5 things we heard in McDermott’s #Know23 keynote–and what ServiceNow Partners need to do stat
If you were at the Knowledge 2023 keynote by Bill McDermott, you heard a lot about what’s coming up next for ServiceNow. McDermott spent a lot of time talking about the near-future of app development, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and machine learning. Here are 5 things we heard McDermott talk about–and the 5 things we recommend ServiceNow Partners do to position themselves to be successful in the coming Intelligence Revolution.
1. ServiceNow transformations across industries are being challenged by a lack of digital skills in organizations.
McDermott mentioned that IDC predicts that there will be over 500 million apps developed by the end of this year (750 million apps by 2025). This exponential growth requires organizations to stand up armies of citizen developers, all of whom will need to have both the business knowledge and technical skills to support app development.
A lack of technical skills, data acumen, or digital strategy severely limits how much change a ServiceNow transformation can actually initiate, and those limitations will only grow as we shift towards an AI-driven future.
What Partners need to do: Begin assessing Business Readiness as part of transformation efforts.
ServiceNow Partners who want to help clients ride this explosive wave of development need to be able to help their clients perform a Business Readiness Assessment prior to engagements. This will help the Partners and client leadership understand what readiness skills the organization needs to learn as part of their transformation journey. It will also uncover areas where the organizational culture may be getting in the way of taking full advantage of the AI capabilities.
By understanding an organization’s business readiness for change, Partners can help position clients for quicker success and value realization.
2. The next 18 months will bring an “Intelligence Revolution,” with the burden of knowledge shifting from human beings to machines.
We’ve all heard the saying “Knowledge is power.” Historically, information has been considered invaluable political currency in most organizations, with functional experts serving as prestigious beacons of internal knowledge. In the not-so-distant future, however, AI will be able to digest and synthesize information with more volume, speed and accuracy than any human being could hope to manage. This revolution will strip many influential stakeholders of the very thing they prize the most about themselves and their roles: their knowledge.
Tl;dr: transformational AI initiatives will threaten the very existence of critical stakeholders across organizations, leading to organizational resistance and challenges to ServiceNow engagements.
What Partners need to do: Invest in Organizational Change Management now.
As Partners prepare to roll out automation and machine learning to clients, the role human beings will play will change. Folks who want to weather this change need to learn how to combine their own judgment and cognition in a useful way with the vast knowledge of machines–and this is a vision ServiceNow Partners need to be prepared to develop, communicate, and deploy.
Addressing fear-based organizational resistance to AI initiatives will be critical to getting widespread commitment and support to changes. Partners who don’t have a robust Organizational Change Management practice will be unable to support their clients through this journey.
3. Organizational design and roles need to change to support transformational initiatives
As the burden of knowledge and information shifts to machines, human beings will need to learn how to combine their own judgment and cognition with machine learning in order to drive more efficient operations. This will probably look radically different than the way most roles function today.
These new roles will not only require folks to have a different skillset than they have now, but they will also require innovative organizational design to accommodate these new ways of working. Leaders will need to decide not only how to structure their teams, departments, and organizations but also whether they want to upskill current resources or bring in new talent.
What Partners need to do: Offer organizational design (OD) services to clients.
If you’re a ServiceNow Partner who wants to support clients through meaningful transformations, the ability to support Organizational Design work will become a critical key differentiator. Transformational OD is not a skillset clients would necessarily have (or need to have) in-house for regular operations, so the more that Partners can fill that need for their clients, the more likely it will be that organizations will be structured in a way to support long-lasting change.
4. Trust will be the critical currency of AI.
McDermott made a point of mentioning “trust will be the critical currency of AI.” Employees in organizations from executives to ground-level will have to trust that the AI they implement will assess information and make decisions which are in line with their values and mission.
We all know trust doesn’t just happen organically, though. This leads to the obvious question: what needs to happen to support the organization building this trust? Experts suggest that the things needed to build organizational trust are consistent messaging, consistent standards, and consistent expectations.
What Partners need to do: Incorporate messaging, standards, and expectations management into engagements.
Partners who want to develop a reputation for successfully partnering on transformation efforts need to incorporate communication planning and stakeholder management into their offerings ASAP. This will ensure they’re helping their clients build organizational trust in the ServiceNow solutions and AI being developed, driving adoption and value realization.
5. Business strategy and IT Strategy need to align.
McDermott ended his #Know23 keynote with the observation that business strategy and IT strategy will have to align–and in fact integrate–to allow companies to thrive in the Intelligence Revolution.
This isn’t a new concept, but in the face of AI and machine learning, it’s more important than ever that technology and business activities all point in the same direction
What Partners need to do: support leadership alignment across client organizations.
While it can be tempting to assume clients are managing the internal politics and relationships among executive leadership, it will be critical in the coming years for Partners to support leadership engagement in a strategic and forward-looking way. It doesn’t matter how good of a solution a Partner develops if the product is not aligned with business goals and priorities.
Conclusion
By increasing their focus on organizational capabilities such as business readiness assessments, OCM, stakeholder engagement, OD, and leadership alignment, ServiceNow Partners can position themselves to lead their clients through the turbulence of the coming AI boom.
SkyPhi Studios can help Partners determine not only where their organizations need to be in terms of these capabilities–but also how to get there. By shifting from an implementation mindset to a focus on integration, Partners can deliver more value, ensure greater adoption, and develop a reputation for end-to-end client success.
