Federal defense agencies are seeing operational gains from deploying ServiceNow platforms and artificial intelligence (AI) tools, with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) cutting its average customer service case resolution time by 60% and the U.S. Air Force using the platform to standardize systems and improve enterprise-wide visibility.
Officials from both agencies detailed the results at Thursday’s ServiceNow Government Forum in National Harbor, Md., where they said AI-enabled automation and platform consolidation are helping to reduce inefficiencies that previously slowed mission delivery.
For the DLA – which serves as the Department of Defense’s logistics backbone – early AI deployments are already delivering time savings for both employees and customers.
“We’re really looking at AI to enable transparency and self service for our customers,” said Adarryl Roberts, chief information officer (CIO) at the DLA. “We’re like Amazon. Everyone just calls us and says, ‘Hey, where’s my package?’”
The DLA handles 16,000 requests per month, according to Chris Bedi, chief customer officer and special advisor to the chairman for AI transformation at ServiceNow.
Bedi explained that the DLA’s case workers were initially averaging about 25 minutes per case and navigating 10 to 12 applications to complete a task. Since implementing ServiceNow, Bedi said the DLA has seen a 60% reduction in average resolution time.
“That’s a lot of time every month, giving them back time to focus on the more complex things, which is really one of the big benefits of AI,” Bedi said.
By deploying AI, Roberts explained that customers can now interact with a virtual agent instead of calling the help desk. The agents can quickly search a customer’s query, tell them the status of their order, and cancel their order or reorder a product if needed.
At the Air Force, one leader described a similar modernization effort focused on consolidating systems and improving visibility across the department.
Keith Hardiman, acting deputy CIO for the Air Force, said fragmented systems across the enterprise drove the service to pursue a standardized approach using ServiceNow.
“The reason why we had to go this route was to eliminate some of these critical gaps we have right now,” Hardiman said. “We’re talking about siloed systems, variations, different configurations of how many instances we had out here, and that was just not something that will be conducive to the fight for our airmen and our Guardians.”
“So, looking at it from an operational lens, those are things that we had to go shore up,” he added. “In order to do that, we had to come up with a very standardized enterprise approach and method on how we want to do this, and partnering with [ServiceNow], we found that way.”
By adopting a more centralized enterprise platform, Hardiman said the Air Force gained improved visibility into its technology assets and how resources are being used across both the Air Force and the U.S. Space Force.
“Taking that deliberate approach, actually having the visibility, seeing what we have, what we’re using across our whole department … was vital in the whole optimization area for us,” he said.
Beyond potential financial savings, which he estimated could be around $170 million, Hardiman said the modernization effort is also helping the service make faster operational decisions.
“The mission impact … is more substantial than some of the financial pieces,” he said, noting that improved visibility allows the department to provide better customer service and make more proactive decisions.
“[That] was even more the value prop for us to go do the things that we needed to go do to make sure this happened,” Hardiman said, adding, “We’ve made some significant strides to get where we’re at today, so I’m very much pleased with it.”