Using Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO)

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Using Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO)

    Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO) is a Virtual Agent-powered conversational tool designed to streamline and automate purchasing and procurement requests within ServiceNow. It enables requesters to easily search for products in the catalog, complete purchase requests through guided conversations, and submit procurement inquiries without needing direct interaction with fulfillment teams. The solution supports both catalog and off-catalog requests, enhancing user experience with natural language interactions backed by generative AI.

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    Key Features

    • Product Search and Request Submission: Requesters can find catalog products with or without prices and fill out intake questions via a conversational interface. They can review and edit responses before submitting purchase requests.
    • Off-Catalog Handling: If a product or service is not found in the catalog, the Virtual Agent collects additional information, checks for quotes, routes requesters to off-catalog intake forms, or allows submission of questions to the procurement team (requiring the snspendpsd.requestor role).
    • Guided Virtual Agent Conversations: The Virtual Agent uses intelligent utterance detection (powered by Genius Results) to surface relevant topics, catalog items, and Q&A, enabling requesters to independently submit and track sourcing, purchase, and procurement cases.
    • Record Summarization with Generative AI: Both shoppers and fulfillers can quickly summarize procurement-related records (such as sourcing requests, purchase requisitions, and orders) to understand status, progress, and action items using contextual AI capabilities.
    • Sentiment Analysis: Procurement specialists can analyze requester sentiment on active procurement cases to prioritize and manage sensitive requests effectively.
    • Automated Email Generation: Procurement specialists and buyers can generate professional email responses efficiently, reducing manual drafting effort and allowing focus on higher-value tasks.
    • Monitoring and Analytics: Administrators can use the Now Assist in Virtual Agent Analytics dashboard to monitor conversation deflection rates and assess the self-service effectiveness of Now Assist.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Improved Requester Experience: Users benefit from a natural, conversational interface that simplifies purchasing and procurement interactions, reducing the need for manual follow-up.
    • Increased Efficiency: Automating intake and summarization tasks accelerates procurement workflows and minimizes administrative overhead.
    • Enhanced Visibility and Control: Both requesters and procurement teams can track and manage requests easily via Shopping Hub, Employee Center, or the Now Platform.
    • Better Procurement Team Responsiveness: Sentiment analysis and AI-generated email responses enable faster, more accurate communication with requesters.
    • Configurable and Extendable: Administrators can configure Now Assist for SPO to align with organizational processes and monitor its impact via analytics.

    Overall, Now Assist for SPO empowers ServiceNow customers to transform procurement operations by leveraging AI-driven conversational interfaces and intelligent automation, resulting in faster, more transparent, and user-friendly sourcing and purchasing experiences.

    For your requesters' purchasing needs, the Now Assist for SPO Virtual Agent searches against the existing products in the product catalog and displays the available products.

    If a product is found with or without a price in the catalog, the requester can then fill out the intake questions through a simple conversation, and then submit the purchase request after reviewing the summary of responses. They can also edit a response before submitting.

    If a product or service isn’t found in the catalog, the chatbot gathers more information, such as checking for availability of quotes, and routes the requester to the corresponding off-catalog intake form. It also provides the requester with the option to submit a question to the procurement team about the required product or service, with relevant attachments, if any, all through a conversation.
    Note:
    You can ask a question to the procurement team, and create a corresponding procurement case, only if you have the sn_spend_psd.requestor role. Ensure that you admin has assigned that role to you.

    As a requester, you can start with viewing all the topics, and then selecting Buy a product.

    View all topics

    You could also directly start typing what you need, in which case the utterance detection mechanism uses Genius Results to retrieve Virtual Agent topics, catalog items, and Q&A results, and displays them to the requester within a card carousel. For details, see Using Now Assist in Virtual Agent.

    The Virtual Agent engages you in a guided conversation, asking you relevant questions along the way to help you submit your purchase, sourcing, and off-catalog requests, as well as procurement cases, independently, without the need to reach out to fulfillers. You can then review and track these request records from Shopping Hub, Employee Center, or Platform.

    To learn more about quick checkout and sourcing checkout processes, see Order a product with quick checkout and Complete sourcing checkout respectively. For more information on off-catalog intake forms, see Requesting for products or services that you don't see on ShoppingHub.

    Now Assist in Virtual Agent provides your users with an interactive generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) experience. A friendly, natural language conversation is easier to understand and makes requesters more comfortable with talking to a bot. To learn how a conversation powered by generative AI might look in Virtual Agent, see Using Now Assist in Virtual Agent.

    As an administrator, you can use the Now Assist in Virtual Agent Analytics dashboard to monitor the performance of Now Assist in Virtual Agent as a self-service deflection tool. To learn more, see . Now Assist in Virtual Agent Analytics calculates the conversation deflection rate based on the resolution status associated with Now Assist query responses. For more information, see .

    For detailed information on Now Assist in Virtual Agent in general, and Now Assist for SPO in particular, see Explore Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO).

    For information on configuring Now Assist for SPO, see Configure Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO).