Why ServiceNow Is a Smart Bet in an Uncertain Economy

We don’t need to state the obvious: Global headlines are dominated by economic uncertainty, from tariff confusion and unstable markets to geopolitical tensions. 

(I suppose we just stated the obvious, anyway.)

We’ve seen some of these signals before and arguably have been facing similar challenges throughout the post-pandemic era. While every sector seems to be facing some strain, some technology companies, like ServiceNow, continue to rise above the noise, demonstrating resilience through downturns.

An October 2020 McKinsey & Company report found that the pandemic sped up the digitization of customer and supply chain interactions and internal operations by 3-4 years. The share of digital products jumped by seven years in a matter of months. Economic uncertainty often forces companies to accelerate modernization, and platforms like ServiceNow are a direct beneficiary of that shift.

During a downturn, the reflex move for businesses in any industry is to start making cuts, but smarter companies defy that trend by looking ahead and investing in efficiency.

Meghan Lockwood-Rexer, CoreX’s Head of Go to Market and Partnerships, has been part of the ServiceNow ecosystem since 2014. With a background in as a financial analyst focused on institutional investment trends and mutual fund investment flows, she brings a unique lens to market trends and platform economics.

Today, we asked her to dive into broader digital transformation trends and the platform’s recent strategic moves and why she believes that now might just be the time to look at NOW as a business hedge against the current uncertainty.

Digital Transformation as an Imperative

At its core, digital transformation is about reshaping how a company operates, delivers value, and creates new business models. What’s important to know is that digital transformation is more than implementing software like ServiceNow or ramping up automation of fundamental business processes. 

True digital transformation isn’t just about software. It’s about rethinking how a company operates, delivers value, and builds resiliency through strategy, culture, and customer experience.

“No matter the market condition, you still have to run a business and protect your teams,” Lockwood-Rexer explains. “What’s interesting is, ServiceNow’s entire business model is centered around helping organizations manage and capitalize on the current curve - and the broader digital transformation landscape we’ve been collectively navigating for the past decade.”

Rexer emphasized that market disruptions don’t change leaders' responsibility to their teams, whether 2,000 or 250,000 employees. “Business doesn’t stop because of political climates, socio-economic shifts, or even pandemics,” she adds. “Shareholders still expect results. People still want to grow and get promoted. And this moment is an opportunity if you choose to act.”

Meeting the Transformation and Technology Challenge

Today, we’re sitting at an intersection of considerable transformation, with technology driving and evolving organizations, empowering them to properly handle the “next big thing,” such as how AI will change what markets resemble in 2025 and beyond.

Despite this significant change, the importance of making correct budget decisions, managing transformation strategies, prioritizing operational stability, and nurturing talent remains constant.

Lockwood-Rexer explains that ServiceNow is shifting toward end-to-end technology, connecting different elements of business. When uncertainty hits, platforms like ServiceNow offer a path forward, enhancing visibility, improving employee experience, and freeing teams to focus on strategic work. 

“Sometimes people get nervous and don’t know what to do next,” says Lockwood-Rexer. “But efficiency, employee experience, and resilience are what ServiceNow brings to the table.”

ServiceNow is well positioned to help organizations capitalize on different business climates, have better visibility and control over the bottom line because of data, while creating efficiencies that play into ServiceNow’s workflow strategy. In our extensive conversation, Lockwood-Rexer outlined five key reasons ServiceNow serves as a hedge against market volatility, each reinforcing how the platform enables agility, resilience, and long-term value.

ServiceNow’s expansion into operational technology (OT) and the CRM space, as well as Manufacturing, particularly automotive in EMEA, is now one of ServiceNow’s fastest-growing verticals, alongside financial services, healthcare, retail, and telecommunications.

At Hanover Messe, one of the world’s premier industrial tech expos, CoreX showcased a joint OT rapid response use case featuring ServiceNow, NVIDIA, and a global luxury automaker. The demo illustrated how ServiceNow enables proactive supply chain and equipment management in high-stakes manufacturing environments.

 5 Reasons ServiceNow is the Hedge You Didn't Know You Needed

1. Proven Efficiency Gains: ServiceNow streamlines workflows, reduces manual effort, and connects enterprise systems through a single platform. With real-time visibility, automation, and self-service portals, teams work smarter, not harder, across departments.
2. Resilience Through Automation: In times of disruption, automation builds business resilience. ServiceNow helps uncover and mitigate risks early with AI-driven insights, enforce policies, improve incident response, and strengthen business continuity across the board.
3. Fast Time to Value: With out-of-the-box functionality, low-code/no-code tools, and a cloud-native foundation, ServiceNow can deliver ROI fast while also driving long-term business improvements. The platform’s guided setup, integration hub, and expert ecosystem make it easy to get up and running quickly, especially when embracing an agile, quick-win approach to your implementation programs.
4. Improved Employee and Customer Experience: Great experiences drive loyalty and retention. ServiceNow personalizes support, simplifies workflows, and delivers real-time updates for both employees and customers across every channel, from chat to portal to mobile. According to Rexer, “This is not the time to lose customers from clunky responsiveness or go out and re-train key roles.”
5. Scalable Strategy That Grows With You: Built for growth, ServiceNow’s multi-instance architecture and flexible licensing scale with you. New features roll out continuously, and integrations with the ServiceNow Store and partner ecosystem ensure you’re never stuck with yesterday’s technology.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

What’s important is not sitting idle or waiting for a climate of “less uncertainty.” Today, waiting just means you’re falling behind. Large enterprise organizations will be watching, but since operating budgets have already been defined for the coming year, these engagements won’t necessarily see much change.

Instead, where today’s economic uncertainty might create more impact is within the organizational trenches. Rexer sees the possibility of “ground-level” transformation initiatives accelerating because there’s a captive budget right now, and next year is more difficult to read than ever.

There are key initiatives needed to accomplish quarterly or annual goals, and taking those on before budget cycles dry up makes tactical sense for many companies.

“Markets will keep moving. People will still place orders,” Lockwood-Rexer explains. “You may need to reroute where products are shipped or rethink your workflows, but that’s where ServiceNow excels. Visibility. Transparency. Efficiency. It doesn’t stop business. It helps companies do it better.”

She added that you have to work with what’s available, and with ServiceNow in around 95% of enterprise organizations, there are a wealth of platform capabilities that may be underused or underleveraged. 

“What can you do with the platform that you already own to make your organization massively more efficient?” she asks. “There are millions of dollars of savings in things like increasing uptime in operational technology. If you can’t find budget from an external source, you’re going to have to self-fund by finding increased efficiency within your organization.”

ServiceNow is a major contributor to cost savings and can help you by finding opportunities to use technology that you already have to self-fund initiatives and come out of this curve better.

“If you look longitudinally at some of the major crashes, that’s where Apple came in. That’s when Uber came in,” says Lockwood-Rexer. “In downturns, organizations that have an innovation mindset and the organizations that are most able to capitalize on their talent and creativity respond to turmoil by doing something differently in the market.”

At its core, ServiceNow is built to make work better, more efficient, more visible, and more secure. In uncertain times, that’s no longer optional for IT strategy.

Lockwood-Rexer closes by saying, “Everything that you would do in an organization to try and future-proof is what ServiceNow was built to do. It’s the fundamental paradigm of the platform.”

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We were thrilled to carve out a few minutes with Meghan Lockwood-Rexer for this interview. For more of her insights, please check out her other published posts.