ServiceNow Adds Capabilities to Help in Fighting Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted not only in people working in new ways, but also necessitated new workflows for the changed world, ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott told the online audience at the opening keynote of Knowledge 2021, ServiceNow’s virtual conference, Tuesday. 

"Science and technology were at the forefront of this year. And let's not forget the people driving it: our employees, our customers, our community," McDermott said. "We knew we had to work quickly to solve some of the world's most difficult challenges, one workflow at a time."

McDermott added: "We realized we were at the epicenter of the workflow evolution. We knew that the world was counting on us to make the world of work work better for them. We realized that it was time not for linear thinking, but for exponential thinking. We're helping our customers dream big and build their digital bridge to the future."

Lauding his engineering team, McDemott said that in the past 18 months, ServiceNow has doubled the features and functionality of the Now platform for customers, quickly adding new workflows, new emergency response apps, a safe workplace suite of applications, and "we leaned in to turning vaccines into vaccinations."

"We can build whatever workflows that our customers dream of," McDermott said. "Whatever the challenge, we are there to support our customers with the Now platform."

ServiceNow announced updates to its vaccine administration solution, enabling the following:

• Clinicians and staff can schedule walk-up appointments on site for first- and second-dose appointments, allowing for in-person registration;  
• Contact center agents can access all of the available appointment times instead of having to choose the first available; 
• People can reschedule appointments to different vaccination centers, based on what is convenient for them.

The new vaccine workflows were among a number of announcements ServiceNow made at the virtual event.

The company also unveiled new capabilities as part of its Field  Service Management product. They include the following:

• Dispatcher Workspace, for scheduling and tracking tasks, technicians, and locations in a single location;
• Capacity and Reservations Management, for field service managers to create granular scheduling rules for teams and contractors; 
• Contractor Management, to support the end-to-end contractor process, from onboarding to project completion;
• Offline access to the mobile field service app, which provides the information technicians need to complete their work; and
• Native Asset Management, a single repository for assets in stock and inventory control.

ServiceNow is also investing in emerging technologies, such as IoT and augmented reality.

The company also  launched a new healthcare and life sciences service management product. It includes the following:

• A healthcare data model to support interoperability of patient data and the flow of information;
• A healthcare agent workspace to provide a 360-degree view of patient information; and
• Pre-built workflows for healthcare. 

"We are experiencing a fundamental shift in healthcare, where patients expect more choice in how their care is managed and delivered," said Mike Luessi, general manager of healthcare and life sciences industry solutions at ServiceNow. "ServiceNow is applying its successful COVID-era innovations to a broader spectrum of healthcare scenarios with a purpose-built healthcare and life sciences solution."