Why AI needs a control tower – and why ServiceNow is the answer

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Fast forward 12 months...

You’ve got 10’s, if not potentially 100’s of AI agents working across the hundreds of applications you’ve got deployed in your organisation.

These agents are relying on fragmented data sources and struggling to integrate with existing processes.

It’s a mess! 🤯

What you’re craving is a unified data source, structured workflows, and intelligent orchestration across the various technologies in your operational estate. 🤖

‍ServiceNow is the only technology positioned to solve this challenge due to its unique architecture.

‍Here’s why. ..

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The Power of a Single Platform

ServiceNow is the only enterprise technology around today that is truly built on a single platform. This means:

Consistent, unified data – Every piece of information is stored and managed in a single way, allowing you to provide a consistent experience regardless of the line of business you’re serving or where you’re sourcing the data from.

By contrast, most enterprise technologies—whether we’re talking Salesforce, SAP, or Microsoft—run on multiple platforms with siloed data architectures. These technologies have to build expensive, resource-intensive integrations just to make their own applications talk to each other. In fact, it’s such a big problem that Salesforce, for example, is working to consolidate onto a single platform—a process that will take years.

For businesses, this means that with ServiceNow:

• AI can access the data, in the form it needs it, in real time, without the delays or inaccuracies caused by fragmented systems.
• Every AI-driven process is operating from a single, trusted source of truth.
• Maintenance costs and integration risks are significantly reduced.

Other platforms are years away from achieving this level of consolidation.

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A Workflow Engine at the Core

Since day one, ServiceNow has been a workflow engine first. Unlike other enterprise software, which around a specific purpose like CRM, ERP, or analytics, ServiceNow is centred around operations – it’s the only general-purpose technology currently on the market.

At the end of the day, every company operates on workflows—in fact, an enterprise-sized organisation may have over 100,000 workflows running simultaneously. Being that general-purpose technology, ServiceNow is built to:

• Orchestrate workflows across IT, HR, Risk, and Customer Service
• Ensure every process—manual or automated—operates with efficiency

AI has become so transformational due to its general-purpose nature. But AI agents are only as good as the workflows they operate within.

ServiceNow doesn’t just enable AI—it gives it a structured operational framework to execute against, ensuring AI isn’t just a bolt-on it is driving action at the core of the platform.

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The Orchestrator: AI Agents & The Control Tower

As AI adoption scales, businesses are seeing a flood of agents but without orchestration, AI quickly becomes chaos.

What does this reality look like for most organisations? Organisations currently have every vendor under the sun knocking on their door for a conversation:

The hyperscalers (AWS, Google, Microsoft) are great at what they do but they’ve never quite cracked workflow. Amazon Q is a great example, it’s powerful but it never really caught on because it doesn’t integrate into day-to-day operations very nicely.

Startups and point solutions are innovating rapidly but lack a common foundation. They are very good at their niche but they ultimately depend on platform technologies like ServiceNow to anchor their AI in real business processes.

Then you’ve got the data platforms (Snowflake, Databricks) that solve storage and analytics problems, but AI is moving away from unstructured data lakes towards structured, workflow-driven execution.

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Why AI Needs an Orchestrator

The modern enterprise runs an average of 367 different applications. With AI now automating more and more of these, businesses are realising they need a Minimum Viable Technology (MVT) stack—a core set of trusted platforms that can:

• Act as the authoritative operational data source
• Manage AI agent interactions across multiple platforms
• Ensure governance, security, and control over AI-driven automation

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ServiceNow: The Control Tower

ServiceNow is uniquely positioned to orchestrate AI agents across the enterprise. It can:

• Manage AI agents built natively within the platform, ensuring they operate within structured workflows.
• Reach into external systems, coordinating AI agents running in other platforms (e.g., AWS, Microsoft, or bespoke enterprise applications).
• Provide governance and oversight, ensuring AI-driven decisions remain aligned with business rules, security policies, and compliance frameworks.

Other AI orchestrators exist, but ServiceNow’s fundamental architecture makes it a frontrunner in enterprise AI orchestration. It’s not about “ruling them all,” but rather enabling businesses to define their AI reference architecture with clarity.

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Why ServiceNow is the AI Platform for Business Execution

AI is not just about intelligence anymore—it’s also about execution.

Most businesses don’t need just another bolt-on; they need a platform that can run AI at scale, securely and efficiently.

Organisations are realising that the real question isn’t how powerful an AI tool is—it’s how effectively AI can be applied to real business operations. That’s where ServiceNow stands apart.

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Harnessing Artificial Intelligence with Crossfuze

At Crossfuze, we are passionate that Artificial Intelligence (AI) must be a strategic enabler that drives meaningful business outcomes. AI is not just about automation—it is about creating scalable, measurable solutions that enhance efficiency, improve decision-making, and unlock new opportunities for innovation.

Our role is to guide organisations through their AI journey, ensuring that every step—from inception to optimisation—is built on scalable, strategic, and measurable foundations.

Find out more about Crossfuze's AI offering.