“AI is the new UI.” That was the headline from ServiceNow’s September announcement of AI Experience, where employees can interact with work through AI, using text, voice, images, or agents instead of clicking through traditional apps.
The idea of multimodality – combining text, voice, and other natural interfaces – ties directly into ServiceNow’s evolving self-image as “the platform of platforms.”
Its goal, however, isn’t to replace apps, but to abstract them, giving users a single, intelligent point of engagement across the enterprise. It’s an evolution from having systems of record and systems of engagement to systems of action, Adam Spearing, the company’s EMEA head of AI innovation, told NowBen.
Beyond Apps: Towards Systems Of Action
What differentiates ServiceNow from its competitors, said Spearing, is its ability to connect operational data across silos. “We’re not a siloed tool… We sit as an operational technology. We know the CMDB, all the information about the tech you’ve got.”
That context – the fabric of how work actually gets done – is what allows AI to move from generating content to driving real enterprise outcomes.
Explaining what ServiceNow calls its workflow data fabric, Spearing said: “We have only one data model, so it means I can now get at all the enterprise data, but not to copy it somewhere else and store it in ServiceNow… It is where it is… Our objective is: can we just get at it so we can use it for a decision and let it go? We hold it, allow the technology to make the decision, and then just put it back where it was.”
It’s a practical approach to a long-standing enterprise problem: how to make data actionable without creating new silos.
The Danger of Doing Nothing
Additionally, Spearing cautions against “AI paralysis”. Some organizations are “bowling in at the speed of light,” he says, while others are stuck waiting for the perfect strategy. Both are risky.
He warned against what he calls “forward-looking technical debt” – the cost of waiting too long to act.
“The longer you spend procrastinating on the ‘should I?’, you can analyze this to the 100th degree and actually end up doing nothing,” he said. “The technology is rolling out at a pace we’ve never seen before. So if you don’t get with it soon, you’ll find the gap between you and it is so big that it becomes overwhelming.”
The right balance, Spearing says, is “a risk-reward equation”: move responsibly – but move.
If you’re wondering how, his answer is a structured framework. “Think about what we call an AI factory,” he said. “In that factory, you need to decide what are the processes I run that I think can benefit from this technology, and what is the benefit? Then what are the choices of technology I’m going to use to achieve that?”
The goal isn’t to apply AI everywhere. “Your factory has to qualify out those that are not suitable for AI… and then to what level those other ones can use AI… before you even put hands on a keyboard,” he said. The organizations taking that thoughtful approach, he said, “are the ones that are going to accelerate really quickly.”
From ITSM Roots to Autonomous IT
ServiceNow’s roots in IT Service Management remain core to that philosophy. “The heritage goes before ITSM… What Fred Luddy [ServiceNow founder] built was a workflow tool,” said Spearing. ITSM simply gave it a foothold in the market.
Today, that foundation underpins what he calls autonomous IT. “Automated software provisioning is still an enormous problem… KPMG got it down [so that] no human [is] involved.” The benefits are tangible: “If I drop my laptop in the kitchen at three in the morning, I can have a new one re-imaged a few hours later.”
In fact, KPMG’s own use of ServiceNow has expanded into a broader strategic offering. The firm recently launched Global Business Services with KPMG Velocity, enabled by ServiceNow – described as “an agentic AI-enabled offering that provides clients with a single digital platform to strategically orchestrate AI and agents.”
The initiative combines KPMG’s advisory and trust-services expertise with the ServiceNow Platform’s Agent Studio, AI Control Tower, and workflow data fabric to streamline complex operational workflows across finance, procurement, HR, and IT.
Final Thoughts
For ServiceNow professionals, the takeaway is clear: adopt, govern, iterate. “Get up to our AI-enabled technology… get on the latest version,” urged Spearing.
Because the real risk, as he puts it, isn’t what AI might do – it’s what happens if you wait. “The risk of not doing anything is pretty considerable.”