The level of complexity in the business environment and within organizations has increased tremendously in recent years. This is due to factors such as the skills shortage, the increase in compliance regulations, supply chain disruptions, new expectations for demonstrable sustainability management, and hybrid working. In parallel, however, technological capabilities have evolved at an impressive rate. Digitization is no longer the challenge, but the solution for innovative, agile and effective business.

We devote this blog post to the following topics:

• How SPM is understood and used today.
• How artificial intelligence will change project management and strategic planning in companies
• What actions you should take today to leverage the potential of digital technologies to your business advantage

SPM stands for the close integration of strategic planning and operational execution: moving away from a top-down approach to a two-way, real-time exchange of information designed to drive accurate decisions and value-creating outcomes at the project and enterprise levels. Successful organizations are hyper-connected and know how to leverage their data in an agile manner. SPM, with its diverse integration options, is the central hub for this.

Much of the data analysis and process automation that still needs to be configured manually today will be available out-of-the-box in the coming years thanks to artificial intelligence and will evolve autonomously through smart algorithms. This will also change the way SPM users see their role. They will have to learn to cooperate optimally with artificial intelligence. The greater the proportion of administrative tasks that can be taken over by virtual assistants becomes, the greater the scope for conceptual, creative work and new forms of project management and business management that are still completely unknown today.

Stay informed about the developments of artificial intelligence in the field of strategic project portfolio management. By doing so, you are already promoting the further development of your organization.

Generative AI for your Strategic Portfolio Management: ServiceNow is working on it for you. In the future, let your virtual assistants create project plans based on historical templates and best practice templates, populate them with content and track them. Tedious project time tracking can soon not only be automated, but likely mapped much more accurately in terms of content, which will greatly increase organizational understanding of resource effectiveness and planning accuracy. Gartner predicts that 80% of administrative project management tasks will be taken over by AI in the coming years.

ServiceNow SPM is already characterized by an excellent user experience. But the cross-departmental subject matter is complex: implementing and using the SPM solution requires users to expend intellectual effort and sometimes communicate with technical support. New employees must be trained regularly and go through a learning curve before they reach the required level of productivity. That’s normal. Thanks to chatbots, engagement with documentation becomes more dynamic and productive. You get guided support in real time. Injected usage recommendations based on your activities anticipate what would otherwise turn out to be a question mark or problem in the future.

The dovetailing of quantitative and qualitative real-time data for different stakeholder groups – prepared in dynamic reports – will accelerate the business agility of companies. With the Common Service Data Model, ServiceNow has already laid the foundation for this. In the future, the bottleneck will no longer be the available data, but the active handling of it: This influences meeting content, decision-making paths and further process designs. Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool that contributes to a hyper-connected, fluid organization if your employees are committed to using it.

The integration of artificial intelligence with SPM and third-party systems represents the effective work environment of the future. Much of what requires complex integration projects today will be independently configurable by business users in the future, thanks to the efforts of established technology vendors. Fading in data queries directly into meetings, having discussed project changes automatically incorporated, filling presentations with SPM content by command – this is the working world we have been officially working towards since ChatGPT.

The possibilities of artificial intelligence are fascinating and can change the working world for the better. But it needs to be handled responsibly. Companies will need regulatory frameworks at different levels to manage the use of artificial intelligence in a sensible and controlled way. At the software level, companies should be able to set how much data transparency is necessary to enable AI-based workflow chains and to prevent or identify AI-generated biases (false assumptions). At the HR level, new concepts will be needed to integrate human-machine interaction into an inspiring work climate that continues to be interpersonal. Corporate management will be confronted with a number of decisions, be it which AI functions should be implemented or which data should be purchased externally to further train the company’s internal AI.

ServiceNow is investing one billion USD over the next three years to develop AI applications and further strengthen its digitally integrated ecosystem. We would be happy to show you how you can optimize your business processes with ServiceNow SPM today and accompany you as a service partner into the modern working world.