Why you need AI in workflows

Many organisations rushed into AI. That’s what the leaders I speak with tell me. They spent a lot of money on general-purpose systems, and now they’re struggling to show measurable impact.

Businesses that fail to deliver value with AI risk falling behind competitors. The problem is the enterprise-wide AI tools they’ve invested in often lack the context needed to truly transform work. Real value comes from embedding AI in workflows.

Surface-level AI tools can block value

When organisations started adopting AI, leaders faced pressure to unlock immediate productivity gains. They invested in the most accessible, popular chatbots because they were easy to deploy across the business.

General-purpose assistants can be helpful, but they typically sit on top of processes. When AI isn’t integrated into workflows, it tends to act as an expensive adviser, delivering surface-level assistance in response to basic prompts. Value becomes diffuse, and organisations deploying AI fall short of their transformational potential.

According to Deloitte, just 34% of leaders claim to be using AI to “deeply transform their businesses.” The majority are stuck in shallower tiers: 30% are redesigning processes, and 37% have made little to no change to their underlying workflows.

The most successful organisations are evolving their AI strategies. Leaders are implementing business-specific agents trained to understand the company's proprietary terminology and processes.

This kind of AI understands the nuances of an organisation because it’s integrated where work happens. It can make better decisions than a generic AI system, which lacks context and access to business process data.

AI agents collaborate to get work done

Consider a task such as onboarding a new starter. Instead of approvals passing through five different employees spread across procurement, IT, and HR, AI agents can handle the process end to end. This frees employees to focus on higher-value activities.

Meaningful value comes from connecting multiple specialised AI agents, models, and capabilities. This can help your organisation become an agentic enterprise—where teams of AI agents collaborate with human employees to execute workflows across the business.

AI agents interacting with other AI agents isn’t a new concept. In the agentic enterprise, you’ll have many AI agents deployed simultaneously. The question leaders are asking is how to enable them to collaborate, communicate, and call on one another when necessary. That’s the value of an AI platform.

Turn scattered tools into systems of action

Before AI can act, it needs to sense what’s happening across the business. By combining rich process data with external data sources, you can give your AI agents the real-time context to understand the enterprise landscape and take informed action.

Connecting data, AI, and workflows on a single platform provides the control needed to scale individual actions into enterprise-wide productivity. It enables you to centrally coordinate teams of AI agents and turn isolated automation projects into end-to-end agentic execution that spans systems and departments.

ServiceNow connects AI agents to efficiently share information and hand off tasks, regardless of where a complex workflow begins. This enables specialised AI agents to collaborate on common goals.

For example, when a network issue arises, AI agents can collect information from network management software, security tools, application performance monitoring, and event management systems. They work together to identify the problem, create a resolution plan, and execute it once approved by a human operator.

Adam Spearing, vice president of AI go-to-market for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa at ServiceNow, believes integrating AI into core business processes is the key to unlocking AI transformation. “Enterprises must design operations where AI is embedded directly into workflows to support real-time decision-making, rather than sitting on top of existing legacy infrastructure,” he says.

“The ServiceNow AI Platform enables organisations to connect data, models, and workflows in one governed environment, turning AI from scattered use cases into coordinated, enterprise-wide systems of action,” he adds.

Find out how ServiceNow can help you put AI agents to work for people.