Introducing the New Demand Management Experience

A smarter, guided way to manage demand — built on the same data you already have, ready to use today.

Introduction

With the Australia release, we're introducing a new way to experience demand management - embedded directly inside the Strategic Planning Workspace (SPW) or Portfolio Planning Workspace (PPW) depending on your license. It's a clean, guided interface powered by Playbooks that helps demand managers move work through the lifecycle without the guesswork.

The most important thing to know first: there is nothing to migrate. The new experience is a modern interface built directly on top of your existing demand data. Your demands, roles, and integrations are already there.

This post walks you through what's new, why it matters, and how to get value from it. For full technical details, visit the ServiceNow Product Docs.

Why Does This Matter?

The classic experience was built for IT intake. It worked but it put the burden of process knowledge entirely on the user, and any governance changes required development effort. Teams outside IT had to work around a form that wasn't built for them.

Area	Classic	New Experience
Interface	Dense form, all fields at once	Guided workspace, progressive steps
Guidance	None. Users must know the process	Playbook guides through lifecycle
Governance changes	Requires code and development	Visual designer, no-code, live instantly
Scope	Primarily for IT intake	Any team: IT, marketing, operations etc
Classic form	Primary experience	Stays on. Both run side by side

There Is No Migration — Here's Why

The first question we always hear is: "What do we need to migrate?" The answer is nothing — and understanding why changes how you approach the rollout entirely.

The new experience is a Next Experience UI layer built directly on top of the existing dmn_demand table. The data model has not changed. No records are moved. No schemas are altered.

What this means for you

• ✓ Same dmn_demand table. No new tables, No schema changes
• ✓ Every existing demand appears automatically in the new experience on day one
• ✓ No new roles. Existing demand roles provide access immediately
• ✓ Classic Core UI 16 form stays fully available — both share the same records in real time
• ✓ All existing workflows, related lists, and integrations continue unchanged
• → Getting started requires two lightweight steps: configure form views and create a Playbook — no development required

You can run the new experience alongside the classic form for as long as you need.

New in Australia Release

Playbooks are now available in Demand Management. For the first time, demand managers can follow a structured, stage-based process directly in SPW or PPW. Guided by the same Playbook framework already used in Project and Agile. No configuration expertise required to get started.

How Playbooks Fit into Demand Management

Playbooks are the defining capability of the new experience. They turn demand management from an unstructured, form-based activity into a repeatable, governed process — one that any team can follow consistently without needing to know the process by heart.

What ships out of the box: one default playbook  Demand Workflow  covering a standard IT demand lifecycle. It's designed as a starting point, not a final answer. In the Playbook Designer you can:

• Rename or add stages to match your actual governance process
• Define tasks that auto-generate when a stage is reached, assigned to the right people automatically
• Control which fields appear at each stage
• Apply different playbooks automatically based on demand type, department, or category
• Set automation triggers - escalate overdue reviews, notify stakeholders when thresholds are crossed
• Create multiple playbooks for different demand types, each with its own governance flow

Example use cases for Demand Playbooks:

IT demand governance

Separate playbooks for infrastructure requests and new product tech demands, each with their own approval gates and auto-assigned review tasks.

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Capital investment intake

A playbook that adds a Finance approval stage automatically when the cost estimate exceeds a set threshold.

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Marketing campaign requests

A lightweight playbook with only relevant fields, routing small campaigns differently from large ones.

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Enterprise-wide intake

Multiple playbooks across business units - each governed independently, all visible in one place for portfolio-level prioritization.

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✨ AI Features in Demand Management

If your organization has ServiceNow Otto for SPM , several AI skills are available directly on demand records — each targeting a specific point of friction in the demand process.

Feature	What it does	Persona	Benefit
AI Demand Management Specialist	An AI Specialist with two child agents: a Demand Readiness Agent that validates submissions against your governance rules, and a Conversion Agent that auto-converts qualifying demands.	Demand Manager, Portfolio Manager, Approver	Removes the bottleneck incomplete demands get triaged with clear feedback, qualifying demands convert automatically. The demand team moves from processing to deciding.
Demand Summarization	Generates a structured summary of any demand covering business requirement, timeline, key risks, cost and effort, expected benefit, and risk of not acting. Triggered by selecting Summarize on the demand record.	Demand Manager, Portfolio Manager, Approver	Faster review at prioritization and approval stages no need to read every field to understand a demand
Identify Similar Demands	Scans existing demands for contextual similarity across name, description, and business case. Flags matches at 85% or above. Results appear in a banner and the Similar Demands related list. Outdated records excluded automatically.	Demand Manager, Portfolio Manager	Reduces duplicate demand submissions and helps teams leverage prior decisions before investing in new intake
Conversational Demand Creation	Creates a demand through a guided chat conversation in the Employee Service Center portal. Now Assist asks contextual questions and auto-populates demand fields. Also available in Microsoft Teams and mobile if Virtual Agent channels are enabled.	Business Requester, Employee	Lowers the barrier to submitting well-structured demands — fewer incomplete records for demand managers to follow up on
Draft Docs with Now Assist	Within the Docs experience on a demand, Now Assist can summarize, elaborate, or shorten selected content — helping draft and refine business cases, requirements, and planning documents. Available as the Planning item doc generation and insights skill.	Demand Manager, Business Analyst	Faster time-to-draft on business cases and requirement documents — the most time-consuming part of the demand process

All ServiceNow Otto for SPM skills are managed from the Now Assist Admin console. 

Getting Ready to Roll Out

There's no single right way to adopt the new experience. Before you start configuring, it's worth taking a moment to think through how demand management actually works in your organization — who's involved, what steps matter, and where the friction usually lives.

The out-of-the-box Demand Workflow playbook is a good starting point. You can duplicate it, rename stages, and adjust it to fit your process — rather than building from scratch. Keep your form views lean, pilot with a small group first, and expand when you're ready.

Resources

• Migrating existing UI actions to Next Experience
• New Demand Management Experience Demo video
• ServiceNow Product Docs