‘At every turn, we’re putting partners first because we cannot succeed without you,’ ServiceNow Channel Chief Erica Volini said.

Major changes to who qualifies as an Elite partner, growing the percentage of partner-sourced net-new annual contract value for ServiceNow Now Assist artificial intelligence tools, and a leadership team that is all in on partners are some of the messages ServiceNow seeks to send partners in the AI era.

Erica Volini, channel chief for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based IT automation vendor, told CRN that ServiceNow is increasing its investments in its partners, tripling the number of incentives from 2024 to 2025 in terms of dollars and time, and encouraging partners to make the most out of new resources.

“I don’t want to leave a dollar on the table,” said Volini, whose official title is senior vice president of global partnerships.

[RELATED: ServiceNow CEO McDermott To Partners: ‘Tell Us What You Need’]

ServiceNow has about 2,200 channel partners worldwide, according to CRN’s 2024 Channel Chiefs.

Jon Reynolds, senior vice president of global alliances, innovation and corporate development at Broomfield, Colo.-based ServiceNow elite partner Thirdera–part of Cognizant, No. 8 on CRN’s 2024 Solution Provider 500–told CRN in an interview that he likes Volini and her team working to add more value to elite status.

“She’s not trying to reduce or limit opportunity,” Reynolds said. “The marketing investment that is being made back into partners … is seen and it’s felt. That is palpable and we’re really putting that to work.”

Sales Plays, Demos, Co-Captains

Jennifer Odess, ServiceNow’s vice president of partner experience, told CRN that part of the vendor’s methods for increasing partner-sourced net-new annual contract value to 20 percent from 2 percent include two end-to-end sale plays, with more expected “in the coming months.”

“It’s going to be a gradual, constant increase in investment,” said Odess, who wants to get to around 20 percent by year’s end.

Average partner-sourced annual contract value for the ServiceNow platform is about 20 percent, up from about 8 percent two years ago. During Volini’s event with partners this week at ServiceNow headquarters, she said the vendor accepted blame for the disparity with the Now Assist GenAI products, saying, “We haven’t given you the resources you need to move at the speed of this new market.”

“You haven’t gotten enough data, enough access, enough stories, enough demos, enough of what you need to own this moment,” she said. “That changes today.”

Partners can leverage a five-hour Now Assist for Creator training and receive three AI credentials. Now Assist for Creator has been responsible for about half of all Now Assist sales to date in the past year. Odess called this offering the “quick win” for partners looking to sell customers on an AI offering. Now Assist for IT Service Management has been the No. 2 seller in the Now Assist suite, followed by Now Assist for Human Resources.

The second end-to-end sales play is a four-hour training with three AI credentials for Now Assist for Customer Service Management, she said—getting the time down from double-digit hours of training for other offerings. Now Assist for CSM is “the entry point for a more targeted customer solution.”

Odess said that the vendor is also working to simplify and improve the demonstration experience for partners. ServiceNow is giving partners two instances instead of one, adding support for partner questions and making the demos ready in minutes out of the box. She said the vendor is working on more automation for the experience.

Odess also detailed a new dedicated partner support role in ServiceNow called “co-captains.” The vendor has regional co-captains who can provide Now Assist support for partners with tickets answered within 24 hours, she said.

ServiceNow has also created an “AI navigator” section of its partner success center where partners can get answers to implementation and selling questions as well as a dedicated partner events page for finding Now Assist and other events. She plans for monthly product highlights and best practice sharing for partners, starting with an event Sept. 25.

The vendor is also adding Now Assist to its deployment success incentive program for partners to earn credits between now and the end of the year and a GenAI customer value award to the 2025 partner program awards event set for February. ServiceNow is also allowing partners to land product line achievements faster so they can more quickly get a validated practice in the ServiceNow Partner Finder, becoming easier to discover for customers.

“We expect we’ll have Now Assist validated practices available in Partner Finder in Q4,” she said.

ServiceNow Is Invested In Partners

Volini and her team featured a series of talks from the vendor’s leaders in marketing, product, sales and other business functions during ServiceNow’s Global Partner Ecosystem Summit held at its headquarters Tuesday in a show that partners are important to the company starting at the top.

ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott told a room of partners that he doesn’t “want silly little stuff like comp and coverage” getting in the way of the vendor and its partners capitalizing on a growing market around artificial intelligence and removing silos from enterprise software.

“Just tell us what you need,” McDermott said. “Let’s get it cleared. Let’s put trust to work. It’s all good. And let’s go for growth.”

Some of the ServiceNow executives who shared early AI market insight with partners include Sarabdeep Narang, ServiceNow vice president and global head of generative AI go-to-market, who recommended leaning into customized demos of AI offerings to avoid proofs of concept and proofs of value and accelerate the sales cycle.

ServiceNow CMO Colin Fleming walked partners through his efforts to simplify the brand and increase awareness, including an ad campaign with actor Idris Elba. And Michael Park, senior vice president and global head of AI go to market, laid out different personas for the people involved in using AI within a company and how to work with different companies based on whether they are ready to adopt AI or are still early in the process.

“This is not old-school ERP from 20 years ago, where this process, once you buy, takes three or four years to put it up,” Park said. “We are seeing average time to deployment in an unprecedented way.”

Program Segment Transition

Volini told partners to get ready for segment transition on Dec. 31, where ServiceNow seeks to add more value to the Elite partner status. Larger partners will be more likely to gain Elite status after the transition, with smaller partners still able to differentiate themselves by earning specializations.

“This concept of specialization, it’s not a generic term,” she said. “It was designed specifically for smaller partners. Not exclusively, but specifically. They may never get to the criteria to get to Elite without significant growth And that’s OK. But it doesn’t mean that they can’t be front and center on Partner Finder.”

She said that changes to who earns Elite status came because Elite partners felt they weren’t differentiated enough from other partners.

“It was almost unfair to our Elite partners,” Volini said. “We need it to mean something. But it’s not the only thing that matters. … No matter how big or small they are, they’re special in our ecosystem and they can stand out in our ecosystem. And that’s one thing we can offer that I don’t know that a lot of technology companies can because we have such a vast portfolio of different partners.”

Volini also said to look out for improvements to ServiceNow’s store to turn it into a full-fledged marketplace with lead generation and a recommendation engine.

Talking to partners this week, she said that they are already growing their expertise on ServiceNow products, with 4,000 new Now Assist certifications completed; 5,000 new pro certifications in the ecosystem in the last 12 months; and 35 new offerings built using GenAI by partners in the last year.

“At every turn, we’re putting partners first because we cannot succeed without you,” she said.