ServiceNow's Autonomous CRM Engine takes aim at Salesforce installs

ServiceNow is pitching the engine at a moment when Gartner has warned that legacy CRM platforms can carry hidden maintenance expenses, integration dependencies and security risks. Gartner predicts that by 2028, most enterprises will identify outdated CRM systems as an obstacle to effectively using AI. That framing puts the new engine in front of buyers who may already be questioning whether their current CRM is worth keeping.

The discovery step is where ServiceNow claims the biggest gains. Terence Chesire, group vice president of CRM and industry workflows at ServiceNow, said organizations typically must interview employees across departments and geographies to understand how sales and service processes operate. He said the engine can collapse that into days by showing how sales processes occur by product line.

ServiceNow is also using the discovery output to recommend redesigned workflows based on industry practices, which business leaders can review in a visual workspace before deploying changes. Chesire acknowledged that automation doesn't eliminate difficult organizational decisions or integration challenges, and that linkages to other systems may get extended because ServiceNow always lands inside a heterogeneous environment. The company points to customer examples such as Bundesliga-Gruppe, which consolidated fan services from seven digital channels in about a month and now resolves 89% of fan inquiries on first contact, and Bell Canada, which connected 26 applications and 8,800 data silos to support 12,000 field employees.