By Vijay Kotu, Richard McGill Murphy, Brian Solis, and Dorit Zilbershot Impact AI Series Enterprise AI Maturity Index 2025 © 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 2 Contents Introduction 03 Section 1: The AI-driven future 04 Section 2: Pacesetters lead the way 10 Section 3: Industry and regional snapshots 21 Section 4: Conclusion 24 Section 5: Appendix 26 E N T E RP R I S E A I MAT URI T Y I N DE X 2 02 5 Authors and contributors 29 © 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 3 E N T E RP R I S E A I MAT URI T Y I N DE X 2 02 5 Introduction For our second annual Enterprise AI Maturity Index, we surveyed private and public sector leaders worldwide to measure progress on their AI journeys. The results surprised us. This year’s average maturity score has declined significantly—9 points—from last year. Fewer than 1% of respondents scored over 50 on our 100-point AI maturity scale. The highest score fell a whopping 12 points year on year. These sharp drops suggest that AI innovation is outpacing organizations’ capacity to deploy AI effectively at scale. There's a vision gap at the top, as leaders struggle to set audacious AI goals while also driving measurable results. Organizations understand they must foster an innovation-forward culture to get ahead. But many lack the proper guardrails needed to innovate safely at scale. We identified an elite cohort of Pacesetter companies that are leading the pack across all dimensions of AI maturity. We modeled the potential economic impact if all companies on the Forbes Global 2000 list were Pacesetters. In aggregate, this could produce a $113 billion increase in total gross margins across all Global 2000 companies. In this report, we provide a view from halfway up the AI summit. We show how AI Pacesetters are leveraging AI by connecting data, automation, and workflows. Then we offer a roadmap for how any organization can deploy AI, govern it, and measure ROI in ways that benefit customers, employees, and the bottom line. Our key takeaways: Agentic AI is enabling enterprises to deploy autonomous software agents that collaborate with other agents in pursuit of defined goals. The right leadership strategy and platform are essential to success. And in the age of AI, human talent and creativity are more important than ever. Richard Murphy Head of Global Thought Leadership Research, ServiceNow © 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 4 E N T E RP R I S E A I MAT URI T Y I N DE X 2 02 5 Section 1 The AI-driven future © 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 5 AI maturity is a moving target E N T E RP R I S E A I MAT URI T Y I N DE X 2 02 5 Based on survey responses, we assigned each organization an overall AI maturity score between 0 and 100. Last year’s maturity scores were low across the board. This year's scores are lower still. However, organizations that we call Pacesetters are ahead of the pack and have the ROI to show for it. When we fielded the first AI Maturity Index study in early 2024, organizations were just coming to grips with the potential of generative AI to deliver better, faster experiences for customers and employees. One year later, emerging tools such as agentic AI are taking transformation to the next level. On the one hand, that’s excellent news for organizations. Emerging AI technologies are already delivering measurable value, and organizations are enthusiastic about embracing AI across the enterprise. On the other hand, the rapid pace of innovation is leading to a decline in AI maturity. To track the state of AI maturity across the globe, Oxford Economics and ServiceNow surveyed just under 4,500 executives worldwide and measured organizational performance across five pillars of AI maturity: • AI strategy and leadership • Workflow integration • Talent and workforce • AI governance • Realizing value in AI investment Glass half full Importantly, our research findings don’t spell doom for the enterprise. While overall AI maturity levels have dropped, AI is generating meaningful returns for nearly every organization we studied. More than two-thirds of them (67%) say AI has increased their organization’s gross margin. Collectively, those executives indicate it increased an average of 11%. Regardless of use case, AI provides ROI for most organizations, with nearly half reporting “significant” ROI for search functions, analytical AI, process AI, and predictive tools. Executives expect their organization’s investment in AI to increase by about 8.6% on average in the next fiscal year. And while our Pacesetters are not immune to the maturity slowdown, they are still well ahead of the pack when it comes to deploying AI productively at scale. Their approach to AI holds valuable lessons for all organizations. T H E A I -DR I V E N F UT URE enterprise AI maturity dropped 9 points Y/Y, from 44 to 35 9pts 82% expect to increase AI investment next year © 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 6 To realize the full power of AI, think of it as a spectrum from incremental outcomes through exponential results. Along this spectrum are three levels of AI. • Analytical AI predicts a numerical outcome or recommends a particular action based on specific, single-focused tasks, such as a chatbot. • Generative AI generates content in response to natural language prompts, such as generating case resolutions, emails to prospects, or code. • Agentic AI creates an orchestration layer across an enterprise that acts autonomously and proactively makes decisions to execute material business activities through end-to-end workflows. Incremental forms of AI are an important advance in technology. They show up in nearly every piece of software we use. But to reap the exponential rewards AI can offer, companies must adopt all three levels of AI and embed them within a platform that can take action in pursuit of defined goals. Early days for agentic AI E N T E RP R I S E A I MAT URI T Y I N DE X 2 02 5 T H E A I -DR I V E N F UT URE Agentic AI—a type of artificial intelligence that acts autonomously in pursuit of defined goals—has emerged as the next big thing in tech. Executives are excited about its potential to boost productivity across the enterprise. However, only about one third of respondents have reached at least the piloting stage for any agentic AI use case. Those who have started to implement agentic AI are already seeing gains. Top use cases include addressing security risks and monitoring/interacting with internal systems. About 40% of executives are considering adding agentic AI tools to their tech stack within the next 12 months, but most feel they lack the proper governance guardrails to do so successfully. Chris Bedi Chief Customer Officer and Enterprise AI Advisor, ServiceNow 28% 55% Agentic AI uptake is low at this point… are somewhat familiar 43% …but many organizations plan to accelerate adoption are considering adopting agentic AI in the next 12 months are very familiar with agentic AI 33% are piloting their first use cases or have at least one fully functioning use case © 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 7 Rapid change brings challenges E N T E RP R I S E A I MAT URI T Y I N DE X 2 02 5 T H E A I -DR I V E N F UT URE Good help is hard to find Human talent is critical for transforming AI from a novel gadget into a mission-critical tool. However, organizations are still struggling to find the right talent to get the job done. Key challenge: It's not always clear what skills people need to work effectively with AI. Measurement struggles persist AI is changing faster than executives can develop strategies to harness it. Few leaders have a concrete idea of how to implement AI in their organization by connecting business strategy to technology strategy. Innovation requires governance Many enterprises are driving AI adoption by encouraging their employees to experiment with AI. This creates potential risks, given most enterprises surveyed also say they don’t yet have the right guardrails in place to govern AI effectively. strongly agree they have the mix of talent and skills they need to execute on their AI strategy agree or strongly agree they are still in the process of identifying skills needed to implement their AI strategy have training and support programs that reskill employees to use AI effectively are operationalizing the impact of AI and specifying how AI drives business goals strongly agree they have a defined set of metrics in place to measure return on AI transformation are working to foster a culture of trust by enabling teams to recommend AI solutions to everyday problems in the workplace empower teams to make decisions about AI solutions that help solve functional business needs have a designated team that drafts AI policies, mitigates AI risks, and focuses on responsible AI use 55% have rolled out 100 or more different AI use cases 19% 29% 33% 64% 59% 44% 61% 58% © 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 8 Pacesetters do it differently E N T E RP R I S E A I MAT URI T Y I N DE X 2 02 5 T H E A I -DR I V E N F UT URE Defining Pacesetters An elite cohort that we call “Pacesetters” is outperforming the rest of the group. While this year's average AI maturity score is 35, Pacesetters averaged a score of 44. A tiny fraction of those we surveyed, under 1% of the sample, scored over 50. Pacesetters make up just 18.2% of respondents. However, by adopting the Pacesetter roadmap, any organization can enter their ranks. The top performer in this year’s AI Index survey scored just 57.9, which is 13 points lower than last year's high score. The takeaway: Even the most advanced enterprises are still in the early stages of AI transformation. Organizations still have time to close the gap by following the Pacesetter roadmap. Extent that organizations’ AI solutions have achieved target outcomes 58% 36% 57% 30% 52% 32% Improved experiences Increased efficiency/productivity Ability to innovate faster Pacesetters Others © 2025 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved.