Manager Hub, Admin Center, ServiceNow Vault and the expansion of Auto Resolution to Human Resources are all highlights of the new release.

ServiceNow has risen to become a major force in IT with its focus on digital workflows on their cloud-based Now platform that enable people to work at the maximum of productivity. Now the new Tokyo version of the Now platform has been released, with what the company is calling supercharged automation and AI features that will drive productivity further forward.

“We are not fundamentally changing our platform, but with Tokyo we are trying to illustrate how changes are tied to overall transformation,” said Jeff Gore, VP Product Marketing, Employee Workflows, ServiceNow“Customers come to us to solve challenges like connecting siloes and drive automation That’s why we talk about optimizing process so that people can  do their best work. In our San Diego release that came before this one, we redesigned the interface to provide a better user experience. In Tokyo, we talk about how all the new innovations are tied to the platform promise.”

The increase in both compliance and complexity has led customers to ask ServiceNow to provide solutions that make them more agile and resilient across their enterprise. The Tokyo release responds with features that simplify complex supply chains, automate asset management, and deliver auditable, investor-grade sustainability data.

One of these responses is Manager Hub, which is a net-new capability for ServiceNow.

“It lets a manager engage with an entire team through a single location in the Employee Center desktop and mobile, providing a single place for managers to establish and review employee journeys and respond to requests,” Gore said.

“Also net new is what we call Admin Center,” Gore added.  “It’s part of Service Now Impact, but it’s a whole new capability that provides a self-service capability to install and configure ServiceNow solutions. The new  Adoption Blueprint feature provides admins with application recommendations based on their best practice blueprints  about what should be installed and configured from this one location within the instance.” It will translate into simpler application installation and configuration.

“Manager Hub and Admin Center are first pillar experiences,” Gore said. “The second one is supercharging intelligence and trust.”

Issue Auto Resolution has been expanded to Human Resources, so that it expands capabilities of Issue Auto Resolution for ITSM to HR teams as well.

“For organizations to be able to autoroute and autoresolve effectively, the  system needs to be smart enough to know when a person has to respond to a more complex case,” Gore said. “Its Natural language understanding knows that, and also handles the routing.”

ServiceNow Vault strengthens security deployments across an entire organization using a set of premium privacy and security controls.

“It consists of five features, all of which were there before, but the concept of bringing them together into a single vault is new,” Gore said. These include native platform encryption with flexible key management,  data classification driving data anonymization, simplifying the management and protection of machine credentials, validating the authenticity and integrity of code being deployed to the MID Server ensuring no malicious insertion, and allowing the export of the  ServiceNow system and application logs at scale and in near real time as a service.

The Tokyo release also adds some new packaged offerings.

“We were already helping customers with things like asset management conversations, but now customers are asking for us to package solutions to quickly solve some of these challenges,” Gore said.

One new solution is Enterprise Asset Management for physical asset management. This automates the full lifecycle of physical business assets from planning to retirement for industries such as healthcare, financial services, retail, manufacturing and public sector. Supplier Lifecycle Management, a new supplier portal , lets organizations transform traditionally high-effort supplier engagements that live in email and spreadsheets into modern, digital experiences, enabling teams to reduce operating costs and refocus talent on building a more resilient, diverse, and high-quality supply base.

The platform’s Environmental, Social, and Governance [ESG] capabilities have also been enhanced.

“This is clearly a focus area for us and a lot of organizations,” Gore said. Management has been enhanced to allow companies to establish and document ESG goals and KPIs, track performance, collect and validate audit-ready data, and create disclosures that align with major ESG reporting frameworks, in a single end-to-end solution. Key capabilities include carbon accounting to calculate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and a first- and second-line user experience that helps companies efficiently meet increasing requests for ESG data. ServiceNow is collaborating with KPMG, Deloitte, DxC, Emissionsbox, Fujitsu, LTI, Mindtree, NTT and RSM, to extend ESG Management’s reach and capabilities into the market.

“Not only have customers been asking us for these innovations, but so have channel partners,” Gore stated. “Things like ESG Management and updates to carbon accounting, and collaborating with GSIs and other orgs to support their channel organization will all aid conversations channel partners will be having with their customers.”