Employees need a unified, seamless experience: ServiceNow leaders on supercharging HR tech impact

The external HR tech landscape is evolving. But are current tech architectures helping HR leaders deliver business value? Recent research from Gartner posits that while HR tech stacks are supporting talent functions, they remain a fair distance away from enabling strategic results.

Businesses are faced with a critical decision: Should they build their talent technology solutions or partner with HR tech companies?

Looking at 2025, what should be the strategy to build future-ready tech stacks that not only help HR prepare for change but also execute for success? We spoke with Diana Spalding, Sr Director of Solution Sales, Employee Workflows, at ServiceNow and Sumeet Mathur, SVP & Managing Director, ServiceNow India Technology & Business Centre, ServiceNow to unpack how the tech leaders see the debate evolving and what is critical today for an impactful tomorrow.

Below are excerpts from our conversation

Given the rapid advancements in AI and automation, what are the key factors that HR and business leaders should consider when deciding whether to build or buy HR tech solutions?

Diana: We are in an era of hyper-personalisation where employees require consumer-grade experiences. The difficulty with building HR solutions is one of sustaining its impact. Often companies go down the build route to tailor the solutions exactly based on the user's needs. Many organizations like the flexibility to customize experiences and workflows in a way that aligns with their processes, especially when compared to the more rigid structures of some SaaS products.

However, this customization can create challenges down the line. As the organization moves forward, the question becomes: how will they maintain that high-quality user experience over time?

While CHROs and CIOs might initially decide to build—due to multiple reasons like costs or having the right people— as companies grow and expectations widen, internally built HR systems are difficult to sustain. A lot of companies will then shift to an out-of-the-box experience. The need for companies and HR leaders to focus on core operations also becomes important. This is where packed solutions like ServiceNow are helpful.

Sumeet: Before making a decision, an important factor to consider is whether you are solving a point problem or whether it is about raising the experience of the entire organisation to drive strategic changes. Doing the latter through building solutions in-house is challenging.

Second is the skills consideration. Given how tech stacks today need different layers like data, automation, AI etc. building your solutions means having the right skilled talent to build, maintain and scale these capabilities across your HR requirements. The variety of skills required to create and maintain a powerful system that meets requirements of scalability, performance, security and compliance is immense.

How can HR leaders leverage emerging technologies like generative AI and build future-ready tech stacks that can adapt to evolving business needs and talent strategies?

Sumeet: AI can today greatly improve how companies solve workflow inefficiencies and enhance the employee experience. But it must always keep people at the centre.

One way to ensure AI implementation is successful is to know that empathy remains essential— not all problems can be addressed solely through AI or automation. It's crucial to identify use cases where human intervention and empathy are needed. This helps avoid over-reliance on AI to solve everything but be applied in the most relevant areas. Technology, including AI, is an enabler, but it doesn't solve every employee problem. This principle should guide how AI is adopted by HR to imporve employee performance and experience.

Diana: In the context of the build vs. buy debate for AI, it’s clear that keeping up with the rapid developments in AI can be challenging. It's difficult for many to differentiate between AI models like co-pilots or ServiceNow’s AI Assist, which makes navigating conversations with CIOs more challenging. To ensure the Gen AI application is successful in improving employee productivity and experience, CHROs need to stay closely attuned to how AI  advancements and track the best use of AI that impacts the employee experience and its overall effectiveness.

With a plethora of HR tech solutions already available and a rush to adopt newer technologies AI and automation, how can HR leaders onboard the right tools and solutions?

Sumeet: When thinking about partnering for an HR tech solution, it's important to approach it from a platform perspective. That is to take an integrated, comprehensive approach. For example, during onboarding several departments like recruitment, HR, finance, procurement, and IT etch are all involved.

But the employee doesn’t care about these organizational silos or the different tech stacks used by each department. What they expect is a seamless, unified experience. To achieve this, organizations must ensure that all departments are connected, working with the same data, and following a consistent data model. This enables an end-to-end use case that can be enhanced with AI and automation to raise experience.

Diana: I agree with Sumeet. Silos often exist because we tend to solve problems from the perspective of individual departments or functions. However, everything is connected. Ultimately, no matter how many systems we implement, if they don't come together effectively, the employee experience will suffer. Companies need to look at HR tech solutions more comprehensively.

Looking at 2025, what is critical for CHROs and CXOs to remember as they scale their HR tech architectures and adapt to meet the rapidly evolving needs of their business and employees?

Diana: This is a crucial moment for CHROs to demand certain experiences and technical solutions be in place. Too often, CHROs are relegated to the middle or the end of the queue when it comes to organizational budgets, especially when it comes to something intangible like employee experience, which might not have a clear owner within the company.

EX is key across different touchpoints like how you welcome employees, how you lead them throughout their journey in the organization, and how they remember their experience when they leave.  CHROs need to identify gaps in their current tech architectures and demand for the right employee-focused solutions to be in place.

Sumeet: The rise of technologies like generative AI and agentic AI is real, and for HR leaders, focusing on two key areas is essential: data and experience.  First, understand where your data is, and what data is relevant for your organization and employees, and ensure it is secure and compliant. This will form the foundation of your HR strategy.

Secondly, focus on the experience in the context of the work your employees are doing. By prioritizing these two aspects—having the right data and experience—the integration of AI and automation will naturally align and enhance your processes.