ServiceNow rounds out automation story with Intellibot acquisition

Over the past 18 months, ServiceNow has shown a real appetite for focused acquisition activity – with a particular emphasis on supplementing its platform’s evolving automation capabilities.

Through 2020, ServiceNow acquired several automation and AI-focused firms – including Passage AI, Loom Systems, and Element AI – helping the firm to bolster its talent pool with some of the industry’s best and brightest. Through its latest acquisition of Hyderabad-based RPA specialist, Intellibot, ServiceNow rounds out its automation story, with a shifting focus on embedding various forms of automation across its Now Platform.

ServiceNow advises Intellibot’s RPA technology will be embedded directly into the Now Platform, enabling customers to more easily integrate with modern and legacy systems and also strengthen other automation capabilities. This move will help move ServiceNow further towards its goal of being a single digital workflow platform uniting systems, people, and data in the modern enterprise.

Enterprises are increasingly looking to embed automation capabilities across their business, with a view to drive out cost, boost service quality, and enable other digital investments – such as ensuring a smooth flow of data to fuel AI initiatives.

The announcement follows the firm’s latest Quebec release, which includes new AI and ML capabilities, including ITOM Predictive AIOps, which predicts issues before they become problems and helps organizations automate resolutions; Virtual Assistant, which is designed to intercept and resolve issues before they reach human agents; and AI Search, which delivers a consumer-grade search experience for employees and customers. These capabilities represent the integration of AI functionality from previous acquisitions, specifically Loom Systems and Attivio.

It’s this track-record that makes this acquisition so interesting. ServiceNow has a knack for finding core capability out on the market that is quicker to acquire and build into the platform over time, than develop from scratch. Take the acquisition of Passage AI, as an example, which over the course of a year has been built into powerful virtual assistant and chatbot solutions. If we can anticipate the same process, the Intellibot acquisition will see RPA capabilities rewired and built into the platform directly – a combination that is attractive to enterprise leaders looking for simpler and more efficient ways to integrate ServiceNow with legacy systems without resource-intensive overhauls or integration work.

The reality for most enterprises is that not every system needs to be modernised and re-platformed on the latest technology. Instead, a better approach is to wind down legacy systems over time, but ensure they can communicate with the latest business applications as seamlessly as possible. RPA has always been an attractive solution to support this strategy, replacing the otherwise manual efforts needed to transfer data between systems. By building this capability directly into the platform, ServiceNow can multiply the business value it offers by enabling businesses to integrate with legacy systems and automate workflows across the business.