Building on a foundation of operational success

Hitachi Vantara is a leading force in data management and digital innovation, dedicated to empowering businesses to unlock the full potential of their data. The company operates across various industries worldwide and understands that optimizing operations is crucial for delivering exceptional customer experiences. Hitachi Vantara's commitment goes beyond technology; it partners with organizations to drive meaningful change and create lasting value in today's data-driven landscape. For Hitachi Vantara, data management is not just about handling information—it's about maximizing opportunities for success

As the Manager of the ServiceNow AI Platform at Hitachi Vantara, Ajay Vuppala is focused on transforming business through innovative technologies. Hitachi Vantara began its journey with ServiceNow HR Service Delivery (HRSD) and IT Service Management (ITSM). With the implementation of HRSD, Hitachi Vantara replaced its legacy HR system, starting with case management and expanding to over 500 HR catalog items and onboarding capabilities across 37 countries. Next, they adopted ITSM to eliminate manual, email-based workflows, replacing 27 procurement mailboxes and automating key processes, like distribution list updates. These changes drove significant operational efficiencies, including a 56% reduction in tickets, helping the service desk focus on higher value work.

Additionally, the team integrated ServiceNow with other critical systems, including Oracle, Microsoft SharePoint, and DocuSign. “ServiceNow makes it easy to integrate with other systems, ensuring data security and seamless processes that take efficiency to a new level,” says Vuppala. One example is integrating the background check system and automating workflows, which drastically reduced background verification time, freeing one full-time equivalent of staff time for other important projects.

Putting AI to work for peak performance

Leveraging AI to enhance operational excellence is a natural step in Hitachi Vantara’s operational evolution. Complex workflows like reporting were identified early as a key area to address. Semi-automated at best, existing workflows require data from multiple disconnected systems and involve many conditional steps and decisions. The company’s sizeable workforce was hindered and frustrated by these workflows. Even finding these and other services could be difficult, with search results rarely providing a direct answer.

Recognizing the immense potential, IT took on the challenge of driving AI adoption by focusing on high-value use cases, data security, and seamless operations. For example, developers have automated expense report submissions by using mobile phone images and intelligent data extraction to streamline entry into the ERP system. An employee simply reviews and submits the entry, reducing the number of steps for what was previously a manual, error-prone activity. AI Agents inspect the photos to find vendor name, date, amount paid, and other relevant data, and then feed it to the ERP automatically for fast, accurate review and approval. ServiceNow plays a crucial role in addressing challenges like this by providing a unified platform where automation and AI are embedded easily for maximum benefit.

The effort has paid off, with a 20% productivity gain for its developers and 15% increase in employee satisfaction. Employees use AI to get the answers they need in a conversational manner, reducing help desk incident volume and improving resolution time. As IT continues to identify and prioritize AI use cases across the enterprise, teams like finance and procurement will benefit significantly from AI automation.

“Hitachi Vantara drives digital transformation and operational excellence with the ServiceNow AI Platform,” says Vuppala.

Prioritizing AI use cases across the enterprise

To extend the value of ServiceNow across the company, the IT team met with departments to identify and prioritize AI use cases from stakeholders.  

In the first AI use case implementation, Hitachi Vantara integrated AI Search into the service portal, giving employees a conversational experience that provides direct answers instead of lengthy articles. Soon after, the team empowered employees to access knowledge articles through Microsoft Copilot—a valuable integration that took only one month. These new self-service capabilities quickly made a noticeable impact—incidents and resolution times fell along with employee satisfaction resulting from their increased productivity.

Service catalog maintenance stood out for its high payback potential. With more than 500 services, plus four or five additions every sprint cycle, keeping the catalog updated consumed a lot of development resources. Using ServiceNow AI Agents for App Dev enabled the team to quickly prototype, test, and deploy applications, reducing developer time by at least 40%.

Then, the IT team looked at their own operations to see how they could improve with AI. First on the list was helping drive adoption of its new project time sheet system. To tackle this, the team used ServiceNow AI Agents for App Dev to automatically fill in hours spent in meetings, based on Microsoft Outlook calendar data. This improved user adoption and simplified the timesheet submission process.

In addition, IT integrated ServiceNow with Azure OpenAI to transform generating reports that pull data from multiple business systems. These detailed reports often take an expert 10 to 15 minutes to define and run. With AI, users simply type in what they’re looking for in plain language, and ServiceNow automatically builds the reports for them in a fraction of the time. It’s a straightforward use case, but one that significantly reduces manual effort. Improved efficiency accelerates decision-making with faster access to insights. Ultimately reducing operational costs and increasing productivity across team.

“ServiceNow AI Agents enable us to quickly automate even the most complex use cases, increasing both employee satisfaction and developer efficiency,” says Vuppala.

Mapping the future

Hitachi Vantara plans to extend ServiceNow AI Agents into ITSM and enhance help desk productivity through summarization and notes generation via their Azure integration. Looking ahead, the IT team aims to rapidly prototype and deploy AI-powered applications for finance using Mobile App Builder and Agents, while exploring broader opportunities for agentic AI to support higher-level decision-making across the enterprise.

“ServiceNow makes it easy to integrate with other systems, ensuring data security and seamless processes that take efficiency to a new level,” says Vuppala.