IT Management
ServiceNow + Microsoft: building the new working environment
Things will never be the same again, that much is clear. Look at the McKinsey Global Institute’s prediction that remote work will increase four to five-fold post-pandemic. Then take into consideration the 97% of employees already reporting that they don’t want to return to the office full-time. It certainly begs the question: how do you accommodate them long-term? And perhaps, just as important: what happens to those who are too slow to adapt?
Well, if one thing’s for certain, navel-gazing about the future of work won’t suffice. Only when businesses start focusing on the future of how we work will they bring about meaningful change.
Organisations looking for genuine longevity need a culture that concerns itself less on where people work, and more on enabling the right working environment.
And with Microsoft, that’s what we’ve set out to achieve: joining forces to deliver an integrated experience where employees can collaborate and communicate, all on one platform (no matter where they happen to be).
Why Microsoft + ServiceNow
Over 500,000 organizations have made Microsoft Teams their de facto business app since the start of the pandemic, keeping employees connected and engaged.
By embedding ServiceNow workflows natively within Microsoft Teams, employees receive a seamless digital experience where they can engage with colleagues directly, access apps such as Outlook and Yammer, chat with virtual agents for automated real-time assistance, and view information and services relevant to them.
And it doesn’t matter where they choose to work or need to be.
Let me give you two examples of how this is already helping businesses focus on creating a new working environment:
1. Unlocking employee productivity through Now Virtual Agent
We know the long list of benefits that chatbots provide in a customer service environment, but can they make a positive impact on employees too?
The answer is yes, and we’ve already proved it. During the pandemic, there was a 300% increase in Now Virtual Agent deployments, seeing self-service usage by employees grow 15-fold.
We wanted to make it as easy as possible for employees to get help, find information, and complete tasks when using Microsoft Teams. For instance, if your manager wants you to come into the office tomorrow, you can ask the Now Virtual Agent within Teams to book a workspace for you.
By embedding our Virtual Agent technology within Teams, employees have everything they need in one place, which means they can focus time that would usually be spent switching between multiple apps or on time-consuming tasks, on doing their best work.
IT teams would no longer be inundated with password reset requests or other low-level but time-consuming tasks – the Now Virtual Agent would automatically resolve them all.
Other benefits we’ve seen Virtual Agent offer so far include:
● Low-code capabilities that mean employees don’t require advanced technical skills in order to build out conversations
● Users can quickly find information relevant to them across many areas of the business including IT, HR, Finance, and Procurement
● Increases business efficiency by lowering costs and handling higher volume of routine tasks
2. Improving the employee experience on Teams
The past year has challenged many workplace myths, for example, we all now know that remote work, for most industries, is possible.
This rapid change, which came into place practically overnight, brought into focus the importance of business resilience and agility, specifically when it comes to creating a new digital working environment. This means providing teams with access to a dynamic virtual workplace that keeps them and departments as a whole connected and collaborating.
Since the pandemic Microsoft Teams adoption soared, now seeing 145 million daily users. And if you’re one of these users, integrating the ServiceNow hub to build this ‘dynamic virtual workplace’ becomes even easier. Prebuilt with the Now Virtual Agent and Microsoft apps, our technology can plug straight into your current operations. In no time you’ll get complete oversight of everything that’s important to you on one dashboard.
Mirroring an office environment, the hub offers instant access to apps and information, creating a single, interconnected experience across departments. Through seamless workflows, colleagues can conduct business and collaborate easier through their hub where they can share files and complete key tasks in real-time, boosting the overall efficiency of your internal processes.
And at the end of the day, this change means your employees can focus on more important work matters rather than the tedious steps it takes to complete them.
Teaming up to workflow better
Through a common vision: empowering employees to achieve more, especially in this hybrid working environment, Microsoft Teams and ServiceNow have worked together to create a platform that can truly meet employees where they work.
It’s no longer about where you work, but how you get work done.
To find out more, please join our webinar on Tuesday, 29th June at 10:00 AM BST
