Exploring Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO)

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Exploring Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO)

    Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO) leverages generative AI to help procurement fulfillers quickly summarize procurement-related records, providing an overview, completed actions, and next steps. This streamlines understanding and managing sourcing requests, purchase requisitions, and procurement cases within the Source-to-Pay Workspace. It enables fulfillers to stay informed about progress and necessary actions, improving efficiency and responsiveness.

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    Note: Installation requires entitlement to specific SKUs such as Sourcing and Procurement Operations Pro Plus or Source-to-Pay Operations Pro Plus.

    Key Features

    • Summarization for Fulfillers: Generates concise summaries of sourcing requests, purchase requisitions, and procurement cases, providing visibility into the procurement process status to enable faster decision-making and action.
    • Conversational Intake via Virtual Agent: Uses AI-driven conversational interfaces to guide requesters through submitting procurement requests accurately without relying heavily on fulfillers. This includes submitting purchase requisitions, sourcing requests, and requests for non-catalog products or services.
    • Now Assist Skills Integration: Includes features such as Now Assist Genius Results, Multi-turn Catalog Ordering, and Topic routing to enhance user interaction and support within the procurement lifecycle.
    • Domain Separation Support: Allows organizational separation within Virtual Agent to ensure data and interaction segregation as needed.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Enhances procurement team productivity by automating record summarization, reducing manual effort to gather status and next steps.
    • Improves requester experience by enabling AI-guided submissions that reduce errors and streamline intake processes.
    • Facilitates quicker response times and better-informed actions by providing fulfillers with AI-generated insights directly within the Source-to-Pay Workspace.
    • Supports integration of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to improve virtual agent capabilities and reduce workload related to topic discovery and request routing.

    Next Steps

    • Install Now Assist for SPO if entitled via the appropriate SKUs.
    • Configure Now Assist for SPO to activate generative AI skills and Virtual Agent conversational intake.
    • Train procurement fulfillers and requesters on using the Source-to-Pay Workspace with Now Assist summaries and Virtual Agent assistance.
    • Leverage Now Assist features to optimize procurement operations, reduce manual processing, and enhance user engagement.

    With the Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO) application, fulfillers can summarize the details of procurement-related records to keep them informed about their progress and action items.

    Note:
    You can install this application only if you're entitled to the Sourcing and Procurement Operations Pro Plus SKU, Source-to-Pay Operations Pro Plus SKU, or the Source-to-Pay and Contract Operations Pro Plus SKU.

    Overview of Now Assist for SPO

    Using the generative AI capabilities, a fulfiller can generate a summary of a record that includes an overview, actions completed so far, and next steps. This ​enables them to get the context by gathering information about a record and taking actions more quickly​. It ​also enables them to refresh and post the summary to the work notes or activity stream.

    Figure 1. Now Assist skills for SPO
    Now Assist skills for SPO section, showing the Summarization for fulfillers and Conversational intake feature cards.
    Table 1. Now Assist for SPO features and skills in the Now Assist Admin console
    Now Assist for SPO features Skills
    Summarization for fulfillers
    • Sourcing request summarization
    • Purchase requisition summarization
    • Procurement case summarization
    Conversational intake
    • Now Assist Genius Results
    • Now Assist Multi-turn Catalog Ordering
    • Now Assist Topics

    Now Assist for SPO Skills

    The Now Assist for SPO application includes the generative AI skills and features that enable procurement specialists and fulfillers to view a summary of procurement-related records quickly within the Source-to-Pay Workspace.
    Summarization for fulfillers
    Provides a fulfiller with a summary of procurement-related records. This enables them to get visibility into the status of the record in the procurement process and consequently enables them to take the necessary actions quickly.

    The fulfillers can get a summary of the following procurement records using the Source-to-Pay Workspace.

    • Sourcing request summarization
    • Purchase requisition summarization
    • Procurement case summarization

    For more information, see Summarize a record by using Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO) in Source-to-Pay Workspace.

    Conversational intake
    Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO) in Virtual Agent uses procurement-related topics to route requesters to the appropriate intake process, and then through conversation, helps to submit their requests. With this application, you don't need to rely on fulfillers, and your requesters can submit their procurement requests accurately with the help of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) companion. For more information, see Request the generative AI capabilities by using the Now Assist for SPO Virtual Agent.

    For more information on configuring Now Assist for SPO, see Configuring Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO).

    As requesters, you can use Now Assist for SPO to submit purchase requisitions, sourcing requests, and even request for products or services that aren't in the catalog. To learn more about how to use Now Assist for SPO, see Using Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO).

    For detailed information on Now Assist in Virtual Agent and how to use generative AI skills in your conversational experiences, see Now Assist in Virtual Agent.

    Now Assist in Virtual Agent uses large language models (LLMs) and generative AI skills to help improve deflection rates and reduce the amount of time-consuming work that Natural Language Understanding (NLU) topic discovery requires. To understand how you can interact with the Virtual Agent when a Now Assist capability is active in your instance, and also the benefits of Now Assist in Virtual Agent, see Exploring Now Assist in Virtual Agent.

    You can also look up LLM assistants for more information on the Now Assist in Virtual Agent assistant that is created during the Conversational Interfaces Assistants guided setup.

    Domain separation is supported for Now Assist in Virtual Agent. For more information, see Now Assist in Virtual Agent domain separation.