Accelerate productivity, increase agility, and transform the experience Putting AI to work for people with Strategic Portfolio Management Artificial intelligence (AI), and in particular generative AI, can’t be ignored by enterprises today. But about 70% of companies lack a cohesive strategy and roadmap for implementing AI—and they see that as a key challenge to their success.1 A strategic approach is required to leverage the technology to enhance current business operating models. AI must be integrated with and supplement current value streams, while also being managed as a distinct strategic initiative. How do you do that successfully? The key to enabling a robust GenAI strategy Like any other strategic initiative, it comes down to setting the right objectives, developing the right plans, executing approved work efficiently, managing risks, adjusting when needed, and finally validating actual value delivered. An AI strategy is going to touch on multiple areas of the business, resulting in some dedicated initiatives, as well as changes to current and planned investments. The benefits of SPM for AI At ServiceNow, our Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) solution–itself powered by generative AI–is a key enabler for organizations looking to develop and implement a robust AI strategy. SPM helps organizations to deliver AI benefits in three key areas: • Accelerating productivity • Increasing agility • Transforming the experience Let’s look closer at each of these benefits and examine in depth how ServiceNow SPM can help your organization maintain alignment to strategy while tracking AI usage. The main challenges for executives are identifying where and how generative AI (GenAI) fits into existing and future business and operating models, how to experiment productively with GenAI use cases, and how to prepare for the longer- term disruptions and opportunities resulting from GenAI trends. —Gartner, What Generative AI Means for Business, 2024 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. 2 Organizations aren’t pursuing AI just because it’s the latest, cool technology. More than half of business leaders polled in the U.S. are measuring the success of GenAI through productivity gains.2 GenAI may be new, and organizations might still be learning how to leverage it, but it’s already expected to contribute to the bottom line. That’s not surprising, since investments in AI are significant and disruptive: 97% of business leaders are currently investing in GenAI, with 43% planning to invest $100m or more.3 Significant benefits—especially increased productivity—are needed to justify that level of investment. But there’s a problem: just 27% of surveyed business leaders say that they are ready to scale up GenAI initiatives.4 And 44% say that it could take more than six months to do so as well as take advantage of potential benefits.5 In today’s GenAI landscape, six months is a lifetime. Why is it so difficult? Accelerating productivity Just 27% of surveyed business leaders say that they are ready to scale up GenAI initiatives. And 44% say that it could take more than six months to do so as well as take advantage of potential benefits. In today’s GenAI landscape, six months is a lifetime. 3 Legacy project management doesn’t work For many organizations, implementing GenAI is challenging because they are still dealing with legacy approaches to planning and delivery that aren’t designed for today’s world. The consequences of these legacy approaches: • There is poor alignment between plans and projects. Work is carried out that doesn’t contribute to organizational success, while there is a failure to recognize those investments that can make better contributions. • Processes are siloed and inefficient. Disparate groups work in isolation, following processes that are different from those in other business areas; they’re all focused on the legacy way of doing things–processes developed at a time when change happened much more slowly. • Processes are rigid and inflexible. This makes it hard for organizations to adapt and shift when circumstances change–and they are changing rapidly with GenAI. • The data to manage this environment isn’t useful. It is incomplete, stored in multiple locations, outdated and inaccurate; as a result, it isn’t trusted, which delays decisions and further diminishes productivity. 4 Reaping the productivity benefits of AI ServiceNow SPM helps you overcome all these challenges and provides a framework to optimize productivity. It offers a single solution to consolidate all your data, regardless of how you structure your investments, which approach you use to deliver the work, or which tools you leverage for managing the work. You use simple, intuitive planning tools like roadmaps to help plan, communicate, and adjust activities as necessary, breaking down silos along the way with a single source of truth for all business areas. Teams at all layers of the organization see not just what is required, but how their work supports the business, helping them to make better decisions in less time. With ServiceNow SPM, you can build a successful AI strategy to deliver on the promise of improved productivity. This includes: • A clear AI vision—Priorities communicated consistently will establish how AI will drive your organizational objectives, expected value, and the metrics you will use to validate success. • Prioritized innovation—A clear, evolving roadmap for AI will capture AI use cases and ideas, prioritize them based on value and feasibility, and demonstrate alignment with strategic priorities—even in today’s dynamic environment. • Effective and efficient execution—AI projects, and AI enabled products and services, are delivered across all methods and structures with complete visibility. • Integrated enterprise architecture—Current and future strategies are visible in one place, allowing enterprise architects to plan and implement the right technologies to avoid future risks and technology debt. • Continuous validation of value: Constant management and measurement of actual performance can ensure you achieve the expected impact and outcomes of your GenAI initiatives as well as rapidly pivot when needed. These capabilities are just the start of how SPM can help you get the most out of GenAI. To ensure that your productivity goals continue to be met in an ever-changing world, you need to create an enterprise designed to be agile and adaptive. SPM can help you there too. 5 In fact, the accelerated pace of emerging technology change is likely to significantly widen the first-mover and fast-follower gap. As such, tracking the evolution of tools and applications to keep pace with innovation will be imperative. Further, early adoption will quickly highlight resource and capability gaps and give first movers a leg up in investing in people, technology, and process change. —KMPG, Generative AI: From Buzz to Business Value, 2024 AI is evolving. While you may think that you know how it will impact your business, the reality will inevitably be different. And as you and your customers learn to leverage the capabilities of GenAI, you will need to adapt and pivot. Your ability to pivot needs to be as effective and efficient as possible, minimizing disruption and maximizing results. ServiceNow SPM is part of the Now intelligent platform, providing a view of everything that is happening in your organization from one place, and facilitating the changes that you need. With ServiceNow APM (Application Portfolio Management), your IT leaders have complete visibility into the usage of AI technologies across the organization. They can understand which applications provide AI capability, which applications incorporate AI into their functionality, and which applications leverage AI from other applications—including external large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI. When a need for change is identified, SPM enables the related work requests to go into the same demand funnel as everything else across the enterprise. This ensures that the requests are prioritized appropriately and that there will be visibility into the funding, scheduling and execution of the work. The path from need to solution is as short as possible, allowing your organization to adapt and adjust its response to shifting circumstances. Increasing agility 6 Managing work collaboratively At an organizational level, the best way to understand how to leverage GenAI, and to develop the most innovative solutions, is through experimentation. That requires the ability to begin work quickly, with minimal structure, allowing teams to experiment, adjust, and learn to establish the best use cases. At the same time, those learnings must be captured, and there must be a way for organizations to convert successful experiments into prioritized, funded initiatives. That’s where, ServiceNow collaborative work management (CWM) comes in. CWM allows AI incubation teams to get to work quickly, without the need for significant structure or support. Teams can set up their initiatives, track work in a way that suits them, and collaborate on tasks and documents. They can also come together quickly to explore and examine an AI technology or use case to understand its validity to the organization. Importantly, this work can be viewed, just like any other piece of AI work, on the AI roadmap. Continuous review and adjustment That AI roadmap is critical for success. Organizations aren’t exploring AI casually. They are doing to advance their business, so aligning with strategic priorities and objectives is essential. The fast-paced nature of GenAI advances, combined with the inherent uncertainty of today’s operating environments, means that those roadmaps must continuously be reviewed and adjusted. With SPM, not only is collaborating to update plans and roadmaps straightforward, the communication of progress—and of the value of AI adoption to the business—is intuitive.