TLDR: ANZ Banking Group is progressively integrating generative AI, specifically ServiceNow’s Now Assist, into its IT service desk. Despite initial skepticism regarding ROI, the bank is realizing “compound” benefits through incremental adoption. Key applications include automating incident summaries, generating product change reports, and enhancing system health monitoring, freeing up staff for more strategic tasks and improving overall platform resilience.
ANZ Banking Group is strategically implementing generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) within its IT service desk environment, anticipating ‘compound’ gains in efficiency and operational resilience. The bank’s adoption of ServiceNow’s Now Assist, a suite of GenAI tools designed to augment ServiceNow instances, marks a significant step in enhancing its IT service management (ITSM) capabilities and streamlining daily workflows.
Jamie Stanton, ANZ’s product area lead, speaking at the ServiceNow World Forum in Sydney, highlighted the bank’s cautious yet determined approach. He noted initial reservations concerning data quality, security, and the tangible return on investment (ROI) for GenAI initiatives. “It took a leap of faith from our management to go, ‘We know we want to go on this journey’,” Stanton stated, emphasizing the importance of starting early to maximize future value.
Rather than undertaking an extensive and costly data overhaul, ANZ opted for a gradual, iterative implementation strategy, building capabilities and layering new use cases over time. Stanton likened this approach to the principle of compound interest, stating, “We’re a bank – we believe in compound interest. What we wanted to do was make sure we started that journey, even though the uptake wasn’t as great as we wanted it to be.”
One of the initial and most impactful GenAI applications involves summarizing service desk incidents. Stanton explained that traditionally, incident closure notes were often vague, such as ‘fixed’ or ‘done,’ making it difficult to convert them into valuable knowledge articles. “With GenAI, we can press the button, and we’re getting instant resolution. We’re getting closure notes that we’re able to turn into knowledge articles,” he explained. These automatically generated articles are expected to improve support staff efficiency and serve as training material for future virtual agents.
Another critical area of focus for ANZ is enhancing the health and sustainability of its eight-year-old ServiceNow instance. The bank faces challenges in allocating resources to address skipped files, health scan reports, and technical debt while simultaneously pursuing new tech initiatives. To counter this, GenAI is being embedded into routine maintenance tasks, or ‘starter day activities,’ such as reviewing logs and monitoring scheduled jobs. “We don’t even need a human in the loop with those things. What’s the information we need and when do we need to get it done, and just do it,” Stanton remarked. He views this as a transformative shift, converting time-consuming business-as-usual activities into more value-added endeavors.
The third key use case involves leveraging GenAI to manage and proactively address technology product changes. This includes generating executive summaries, identifying missing steps in processes, and flagging the need for additional testing before changes are deployed on the ServiceNow platform. “It’s not just about saving time,” Stanton clarified. “It’s about improving the quality of checks we’re doing. Plus, the resilience that the platform is [improved] because I’m not running incidents. I’m not creating issues. I’m not wasting time and effort fixing those problems.” He added that this has instilled “a lot more confidence back into my hands.”
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Currently, these GenAI applications are confined to ANZ’s ServiceNow and IT support environment. However, Stanton revealed an ambitious 12-month roadmap for the platform and broader enterprise-wide AI integration. He anticipates an “explosion” of AI use cases, with plans to extend GenAI to security (for incident resolution summaries), risk management, and human resources.
