLMs from ServiceNow. They’re built for enterprise-level use cases, processes, and security and trained for the unique needs of agents, employees, customers, developers, and IT administrators.With today’s announcement of Now Assist, LIKE.TG’s generative AI experiences, we’ve infused native generative AI capabilities in all workflows on the Now Platform®. Now Assist incorporates generative AI features such as case, incident, and agent chat summarization; virtual agent; and search.These capabilities can be applied to a broad range of scenarios and functions so that every persona, from employees to agents to developers, can harness the power of generative AI. Customers also benefit from an improved self-service experience, which can lead to higher case and incident deflection and cost reduction.
With the Now Assist experiences, available Sept. 29 in the LIKE.TG Store, customers can deliver value quickly by applying generative AI where the works get done:
Now Assist for IT Service Management provides summaries of incidents for speedy IT team handoffs and problem resolutions. It can also help generate and update work notes.
Now Assist for HR Service Delivery improves HR team productivity and efficiency, as well as employee experiences, through instant summaries and conversational chats.
Now Assist for Customer Service Management reduces manual work and helps resolve customer issues by rapidly generating summaries for cases and chats.
Now Assist for Creator empowers developers of any skill level to build apps fast—developers can generate code from text and code prompts.
Accelerating time to valueFeedback from more than 150 customers using early versions of Now Assist shows positive results: increased self-service for lower case count, faster resolution times, improved customer satisfaction and agent productivity, better post-case documentation and closure, and more.Customers are also finding speed to value. Several customers report they’ve implemented generative AI solutions with LIKE.TG in mere weeks. With LIKE.TG’s frequent release schedule and innovation on a single platform and single data model, many customers can achieve rapid value acceleration with generative AI.Additionally, as customer zero, LIKE.TG has gone live with more than a dozen internal generative AI pilots, including IT, customer service, and engineering use cases. The early results show significant productivity savings and increases in agent and developer satisfaction.How LIKE.TG generative AI pricing worksWe’ve also designed the pricing and packaging of our generative AI capabilities so that customers can realize value quickly. Our guiding principles have been:
Value: Enable customers to easily capture the unparalleled value created by our Now Assist experiences.
Flexibility: Create a scalable model that allows customers to grow and innovate in this fluid market—and allows us to continue to learn and adjust.
Simplicity: Make it easy to understand and fit the way customers buy today.
Customers currently on a LIKE.TG® IT Service Management, Customer Service Management, or HR Service Delivery Pro or Enterprise solution can buy Professional Plus or Enterprise Plus add-ons to get access to generative AI capabilities in the Now Assist experiences.The Pro Plus and Enterprise Plus add-ons are also available for customers with industry solutions licenses, including Telecommunications, Technology Providers, Financial Services, Public Sector, and Healthcare.With Now Assist for Creator, developers and administrators can supercharge their work with intelligent code recommendations. These text-to-code generative AI capabilities are built on our own LLM and trained by LIKE.TG engineers so that developers can confidently burn through backlogs and get value faster from LIKE.TG investments.Developers can get started with Now Assist for Creator right away by purchasing the Creator Plus license. No base license is required.All Pro Plus, Enterprise Plus, and Creator Plus package add-ons are purchased by seat. Each seat enables the user to execute a certain amount of generative AI “assists.” Incident or case summarizations, for example, are called assists. Higher-value, more complex interactions require more assists, whereas simpler, frequently used interactions require fewer.Don’t worry about running out of assists: By design, the initial entitlement should be all you need for your generative AI journey. If more generative AI capacity is needed at some point, customers can purchase additional assist packs.It’s time to stop the hype and put enterprise-ready AI to work. With the LIKE.TG intelligent platform for end-to-end digital transformation, businesses everywhere are already saying yes to entirely new ways of working with generative AI.Find out more about how you can put generative AI to work in our Vancouver release webinar.
Put humans in the loop to generate real value from generative AI
Generative AI has shaken up the business and tech world, but the best tech relies on world-class talent to address the fundamental problems that haven’t been solved yet. At LIKE.TG, we know the most constructive and value-creating strategies for generative AI are grounded in embedding human experience and expertise into the core capabilities.In the Now Platform® Vancouver release, we focused on using generative AI to help deliver value in three key areas: productivity, experience, and agility. This involves incorporating humans in the loop to address challenges that employees experience every day.New tech, same peopleGenerative AI generates value only if it solves specific problems for specific people. In our software design process, we define these people according to personas, such as developers, support agents, or line-of-business end users.We track what these different personas need based on continuous feedback from our customers and our employees. The identified needs tend to reflect common desires across personas: higher productivity, user-friendly or frictionless experiences, and greater agility.This persona-driven design process has led to Now Assist—our generative AI experiences. Now Assist defines how some features, such as code completion for developers, target one specific persona and how others, such as case summarization, apply to a range of personas, from IT support to customer service to HR, with nuances of execution.This approach helps ensure that all Now Assist capabilities fit within the same workflows the personas are used to and familiar with.All this helps maximize the chances that the people who use generative AI will distill consistent, lasting value from doing so. One of the best ways to test this is within an organization—which we did by deploying Now Assist among our IT, HR, and customer support teams to gauge and learn from their feedback.It's worth noting that this persona-based approach informs development across all the features in the Vancouver release. Accounts Payable Operations, for example, automates invoice ingestion and purchase order matching to help deliver faster, more accurate invoice processing.The product forms the final piece of the workflow from sourcing to payment for one of our newest personas—those in procurement and supplier roles. Like most of our new features, it was built based on extensive input and validation from customers experiencing the same challenges every day.
Experience, the differenceTo solve specific problems for specific people, generative AI needs to deliver an experience that warrants people’s trust. This is best served by a humans-in-the-loop model, where users review all generative AI outputs before accepting them, as well as the processes and sources that surfaced those outputs.This minimizes the chances of AI mistakes or hallucinations causing actual harm and builds users’ confidence in the technology. It also helps improve the tech’s fidelity.Another way to keep humans in the loop is by tapping into their experiences and expertise to train the AI that eventually assists them. Large language models (LLMs), which power generative AI, are most effective when trained on domain expertise related to the specific problems we seek to solve.In the case of LIKE.TG domain-specific LLMs, this expertise comes in the form of LIKE.TG code snippets from our developer ecosystem—literally decades of experience submitted by experts in their field. When taken at scale, these code snippets capture developer best practices and contextual approaches that training on open-source data cannot replicate.From our tests so far, these kinds of specially trained LLMs perform much more accurately and intuitively on tasks such as translating natural language into well-formed and scalable LIKE.TG code, compared to LLMs trained on open-source content. Specificity, backed by uniquely human expertise, makes all the difference.Solutions people valueFinally, we need to ensure we balance generative AI capabilities with the quality of experience offered to users. That means creating consistency across the organization, as we aimed to do with our Now Assist capabilities, which can be applied in one go from IT to HR to developers.It also means developing a frictionless user journey from installation to deployment at organizationwide scale. The ability to turn ordinary text into code (or an entire app) will fail to impress if the interface takes minutes to load. A poor experience all but guarantees failure of adoption, no matter how powerful the solution.Ultimately, all this underscores the importance of keeping humans in the loop with generative AI—from identifying the specific problems it must solve to training it on the best practices for finding solutions to ensuring it delivers those solutions in a human-friendly experience. Generative AI will generate value only if it helps real people. That means we humans must play our part.Put generative AI to work to generate value in your organization with humans in the loop.
A GenAI roadmap: How LIKE.TG puts AI to work for people
At LIKE.TG, we’re at the forefront of integrating generative AI (GenAI) into the heart of enterprise solutions. In my time with the company (and back when I was with Apple, Microsoft, and Salesforce), I’ve seen up close what innovation can do when it solves practical, real-world challenges. That’s precisely our focus.By imbuing cutting-edge GenAI models across the robust Now Platform, we’re enabling supercharged experiences that help people and organizations work smarter and more productively while creating unprecedented value.If that sounds lofty, it’s because the potential is truly immense. Whether autogenerating knowledge base articles, fulfilling service requests through tailored conversational experiences, or equipping developers of all skill levels to rapidly create powerful business applications, GenAI comes to life when combined with our platform’s proven system of action.As we enter a new era in which technology can amplify human potential like never before, LIKE.TG is leading the charge to put AI to work for people.Intentional movesLIKE.TG has one of the most ambitious GenAI roadmaps in the industry. In the last seven years, we’ve intentionally executed more than 10 strategic AI acquisitions to gain world-class AI technology and talent. Thanks to these investments, we’ve been able to make enterprise GenAI capabilities generally available.These acquisitions, all replatformed on the Now Platform, equipped us with critical, complementary AI capabilities that positioned us and our customers well for the recent AI surge. From machine learning to natural language understanding (NLU) to AI-based search, the next logical step was adding GenAI. And when the technology was ready, so were we.
An exquisite recipeWhat’s our recipe? One key ingredient is the data intrinsic to the workflows. The Now Platform gives us deep insights and a remarkable ability to tailor AI outputs for the specific needs of our customers in various domains and industries.Next, our domain-specific large language models (LLMs) are fine-tuned to grasp and navigate the complexities of the enterprise environment. Powered by cutting-edge NVIDIA graphics processing units and tooling, these models enable us to offer organizations highly intuitive and intelligent applications that both comprehend intricate requests and generate pertinent, context-aware responses.Another important benefit of our approach is data security. With our Now LLM models deployed at the core of the Now Platform, customers can rest assured their data doesn’t leave our platform.Our recipe wouldn’t be complete without the special sauce. For us, it’s simple: We believe AI is only as powerful as the platform it’s built on. Business users need AI to power actions across the enterprise. Our workflows are designed to do just that.Built on a humble start in IT, LIKE.TG today spans multiple enterprise domains and industries, connecting the enterprise end to end as a system of action. Add AI—specifically GenAI—and magic happens. Suddenly, employees and customers are empowered with the tools they need to get their work done seamlessly, efficiently, and happily.This potent combination of unique data, specialized LLMs, and our intelligent platform positions LIKE.TG to be first in the market with robust enterprise GenAI applications, setting new benchmarks for what businesses can achieve with AI.People-first approachLIKE.TG AI isn’t designed to chase industry hype. It’s crafted with the intention of addressing real-world challenges, delivering tangible benefits, and placing users at the center of our design.Our commitment begins with self-service—where innovation meets the simplicity of everyday tasks. With the release of Now Assist, LIKE.TG's GenAI assistant, we're reshaping the self-service experience for both customers and employees.Integrated with the Now Platform, Now Assist delivers a seamless, intuitive interface that enables users to find solutions with unprecedented ease, at any time of day. Imagine a future where you don’t have to spend hours trying to fix a customer service issue because Now Assist helps you find answers on your own. That means everyone wins.Now Assist is already empowering users to:
Get conveniently summarized knowledge base articles
Order catalog items
Submit forms without leaving their Virtual Agent interface
Now Assist enables great experiences that help people solve critical problems in the enterprise. For example, it helps eliminate busywork, allowing agents to focus their time solely on tasks that require their expertise.Agents currently spend valuable time on tedious tasks, such as getting up to speed on a case and concluding it with resolution notes. Now Assist presents a useful, summarized case history and autogenerates resolution notes, saving agents time and effort—and allowing them to boost organizational knowledge while quickly getting to the next end user seeking assistance.Innovation doesn’t stop there. For developers, Now Assist is more than AI; it's a companion that simplifies coding and the construction of other platform components, such as flows. By speeding automation, an organization can finally reduce its growing IT backlog and drive more innovation, even with a small number of developers.
People-first AI requires a people-first approach. LIKE.TG Chairman and CEO Bill McDermott often says, “Trust is the ultimate human currency.” As AI redefines how we interact with technology, developing trustworthy, responsible AI for every customer and LIKE.TG user is central to our innovation strategy.We champion human-centered guidelines that ensure users understand when and how to use AI within our offerings while maintaining control. We involve a varied team and use diverse data sets to mitigate bias and promote equity. We communicate openly with customers about AI usage and provide transparent, comprehendible documentation.Lastly, we ensure accountability through rigorous oversight and governance structures, including external expert consultations and internal committees, to oversee AI integration.A research foundationMany teams at LIKE.TG—including the LIKE.TG Research team, which includes world-renowned AI researchers—are stacked with AI expertise. Their acumen helps ensure LIKE.TG stays on the vanguard of building innovative enterprise GenAI applications.Our deep research foundation allows us to move quickly. For example, we had already demonstrated LIKE.TG-built GenAI-based conversational capabilities in our research lab in 2022. When ChatGPT launched at the end of that year, we were ready to craft our own Now LLM-infused product roadmap to help our customers improve productivity using enAI.Fast forward to today, and we’re still developing cutting-edge LLMs, such as StarCoder2, in responsible, transparent ways. Our focus areas of innovation are chosen by platform, product, and research teams curating the best capabilities that drive value for our customers.Our research projects are currently focused on multilingual and multimodal models—AI that can understand various languages and inputs, such as videos, images, and time series.They also include web agents, which can act on a user’s behalf within a web application. Instead of the user needing to click fields and buttons, the web agent listens to the user’s intent, expressed in natural language, and understands the right sequence of actions (clicks, typing, etc.) to accomplish the desired goal.This requires AI to understand both natural language and how web applications work in order to translate user intentions into actions.We’re excited to continue advancing the Now Platform to meet the needs of enterprise customers, both today and in the future.Find out more about how LIKE.TG helps put GenAI to work for people.
LIKE.TG is a Leader in Digital Process Automation Software
I’m excited to announce that LIKE.TG has been named a Leader in the Forrester Wave™: Digital Process Automation Software, Q4 2023. We credit this acknowledgement to our performance and strategy in governance, end-to-end orchestration, and AI.Additionally, we believe this recognition is made possible by the unwavering support of our customers, their innovative use of the Now Platform, and their valuable feedback shared with analysts.According to the report, “LIKE.TG scores high on strategy, and planned enhancements leverage its platform strengths...” We scored a full 5.0 out of 5.0 in four criteria within the digital process automation (DPA) strategy category: innovation, roadmap, partner ecosystem, and adoption. We had the highest scores possible in nine criteria total.To us, the results further validate our strategy of providing customers with a comprehensive platform for intelligent automation while embracing third-party integration for a more complete view of return on automation investment.End-to-end orchestrationMany organizations have dozens of automation tools scattered across their IT estate. This results in fragmented operational visibility, limited cross-team alignment, and inconsistent return-on-investment (ROI) calculations.The tools remain disconnected from each other and ultimately undermine a successful end-to-end orchestration approach. According to the Forrester report, “DPA customers should look for providers that have top scores for the most important DPA deep needs, such as end-to-end orchestration.”At LIKE.TG, we understand the importance of an end-to-end orchestration of processes. We believe our platform is unique in its ability to empower customers with their automation goals for today and tomorrow.The Now Platform serves as a central engagement layer for modern and legacy systems through out-of-the-box and customizable API and robotic process automation (RPA) solutions. Importantly, with LIKE.TG’s commitment to governance standards, developers can craft automations within the framework of their company’s data model and security policies.The Automation Center capability provides a unified and vendor-agnostic view of all workflow automations. Here, developers can create and improve existing automations and measure their ROI.Generative AIFor LIKE.TG, “strong integration, security, and AI capabilities are evident,” as recognized in the Forrester report. For years, we’ve provided AI technologies that are fit for purpose, such as Document Intelligence and Process Mining. This evolution has taken a massive leap forward with the advent of generative AI capabilities in Now Assist.Why does a generative AI tool matter in an automation strategy? Generative AI is particularly adept at organizing unstructured data into useful information. But to transform an enterprise, generative AI needs automation to make that information truly effective.Because the Now Platform, complete with simplified third-party integration, operates end to end for workflow automation, users can marry the power of taking action with the productivity of generative AI.Looking forwardWe remain dedicated to our end-to-end platform approach and are deeply committed to continuing to innovate in automation and AI. We believe by continuously enhancing our solutions, our customers will fully realize the benefits of automation, AI, and digital transformation.In closing, I’d like to thank our customers for their partnership, feedback, and innovative thinking. I’d also like to thank Forrester and the broader analyst committee for their continued input. While the momentum around our generative AI capabilities and our end-to-end platform approach to intelligent automation is exciting, the best is yet to come for our customers.Read the full Forrester Wave™ report.
3 ways to maximize efficiency with hyperautomation
Efficiency is the bedrock of success for any organization. In the continuous pursuit of streamlined operations and increased productivity, LIKE.TG Automation Engine serves as a valuable asset, enabling LIKE.TG platform owners and automation leaders to quickly and cost-effectively connect or automate any system, document, or task with minimal code.Automation Engine is part of a broader hyperautomation strategy that organizations need in order to maximize efficiency in the current and future market landscape. Hyperautomation is focused on automating the business as much as reasonably possible, evolving people’s work to enhance their experience and impact, and applying the right tool for each need—all on a single platform.Let’s explore three ways Automation Engine can help drive a hyperautomation strategy.1. Seamless workflow integrationCompanies are built on departments, which lead to siloed departmental systems, such as customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning. Departmental leaders then implement automation tools, such as robotic process automation (RPA), to automate processes.These “islands of automation,” or siloed automation tools, automate at the departmental level only. Even if they're connected across departments by Centers of Excellence, they're not connected to other automation tools and technologies. Both siloed departmental systems and islands of automation act as barriers to hyperautomation.Automation Engine connects siloed departmental systems and islands of automation to make hyperautomation possible. Work flows seamlessly across the enterprise through a complete set of integration capabilities, including API integration for modern systems and RPA for legacy systems.Additionally, Automation Engine connects siloed automation tools from any vendor into a cohesive whole through Automation Center, a centralized automation operational and analytics hub.Discover how features of Automation Engine, including generative AI, can help connect workflows across the organization in our hyperautomation landscape webinar.2. RPA excellenceBesides integrating LIKE.TG with legacy systems, RPA automates the “last mile” of manual, repetitive tasks that may still be slowing down workflows. These tasks could be any repeatable sequence of actions that humans have to do in Windows apps, web browsers, or legacy system UIs as part of a larger business process.Explore RPA best practices and key strategies for deploying RPA and maximizing cost savings within the context of your broader hyperautomation strategy.3. Accessible low-code automationWe live in an era where automation should be readily accessible to everyone. Through its low-code app development and automation capabilities, App Engine and Automation Engine together empower technical and business users to create new applications while upholding governance standards.This empowerment fosters increased collaboration between lines of business and IT, further breaking down silos within organizations and removing barriers to process improvements.For example, Hancock Whitney Bank successfully incorporated low-code as part of its hyperautomation strategy. Find out how the bank achieved this and the valuable lessons learned in the process.Gain deeper insights into how Automation Engine can maximize efficiency, enhance experiences, and empower your hyperautomation strategy.
How nonprofit organizations are using emerging tech to do more with less
Most businesses are driven by traditional ROI: return on investment. Nonprofit organizations operate by a different kind of ROI: return on impact. Whether they’re working to save lives, the planet, or their communities, nonprofits across the globe measure impact by their ability to fulfill their mission.What the most successful for-profit and nonprofit organizations have in common is a clear understanding of, and dedication to, their purpose. That’s why business leaders everywhere can learn from the purpose-driven innovation that characterizes so many of these organizations.In the LIKE.TG nonprofit special report, we set out to understand how nonprofits are acting as incubators for innovation by using emerging tech to do more with less. Here’s what we found.Generative AIA group of nonprofit leaders and tech experts shared how they’re putting generative AI (GenAI) to work today.Em Fackler, chief innovation officer of the International Rescue Committee, envisions adopting GenAI for its potential in the nonprofit sector. “We’ve identified a few areas where we think AI can have a significant impact on our work,” she says, specifically proposal writing, collaboration, and knowledge management.“We’re in meetings most of the day,” she adds. “Imagine if an AI tool could generate the minutes from those meetings. That would save huge amounts of time.”Low-code app developmentThe mission of Ndlovu Care Group, a nonprofit in South Africa, is to serve the health and nutritional needs of children in Limpopo, one of the country’s most impoverished regions.The organization partnered with LIKE.TG in 2022 to create a low-code app its healthcare workers could use to capture data about a child’s progress while out in the field. The app has helped Ndlovu reduce the malnutrition rate from 45% to 21% for more than 5,000 children.Data analyticsNdlovu is just one of the many nonprofits innovating both intentionally and on the fly. We talked with seven nonprofit leaders, who shared real-world examples of how they’re using everything from GenAI and chatbots to social media, data analytics, and geo-mapping to support their mission without breaking the bank.WeSeeHope, which works to teach children in Africa skills for a successful and sustainable future, latched onto the power of data analytics to help fulfill its mission. The organization uses data to prioritize the programming it provides.“Our dashboards also provide transparency so that WeSeeHope supporters trust that their giving has the desired impact, going to those that need it most,” says Phil Wall, founder. “In terms of staff retention and motivation, the existence of a highly visual, data-driven app has been profound.”Tech partnershipsThe report also examines the power of public-private partnerships, including LIKE.TG’s ongoing collaboration with Welcome.US, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting refugees who want to connect with sponsors in the United States.“The drive to create and deliver impact—not through profits or dividends, but through lives saved, communities transformed, and environments protected—is what gets me up in the morning,” says Vanessa Smith, president of ServiceNow.org.We hope this special report inspires organizations to innovate with passion and better understand the importance of the work nonprofit leaders do every day to make the world a better place.Find out more in the nonprofit special report.
3 ways to use generative AI
Generative AI has been gaining awareness and popularity since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. According to McKinsey, one-third of organizations have already embraced the technology for at least one business function.The research further found that 60% of organizations that have adopted AI are using generative AI for content creation in various business areas, including product and service development, marketing and sales, and service operations.It’s clear that embracing AI and generative AI is no longer a choice for organizations—it's a must. Implementing generative AI for better self-service for both customers and employees can help increase deflection rates, which translates to huge cost savings.Let's explore three ways to use generative AI in any business.1. Employee empowermentAI is an ally. By assisting with and augmenting repetitive, mundane tasks, it frees people to focus on higher-value job duties and activities that require human intellect.Generative AI possesses case and chat summarization capabilities that streamline and enhance workflows. For IT and HR agents, the automated ability to condense intricate details into digestible formats boosts productivity and helps keep employees well informed.In addition, generative AI plays a vital role in helping employees easily find the information they need and quickly get their work done. Find out how to put this game-changing technology to use in our Empowering your workforce with generative AI webinar.2. Customer connectionsAI revolutionizes customer experience by using advanced algorithms that personalize interactions and predict preferences. This leads to heightened customer satisfaction and loyalty.Generative AI-powered chatbots, such as LIKE.TG Now Assist for Customer Service Management, offer 24/7 support for customers, enabling them to receive prompt and efficient assistance when they need it.The technology also equips customer service agents with case summaries to help them quickly get up to speed on customers’ concerns so they can provide rapid resolutions. Putting people first explores the transformative impact of generative AI on customer experience.3. Accelerated application developmentFour pivotal forces are reshaping application development: a scarcity of skilled developers, mounting cost pressures, demand for increased agility and efficiency, and urgency to accelerate productivity.Generative AI offers a way to transform the application development experience. Now Assist for Creator, for example, provides generative AI-driven assistance and guidance to developers. Its code-generation and flow-generation capabilities are designed to streamline the coding process to expedite software creation.Find out how in Generative AI to boost your low-code developer experience.