AI Strategies in 2025: Is Your Tech Setup Ready for Autonomous Artificial Intelligence?
Getting real at Knowledge 2025, ServiceNow brought the heat. They spilled the tea on their new AI game plan, aiming to torch old school enterprise systems.
Chew on this: fragmentation, silos, and dull workflows used to be minor hiccups. Now, they're roadblocks to progress.
As Bill McDermott said, "21st-century problems can't be solved with 20th-century architectures."
Our team jammed it out in Las Vegas, got the lowdown on every key announcement. This was more special for us: we marked another year teaming up with ServiceNow, with a special moment: our CRO, Nick Baca-Storni, had a sit down with ServiceNow's king, Bill McDermott.
Now let's dig into Knowledge 2025's main points.
The Opportunity (and the Urgency)
We're at a crossroads. AI ain't just a trend, but "civilization's greatest opportunity of this century" - worth $22 trillion, with the capacity to chop $4 trillion off operating expenses. But we're running out of time.
Despite mega investments, ServiceNow's AI Maturity Index showed a 9-point dip in enterprise data preparedness YOY. The issue? Smart tools and a dated architecture.
With no orchestration, AI can't scale. Without proper context, agents can't argue. And with disconnected systems, automation collapses under its own weight.
A Platform Connected: ServiceNow AI Agents
ServiceNow graced us with their AI Agent platform. It's not just a product; it's the grand design for the future of enterprises.
This platform's not here to replace your things. It's about merging your data and systems into something smooth.
From this harmony emerges several morsels:
- AI Agent Fabric, a shared-context hub for agents
- AI Agent Orchestrator, a dynamic dude coordinating tasks across agents
- AI Control Tower, for observing, governing, and maintaining compliance
- AI Studio, for crafting natural-language agents that don't require a PhD
- Workflow Data Fabric, enabling agents to swipe right on on-demand data without doubling
- RaptorDB, a new database for both analytical and operational scale
- Personal Data Fabric, providing context across internal and external sources
- Workflow Data Network, offering a bevy of pre-built integrations throughout the ecosystem
In a union with NVIDIA, ServiceNow's on a journey to create advanced reasoning models capable of reading contracts, deciphering data formats (like PDFs), and even understanding complex enterprise scenarios.
Live Demos: What Agents Can Actually Do
During the keynote, dollar bills flew as product leaders showed off how their agents stack up.
John Sigler and Joe Davis kicked things off with a contract renewal task. Traditionally, that'd require the legal, procurement, and finance teams. The demo? Minutes: agents reviewed contracts, scrutinized history, checked payment data, called on a Microsoft agent, and logged every nitty-gritty detail.
Sigler returned for a second round, focusing on software development. Using AI Studio, he cooked up a digital developer agent live. Mission? Scan a GitHub repo, root out security issues, investigate fixes, craft patches, and commit updates.
It taken care of the entire shebang-three updates, scripted and pushed-in under a minute. No burdensome tool switches or hangout times: just one instruction, and an agent that could reason, act, and deliver like a boss.
If you're thirsty for more on AI's impact on software development, dive into our article: "AI CodeSlinger: What's Left for Developers?"
Why CRM is Broken (at least the way we know it)
No secret: ServiceNow's waltzin' into the CRM game. But what's unique - and important to watch - is their vision: rethinking what CRM could be in a world where every business function influences the customer experience.
At Knowledge 2025, an eye-opener came during a customer experience session: CRM, in its current form, is flopping on its face.
"It promised a 360-view. What we got was fragmentation and customer aggravation."
Customer service ain't about sales anymore. It's hit by IT, finance, HR, supply chain... yet these systems are still disjointed. Result?
- Delayed responses
- Inconsistent data
- Lost opportunities
In the 21st century, every employee's a part of the customer experience team, but we're still operating like customer service, sales, and support live on separate planets.
That's why ServiceNow's shaking things up, redesigning CRM around workflows—not just interfaces. New capabilities such as CPQ orchestration, deep connections with Genesys and NICE, and stronger links between service and operations are replacing traditional systems with something way more flexible: a system of action.
The Architecture of the 21st-Century Boosted Enterprise
The deeper message at Know 25 was about architecture.
We're witnessing the largest enterprise architecture shift since the cloud. Traditional systems, shaped around departments and tasks, no longer align with AI's way of working. Agents skip lanes, problem-solve, connect, and act across domains. That's why ServiceNow pushes a platform composed of:
- Agents that collaborate, don’t just execute
- Data that's real-time and contextual
- Outcomes over outputs
- Autonomous orchestration as the new normal
This ain't just about speed, it's about resilience. About creating infrastructure that adapts instead of breaking when changes roll in.
Real-World Adopters: Pacesetters Setting the Pace
ServiceNow crowned their AI Pacesetter Awards, honoring organizations already groovin' in this new groove:
- Canada Life: blazed through catalog creation—2x faster
- Lloyds Bank: solved 90% of HR requests via agents, saving 4,000 workdays
- Telstra: shot from 18% to 94% case deflection with AI-powered virtual agents
Across sectors:
- AstraZeneca boasts agents in R&D, commercial ops, and even patient support
- UKG supports 80,000+ frontline customers with shift scheduling and pay optimization
- Standard Chartered transformed procurement with agents that surfaced opportunities automatically
Not these wins came from adding another tool. They sprung from integrating AI, data, and workflows under one roof.
- The AI Maturity Index revealed a 9-point dip in enterprise data preparedness year over year, indicating that the lack of orchestration, proper context, and connected systems are significant issues hindering AI's scalability and effectiveness.
- ServiceNow's AI Agent platform, unveiled at Knowledge 2025, aims to revolutionize enterprises by merging data and systems into a coherent, streamlined entity, enhancing AI's potential to automate, argue, and operationalize.
- The platform includes several essential components, such as AI Agent Fabric, AI Agent Orchestrator, AI Control Tower, AI Studio, Workflow Data Fabric, RaptorDB, Personal Data Fabric, and Workflow Data Network, which work together to provide context, optimize collaboration, enhance governance, and improve data access.
- ServiceNow partners with NVIDIA to develop advanced reasoning models that will help AI agents read contracts, decipher data formats, and comprehend complex enterprise scenarios, ultimately driving the future of AI-orchestrated business operations.
