Generative AI is likely the most heavily hyped technology innovation since the World Wide Web during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. And while many companies oversold the internet’s capabilities—at least, at the time—it has undoubtedly transformed enterprise technology and modern life over the past two decades.
Generative AI seems to be following the same path. So, let’s consider the potential impact on one sector to explore the future of generative AI, large language models (LLMs), and enterprise service management (ESM)—a combination that many are coming to call AI service management.
But before we describe that future, let’s briefly define Enterprise Service Management (ESM). ESM evolved out of IT service management (ITSM), to non-IT lines of business. Processes across the entire enterprise are automated and optimized, which provide services to end users, ultimately accelerating time to resolution and improving the end-user experience. ESM applies the same technologies to automate business processes in other lines 0f business, such as HR, facilities, security incident handling, and customer support. AI service management is the next phase of ESM delivering real-time incident correlation, advanced change risk prediction, and knowledge article auto-creation—and that’s just the beginning.
One of the most exciting capabilities of generative AI is its ability to make automated interactions feel much more human-like. End-users will be able to communicate with virtual agents in a completely natural way, and the AI will not only be able to understand the queries but will also place that understanding within a larger context to provide human-like answers.
For example, if an employee asks a virtual agent to assist her with taking medical leave, generative AI can gather all HR information on the employee to understand her department, role, and location. It can comb through all the company knowledge bases and policies and determine which ones apply to her situation. And not only would the agent be able to generate a clear, succinct, and tailored summary, but it could also create a pre-populated form to gather the information required to process her request automatically. Even better, it could do this over several different channels: text, Slack, the website, or even over the phone.
But generative AI can go well beyond scanning the knowledge base. It also can improve the knowledge base, identifying outdated content and replacing it with current, correct information descriptions. And generative AI doesn’t just have to follow pre-set processes—it can optimize and create new ones. In IT, for instance, the AI will have access not just to a particular user’s ticket, but also to every ticket ever submitted along with the way in which it was resolved. With this information at its disposal, AI service ops are possible because it can determine a more optimized process that will shorten time to resolution. In fact, generative AI could automate business processes that have never been automated at all.
Many worry that AI service management will replace humans in ESM—that’s not the case. Companies will always rely on human intervention. However, AI service management will make humans more adept and capable, provide a level of service previously unthinkable, and enable the kind of scale that has previously only been dreamed of.
We’re entering a new era of AI service management. And BMC Helix is already leading the industry charge with BMC HelixGPT, a generative AI platform integrated into its core BMC Helix ESM solutions.
