The new solution, suitable for a broad range of customers, digitizes lower‑value tasks so teams can focus on the work that matters most and deliver the highest‑value outcomes
LAS VEGAS – At their Knowledge 22 event here, digital workflow company ServiceNow has made an announcement adding a new capability to their platform. Their Procurement Service Management [PSM] solution helps transform procurement across the enterprise by digitizing lower‑value tasks so teams can focus on the work that matters most and deliver the highest‑value outcomes.
“We just made PSM available with our San Diego release, which went GA in March of this year,” said Colby Blakeman, Director Product Management at ServiceNow. “We chose to make it public here at our Knowledge event, since it is so important, particularly when dealing with supply chain disruption issues.”
Precisely because procurement management is important, ServiceNow has provided various solutions covering it previously, but not anything as comprehensive as the new PSM solution.
“We have provided solutions in a variety of formats, like vendor risk management, which assess the risk of third parties, and makes sure you get things right before you sign with them,” Blakeman stated.
“What we have done here is productize procurement service to get to value faster,” he added. “This is the first time we have productized a solution in this way.”
A recent analysis from ServiceNow indicates that only about half of requests to procurement teams are focused on procuring goods and services.
“The other half is around transactional and operational processes,” Blakeman said. “Operational includes things like returning damaged goods, and today it is handled in email or outside of core services, which is slower and less efficient. If employees don’t get help with these issues fast they use email, and procurement gets dragged into being a tactical thing.
“There is an opportunity to help automate and reskill these teams, and to automate more low value transactional work,” Blakeman added. “Robotic Process Automation [RPA] is also new with San Diego, and it helps achieve these same goals by being useful for things like invoice processing.”
PSM lets finance departments manage the complete procurement lifecycle with one centralized system of action, providing end‑to‑end visibility into all processes and complementing current systems of record.
“The ROI comes in improvement for teams creating standard repeatable processes,” Blakeman said. “Productivity improvements will be significant, as the saving in time to value is a matter of weeks rather than a year or more. It will also improve an organization’s ability to negotiate savings.”
Blakeman said that this will be a major play for channel partners.
“It’s a massive market for partners, whether they are in BPO or implementation consulting,” he indicated. I fully expect partners to be excited by this.”
Blakeman said he expects much the same reaction from customers.
“We see benefits for all customers, even though commercial companies or those that are smaller in size tend to have an ERP rather than a core procurement system,” he indicated. We see it as very relevant for customers of all sizes because we are meeting them where they are, and helping them in their transformation journey regardless if where they are starting from within the procurement process.
“We are very excited to continue partnering with customers in this new space,” Blakeman concluded. “We are just starting here.”
