Throughout my career, I’ve focused on building and leading effective teams, and I firmly believe all leadership starts with empathy and understanding your people.

Today, leaders can pair empathy with AI, automation, and machine learning to drive efficiency and minimize employee stress. With applications like ServiceNow’s AIOps, Predictive Intelligence, and Automation Engine, organizations can address employee feedback and streamline workflows to retain top talent and ultimately grow at scale.  

Our NewRocket Delivery Guiding Principles

New tech is constantly being introduced in the workplace. At NewRocket we developed four guiding principles to help our Crew navigate this changing landscape. Here’s how we design and implement ServiceNow technologies and processes:

1. Processes must be efficient and well understood. We help companies build simple processes while meeting audit, regulatory, and compliance requirements.
2. Technology must be clean and (close to) out of the box. With several patches and up to two major releases each year, we work with clients to leverage “out-of-the-box” functionality whenever possible.
3. Foundational data integrity is essential. Successful integrated Enterprise Service Management programs include processes and services that create and consume common data such as configuration items, location, and people data.
4. Automation and machine learning are game changers. Automation increases efficiency and reliability and enhances the user experience. Automation opportunities also improve delivery and reduce costs and chances for error.

These tenets are fundamental to how we solve customer challenges (we wouldn’t call them “guiding principles” if they weren’t). Each depends on the others; automation and AI-powered solutions only work when the other three principles are in place.

The Building Blocks of Robust Automation, AI, and Machine Learning Strategy

Digital transformation doesn’t happen overnight. The journey requires continuous, steady improvements. When leadership combines a digital strategy and data governance in place with an IT roadmap, it generates empowerment, enterprise visibility, and trust across the organization.

NewRocket regularly collaborates with ServiceNow, whose Now Intelligence platform automates repetitive tasks so employees can focus on more important work. That’s the ultimate purpose of any sound automation strategy: giving your team more time to accomplish bigger and better things.

For example, ServiceNow's Virtual Agent can pull from previous issues and tickets to offer solutions to employees and with Now Assist for ITSM PRO, agent chat summarization and solution remediation are more ways to increase IT Teams efficiency leveraging the power of Gen AI.  Visibility to value realization showing time saved, cost savings, and incident deflections from these applications via Performance analytics can illustrate how your teams are tracking toward KPIs and spotlight data trends where teams should focus their efforts.

Predictive intelligence is another application companies can use to streamline their workflows. It combines AI, machine learning, and automation to deliver insights that help teams work smarter and faster. This application detects major incidents before they occur, automates workflows, and identifies opportunities for improvement. Predictive intelligence does all of that without adding to a team’s workload. Plus, you don’t need a data science expert to set up a predictive intelligence application.

Managing multiple business applications in your application portfolio make resolving security, material weaknesses, and conducting real-time audits time consuming without automation.  AI empowers teams to work smarter, not harder; this concept is critical to business resiliency.

Finally, we help our clients leverage machine learning to create and even uncover and correct service mapping gaps. Machine learning can also help classify tasks, instances, and other content at scale, offering suggestions to agents to help them solve issues faster.

Where Should CIOs and IT Leaders Prioritize Their Efforts?

IT leaders who maintain a growth and predictive mindset contribute more to their company’s success. By leading from a place of empathy and establishing a culture of excellence, you can achieve this mentality.

At NewRocket, I shape a strong culture by promoting positivity without dismissing Crew Members’ stressors and concerns. Automation is a huge help here. Guided by our four principles, we help our clients on The AI Way Path to Success leveraging AI-Powered Service Operations to reduce complexity and enable their business to engage in more meaningful, strategic work.

When evaluating applications and solutions, leaders should look for options that generate immediate resolutions and predict issues before they arise. Rather than spending hours analyzing reports and system logs to document causes, employees can work on initiatives that better serve their business stakeholders and customers.

For example, businesses can utilize virtual agents, AI-assisted routing, natural language processing, and more to offer quicker and more effective customer solutions.

Your entire leadership team must align on digital priorities as well. Incorporate a data-driven growth mindset into your strategy.

• How are you planning your automation and AI journey in your company?
• What processes do you need to transform to increase productivity and efficiency?
• What can help you reach your targets using specific key metrics?

Once you’ve established your goals and roadmap, ensure everyone is on the same page regarding their outputs and timelines.

At NewRocket, we focus on partnering with companies that foster cultures of innovation. Prioritizing innovation is vital to successful automation and transformation across an organization.  

Automation, AI, and machine learning can lead to impressive business growth. When we harness them properly, we maximize their value and put our teams in a better position to succeed.

Teresa is a purpose-driven service leader with over 20 years of experience transforming organizations, projects, and teams. Follow her on LinkedIn.