Greg Irwin 0:18

Everybody on the line here touches, plays with, is thinking about service management. We are partnered with Acorio, Monica and Jesse are the gurus, and they work on more projects around ServiceNow, then I'm sure you can, we're going to be using them as our anchors for our discussion, but not our sole contributors. So what we do in this forum Zoom is brilliant, we basically are going to share some stories about what other organizations are doing in terms of their journey, where priorities are or where the challenges are. And on top of all of that, just to do some simple network. So what we'll do at the end of this call is send around an email with everybody who joins their name. And what I really want to do is I want to encourage everybody to make one new contact across this group. All right, yeah, a lot of people in similar seats, seeing similar things. It's really wonderful to be able to leverage people's people's experiences. So do me a favor and places take advantage of that. Now, what we're going to do is I'm going to start with Monica and Jesse. And then I'm going to start working our way around the group, and soliciting stories from everybody. The chat window also is broken. So I really want as we go for people to ask for clarification, to add on your own stories, orders to respond to others, but it's a great side channel that I really want everyone to use throughout our call. Okay with that, let's get into it. Monica, do us a favor, please introduce yourself and introduce a Acorio. Who Who are you guys? What do you got? What do y'all do?

Monica Blandin 2:07

My name is Monica Blandin, I'm with the Acorio. I think some of you heard I'm in Houston, Texas. And Acorio is a we are a delivery company, we are a sole implementer of ServiceNow. So that is all we focus on all the different modules. I like to say that I love that we focus on one aspect of the entire we'll have you know it delivery, we have, you know, all the way down from Project analyst all the way to our business process consultants are Practice Lead. So really that is all we do is focus on service now. I've spent the better part of almost 25 years doing delivery. And that includes on the infrastructure and application side, I've got a ton of experience with respect to tools and software specifically in ITIL. World. So doing ServiceNow implementations as well as you know, some of the other tools. I've got, you know, stories of really successful projects, right in terms of ITSM CSM HR. So I feel like I bring that to the table as far as what we've done. Right. Right. And what's just gone right in general. And then I've got some stories where, you know, we got to see what not to do with with the implementations. So I think, you know, again, thanks for everybody for coming today. I think ServiceNow is just, it's an amazing tool. It's got so much capability to so much. So I just I'm here and pick my brain and ask any questions you want. Are you on mute? Or can you hear me

Greg Irwin 3:48

I am on mute. But I Okay, quick, quick click Monica, we're gonna come back to you. Let's, let's go Jesse do a little bit of an intro. And I'm going to ask you, we're talking about predictions for 2022. So we'll get right into that. But just to do us a favor. Give us give us your intro, please.

Jesse Nocon 4:05

Yeah, thank you everybody for coming today. My name is Jesse Nocon, I'm a Solution Architect out of Acorio and our pre sales group. And so my kind of day to day role here is focusing on strategic planning with our customers. So you know, the group that I work in, looks to evaluate, find the business value that our customers are looking to get and put together you know, our project plans to to support that. My background, I come actually from a technical background. So I spent my first two years a little over four years of Acorio. So my first two years here as a member of our delivery team as a technical consultant with a focus on ITSM IT Asset Management and custom applications. I'm still certified in those those areas of the platform and I'm really excited to be here today. shifting the focus right Acorio, we're the we're the largest pure play ServiceNow consultancy As Monica said and and so we you know work got all different areas of the platform. And what we've been hearing from our customers, what we've been seeing from ServiceNow experience is is the key, we want to make sure that it whether it's customer service management, right people are, are going into the tool. It's intuitive, it's easy, they want to come back, right? Same thing goes for HR, right, we want to make sure that employees are getting on boarded rapidly, being able to get their infrastructure before they start being able to hit the ground running and adapting to, you know, the changes in the workforce that have been happening with COVID, with the Great Recession, or the sorry, the great resignation, excuse me. And in the general focus and new features that ServiceNow was brought out around experience, particularly the employee center. So I think everything moved before it's going to be bad experience. And in my predictions, today, you're going to focus around that

Greg Irwin 5:54

Super we're talking about 2022, let's talk about what your clients are working on, in some granular, some granular fashion and do me a favor, everybody, let's get get on get on our keyboards, and in the chat, share with us. One, one or two things that you want to hear about in our session, not just from Acorio, but from others on the panel. So Doot doot are in the grid. So one thing you want to hear about, and and Jesse, I'm going to start with you and then back to Monica, what are your clients working on?

Jesse Nocon 6:31

Yeah, so in particular, I have been working with a number of clients recently on HR service delivery, and ITSM confluence, right, making sure that both of those are stood up in a unified fashion. So that it presents kind of a single pane of glass for services for those individuals, right. So it really is focused on making the jobs of their employees, or their work lives of the employees better. So having a single place for the employees to go to where they can solve all their ITSM issues, solve other HR issues. And then in that back end, process wise, putting together the, you know, proper automation of approvals, automation of third party systems. And, specifically, you know, being able to leverage, you know, IT support and leverage HR support where appropriate, you know, in in combination of processes. So, you know, for example, looking to configure those complicated life cycles where you know, somebody needs to get their W nine and all their different paperwork that HR is concerned about, but also, you know, needs to get an email, it needs to get a laptop needs to get on the proper domains and the credentials that it cares about.

Greg Irwin 7:52

I got it. Perfect, by the way, Alex and Alex. Thank you, Alexander. Thank you, Andrew, thank you, the A's are coming through in spades. So let's let's, let's have the whole group drop, drop your topics in here. What do you want to hear about Monica? What are some of your client projects?

Monica Blandin 8:12

So similar to Jesse, I do have some clients that are doing HRS D implementations right now. They're either going from a legacy version, or they're coming at it net new, so they had something homegrown, one client in particular as a health care client. So that's this is especially sensitive right now, of course, given the pandemic, right. And there's multiple affiliates. So just the general onboarding and including all the groups is certainly provided some challenges, but But again, it's it's been a really good experience. And again, to what Jesse said, the ultimate goal is to get people working better together. But also being able to do it in a more virtual format. Right. I think that's one of the biggest advantages. A couple other clients have got doing a CSM for a major timeshare company. So things are definitely changing there. Right. I mean, I think the travel industry has been completely turned on its head, right. So that one is actually taking a 20 something year old, homegrown system, where there was absolutely no governance or process and you know, getting it into a new ServiceNow, CSM system and also putting in the necessary workflows and processes. And then I've also got ITSM as well, which, you know, that's, that's actually kind of near and dear to my heart where I started. And that is absolutely going to be kind of the starting point of a much larger initiative, to first kind of get everyone following, you know, working through the same channels, but understanding the importance of, you know, incidents request governance, write documentation, and then that will segue into other things like CMDB right, trying to consolidate, you know, Pam and Sam. trying to just get more rigor around the business. Again, I think a lot of it's been because people are more virtual. But I think it's just also businesses want to work smarter, right? They want to be more efficient. So those are just a few few things going on right now.

Greg Irwin 10:14

Or we're gonna pick it these. And I'm going to actually ask Alex Alexander to tell us a little bit about HR service delivery, specifically, because ROI counts. It's a story, right? What's the idea? What's the vision around deploying this and getting value for the organization? So we'll get it that Alexander but do us a favor. Tell us about the story you're trying to put together? Or the real question you have around ROI on on HR service delivered to you Hello,

Alexander 10:52

everybody. I'm sorry. It's my son or Jamaica.

Greg Irwin 10:56

Your in We gotcha. Okay.

Alexander 10:58

So currently, my position servers like I'm a service now processes you are sir friends, my friends. Working on chars are so empty, which is a customer or serve. So we're sorry. So eating a char we have project to implement the workday. integration between ServiceNow choice so workday. So there were were abouts and also ever be the leader for the mission? Or sorry. So we currently had this project. So I chose implementations. And a lot of times the customer say HR is expensive. It's expensive. It's expensive. Other questions why has both workday. And sort of sound starts to accelerate. case resolution. A single point of contact in the portal is firm, etc. If ever someone has a success story about it, I'd be very happy to learn.

Greg Irwin 12:39

Yes. Wait. We do have some background noise from Yeah, Alexander. But I think we've got no,

Alexander 12:45

I'm sorry. I'm in the restaurant. I'm very sorry. That's all

Greg Irwin 12:49

Alexander, I think we got the question. Well, which is there's workday HCM. And you have ServiceNow. You have a project here to implement. And I think the question is stories on driving the value. Why do you need both? And and how do you drive operational improvement by layering on top HRS D in combination with weather? Let's let's use workday. I'll ask Monica, this one to get started. But I'd love to hear from others. It's a good question. If you have an HCM, why do you need a service delivery platform to cover HR case management with ServiceNow?

Monica Blandin 13:31

So I think I got most of that it was pretty loud. So if I missed anything, I apologize and maybe Jesse will fill in here. So are you asking about the value of the HR SD as

Greg Irwin 13:46

to how it helps the value of the HR SD in addition to an to a standing HCM? Like like Workday? Okay,

Monica Blandin 13:57

okay, Jesse, do you want to take that one? I'm going to try and sorry, I do apologize. I'm going to try and switch internet here really quick, because something is it's very sorry to put you on but it's very choppy. And I just want to make sure I know I'm sorry. I'm gonna switch internet here really quick.

Greg Irwin 14:10

All right, you got it Monica, Jesse, let's do it.

Jesse Nocon 14:16

To be honest, workday is not something that I have a deep knowledge and expertise on. But I think we'll we'll want to wait for Monica to be able to come and address the HCM to HR S D issue. I can, you know, dive deep on the features and functionality and value of HR SD, you know, if we want, if not, we can change the subject.

Greg Irwin 14:36

Let's take it to the group. Let's pull the group has anyone deployed ServiceNow service service now HR service delivery, and can articulate or point to the operational benefits of having that run alongside or a feed are integrated into their HCM platform. Has anyone done it Wow. Now everyone may be May everyone may be a little. But seen as no one. How about a Jeff? Have you tried it? Jeff? Jeff?

Jeff 15:14

Oh, I, we've done mostly workday, obviously, the user data. Yeah, I'm trying to get them to map all the necessary data, you know, locations, instead of trying to maintain locations in ServiceNow. Yeah, you might as well have your HR who's in charge of all the locations maintain that. Yeah. And it's just a lot of work getting these disparate environments connected to each other. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Jesse Nocon 15:46

One thing I can say is, is very important when working with you know, multiple systems and something that, you know, I deal with a lot and more my expertise on the asset management side, where we have, you know, procurement systems and data systems, like endpoint management systems, in, you know, ServiceNow discovery, combining with all of that is, is really important to, you know, talk about your governance, in in have your process owners defined, so that, you know, there is a, you know, person who can make those, you know, decisions at that leadership level, and can look to enforce them, you know, as the process goes, you know, down from the more of the leadership to the execution of the process. And as that comes into play, especially when we're talking about multiple systems and multiple processes that are intertwined, like you would get with an HCM, more like you would get with a ServiceNow, connecting with an SAP, like system for procurement, where you need to make sure that the development work that's happening in both of those systems is coordinated, that it is benefiting the processes that are interacting, and it's also not preventing the processes. You know, not sorry, not, we're not doing manual work in both system that's unnecessary, right. So I really like what Jeff caught up there is that identifying those areas where you can have one system be the point of truth, and then both systems can leverage that data for their processes as needed.

Jeff 17:19

Yeah. By interesting, I mean, that's exactly what I was meant wanting to mention is, you want one system to be the source of truth on this stuff. Others can have it but the minute you put it in the other system, it's as good as the date that you put it in there. Exactly. Yep.

Monica Blandin 17:40

And Greg, I can add to that, sorry, apologize for the internet. So one of the HR implementations I'm working on right now is actually the integration of Workday. So when I heard the question, it was all jumbly. I was like, this is very applicable to what Alexander is asking. So we're doing a workday implementation right now. And it's actually the one for the healthcare company. So I would say just ROI is having you guys said this, I apologize, one central source of data, right. And I'm not just doing it for the healthcare company, there's a couple of affiliates with it. So again, when you're dealing with a healthcare company, in a pandemic, right, their data is extremely critical. You know, everyone's data call data is critical, but it's really, really critical, right? So we are doing the implementation integration right now of Workday. And it's, it's really, I think, the biggest ROI is going to be that single point of reference, the single point of truth, and just having one platform where everybody can go into, because I look at having a single point of reference as similar to a CMDB, which I thought somebody actually mentioned here as well. When you don't have that. And you've got multiple platforms, or spreadsheets or whatever you're using. It's only as good as when it's done right away. It's like driving a car off a lot. The second that somebody else touches it, right, it depreciates and it's not valid anymore. So I absolutely think that there's a benefit. And so again, Apology

Greg Irwin 19:07

large company for a large company, 10,000 employees, what's the scope of work to implement and get it fully go live on hrs pay?

Monica Blandin 19:18

That's the million dollar question. So I don't want to I don't want to seem like I'm skirting it. I think it depends, right? So on a large company with 10,000 employees. It can be as simple or as complex as you want. And I'm not trying to be a

Greg Irwin 19:34

project.

Monica Blandin 19:37

It can be right. So if you're dealing with just the company, and I think you're just looking at a defined set of HR services, right, you can do it in a relatively simpler amount of time. A lot of it has to also do with some of the methodology behind it. So it's what kind of prep work and homework the client is participating in, as well as their rigor When it comes to, you know, integration testing, you know, unit testing you 80, right. And then if it but that can expand and scale if you're working on a larger company, or more complex with affiliates, and their, their processes to date aren't possibly as mature. Or if you've got a significan, right well over 100 HR services that you're trying to work through, and you know, 20-30 years of data that you're trying to skinny down, it can be much longer, right? So a lot of it is client dependent, and, and then you kind of add in the level of complexity with OCM. Right? So then there's that part is once you get through kind of designing and planning, sometimes you get roadblocks, as you're starting that that OCM piece and communicating organization, you get resistance, which forces you to go backwards. So a lot of it's just dependent in setting the parameters up front,

Greg Irwin 20:56

the project you're on right now implementing workday in ServiceNow. What's the scope? What's the cost? Give us a, is this a six month project? Half a million dollars? What's the give us?

Monica Blandin 21:07

Yeah, so So the price have to be sensitive around it. And again, I wouldn't want to provide I wouldn't want to provide that just because there's a lot of caveats to it. So again, not not trying to be evasive. The project is six to nine months. And in and I say that kind of a sliding scale, because there are a lot of things at play here. This one does have two additional affiliates. And there's a lot of history.

Greg Irwin 21:37

There's a lot of history, you have some cleanup to do.

Monica Blandin 21:40

Right. Right. So the pricing again, the pricing is going to be dependent on a whole lot of things.

Jesse Nocon 21:46

Right, and some other some other factors that can come into play there. Right, so So Greg, right, I heard for a 10,000 person company, right? For HR in particular, you could have a 10,000 person company that every employee is located in one state, the following one set of guidelines and regulations, you could have a 10,000 person company that's operating in 2020 countries,

Greg Irwin 22:05

I think, right? I get the variation. Haven't we've all done these projects? The question is, you got to scope it and understand what's an easy hit, what's an easy win, I've got this platform, I'm voting on the platform, I want to get value for the platform, and I want something that I'm going to roll out, that's going to be a win for the organization. And we've i You can see them right here. Brandon, I want to get to AI and service delivery. That's, you know, alert storms I've heard about now over and over and over all these different tooling, all of that, that basically the ops team has to figure out how do we how do we resolve it? How do we find a real issue from just from just noise? There are lots of potential things you could do with service now, where I'm driving this conversation is to find the wins to find the lowest hanging fruit to get the most value out of the platform. So if it's okay, let's, let's follow that thread. And we talked about some of the projects, maybe Brandon, I'll bring in if that's okay. Tell us about where you're going some of some of your roadmap, roadmap items, I was kind of riffing off of your comment here. But maybe you can tell us a little bit more color.

Brandon 23:19

So I've just I've recently changed roles. But in the previous one where this I think it's conversations more relevant in just a few months ago, we were bringing ServiceNow it we were doing our implementation, and part of that was a phased approach. You guys were talking about the integration between ServiceNow workday and some of those other systems, we had that we had a similar challenge like that. And we chose to start with the service delivery side and leave the, you know, the higher higher end functions like HR and things like that out of it in it for the initial phase. But from an AI perspective, you know, one of the things that I see as a benefit for organizations with AI is being able to handle some of those, well, you know, you talked about the alerts and things like that, but I'm even thinking more from a customer perspective, I'm having people call in and get that or be able to, you know, use that those AI agents to be able to do simple tasks, and really cut back on the amount of time your your service delivery teams are spending on you know, simple things like, you know, password resets or, or being able to have have those have the AI set up to provide the information to the customer so they don't have to, you know, so they can do a lot of things on their own. And what I'm curious about from an AI perspective is, you know, the, the language, the natural language of the day has really improved over time. And I'm curious to know, from from the from a future perspective, you know, where's that going? You know, it is They're going to be well, do you think we'll get to a time? Where does these folks think we'll get to a time when we really don't have service agents on the desk anymore, that the AI will really get to a point where it's good enough to really reduce some costs in that area? And focus on just getting the knowledge in on that side?

Greg Irwin 25:17

Or not? You're referring to chat bots, and leveraging a knowledge base of like, Hey, here's the question. There's the there's the answer, and basically, self service. Yeah.

Brandon 25:28

Yeah. And that's what we were looking at early on. But you know, as a improves, I feel like there's, we're gonna see that being utilized and some of the other areas as well. Yeah, we're just curious what that looks like.

Greg Irwin 25:43

So for anyone on the line, and somebody share a story of leveraging some more self service here, on, you know, on, on on tickets and questions, obviously, Jesse, and Monica, but I'd love to hear from others as well.

Jesse Nocon 26:03

I can certainly chime in here. for it. Let's start Jesse. Yeah. So to address you know, Brandon's question there directly about do we think we'll ever get to a place where, you know, we don't have that support team, I'm not sure that that's the direction that ServiceNow is necessarily moving to. However, I do think that they want to get to a point where it can be a very lean and limited almost skeleton like crew that is dealing with bespoke issues to a customer, and also really high priority complex issues that we want to have, you know, a human intervention on. But when it comes to our, you know, p four, P five, b threes, you know, I do think that that, you know, is is an area that ServiceNow is looking to move towards, with, you know, eliminating the need for support staff. To directly kind of go into their natural language to write I ServiceNow is definitely investing in that, right, they've had a number of acquisitions in the last year, which is really related to AI, it particularly around AI preventing AI from having bias. So, you know, looking to ensure that when AI is interacting with somebody that, you know, the, the inherent bias of the programmers and the inherent bias of the people who are designing the systems is not coming into play in that, you know, that AI is, is interacting with folks on an equal and equitable basis for natural language understanding, right, that's already pretty prominent in the platform with virtual agent. And one new feature as a broker that is using that natural language understanding is that AI search in the employee center. And if you haven't got to, you know, deal with that, that previous zing, search and service now I'm sure we've all done a search, and it's hung up for 20 seconds on us. And we're like, I'm just trying to find a knowledge base, what's going on? Right? So first and foremost, that AI search is about five to six times faster. But by being able to use that natural language understanding, right, those little spelling mistakes and jargon that people use, right, we'll be able to account for that we'll be able to route searches properly, and then that AI search, you know, with some, you know, advanced feature sets can actually now go and search in different products in your organization. Right? So we talked about having an HCM, what's the value of that? Well, if your HCM is the source of truth for your data, and it's populating service, now we can actually connect that AI start directly to that HCM now and be able to search through, you know, search through that system, as well as what's going on with ServiceNow.

Greg Irwin 28:34

Have you seen some of these tools then employ Jesse have seen some of these tools implemented in a way that it's really offloaded a lot of tickets, and, you know, reduce some of the strain on on the internal services team?

Jesse Nocon 28:53

Yeah, I think people attack the AI and, you know, the natural language understanding features from kind of two different mindsets. One is that mindset that you just talked about, Greg and we certainly have, you know, work with customers and clients who are who are looking to, you know, increase efficiencies, make make sure that their support team is focusing on critical issues, and, and to promote self service, the other lens that that that folks have come to it as is actually providing that kind of white glove treatment, and ensuring that, you know, their employees are, you know, being able to interact with the system in a number of different ways. So they actually feel like that they're being catered to tailor to and getting almost extra bespoke treatment. Better, right. Exactly. Exactly an experience that's tailored to them. So I so you know, ultimately the end, the end result is the same, but we've seen people attack it from both of us mentality.

Greg Irwin 29:51

Excellent. Hi, can I can we poll the group and somebody here share a story about deploying some cognitive services on top of ServiceNow I'd like to I'd like to hear if somebody had success with a wide open question. I'd love somebody to volunteer. I can call people out. But you know, Alex, Sohail, Raman, anyone have some experiences you can share?

Alex 30:23

This is so helpful. Unfortunately, I do not have that kind of experience, which I can share with you guys. But I'll be interested to know what other people did and what they faced. But thank you.

Greg Irwin 30:41

Yeah, so thank you. And Alex done pleasure. Jesse, is this just new stuff? I mean, is this just, you know, we're not there yet. Any evolution that is that it's, you know, bubbled through through the community.

Jesse Nocon 30:56

I do think it's, it's, I would say, new ERP. But we definitely have, you know, I've worked with a good subset of our more mature clients on, you know, looking to target those user focus, they have features, but also more of those analytics focused AI features, right, the product of intelligence, where, you know, you're able to, you know, have the machine learning aspects of ServiceNow, aggregate a number of incidents, and you see problems arise before, you know, human eyes would be able to see it. And those kinds of those kinds of different features, I will say that, like something like Performance Analytics, it takes a good subset of data in the platform to really drive the value out of that. And it's definitely most beneficial to folks who have been working in the platform for some time.

Greg Irwin 31:43

Oh, less,

Dr. Katherine Sternasty 31:44

I would say, oh, go ahead. Sorry.

Greg Irwin 31:48

No Monica please.

Monica Blandin 31:50

Oh, okay. Sorry. So I was gonna say, I did work on an ITSM solution with AI for an oil and gas company couple years ago. And of course, everyone, you know, I'm in Houston, right? Everybody knows the challenges with oil and gas. So there's obviously been an initiative to, you know, get lean, right? So there were, you know, large initiatives, like how do we consolidate down from the 2700, individual softwares are in the company, but also just simple things, like the AI with the ITSM. So to Jesse's point, the goal was never to completely eliminate, like a service desk, right? It was to really kind of hone in on your, you know, your most significant issues, the P ones P tos. But while delineating between the incidents and a request, because that's a huge portion of this, right, you can have ai ai, you better have the data and all that. But you have to be able to articulate and get everybody on board with the difference between an incident and request. And I think ITSM is a wonderful tool that can segregate them, but it's also getting everybody on board with, you know, the, the letter K on your keyboard missing is not a P one. And it's not a P one incident. Right. So it's, it's been a very tricky like that. But, um, I would say in terms of value in percentages, right? If I looked at a first call resolution, if you had a target of, you know, 80%, I would say that, you know, implementing this solution was able to bring us, you know, kind of an immediate, I would almost say as aggressively as like a team percent, just immediate, right, and that that flows through the organization, because you've got more efficiency, less frustration, less downtime, less agents, and although your service desk agents are expensive resource, you have to start somewhere, right. So you've got to start, just kind of stop the bleeding while you're working on the larger initiatives.

Greg Irwin 33:40

Yeah. Hopefully, that helps. Great stuff. Let's keep going. There are a couple areas I want to cover risk management, and I saw it raised a little bit earlier. I think it was Andrew, who mentioned Andrew, thanks for that. Um, would you do us a favor? And just tell us what's the what's the thinking around here, see, and risk management on ServiceNow? And then let's bring it out to the group. And I'll ask everybody for your stories. Good, bad or ugly?

Andrew 34:12

Yeah, of course. Hi, everyone, Andrew. I'm a manager of operations and risk strategy. And I guess why it's pertinent to us now is we've had we have different technologies, kind of across our Risk and Compliance branch of the company, and some of them I guess, in the space of IRM, specifically, Integrated Risk Management, that ServiceNow has, somewhat quickly become kind of a front runner in the space, you know, in comparison to you know, some of the some of its competitors. And so it's just got us looking at, you know, it's ServiceNow is something we've implemented at our company for EHR and ITSM already. And I guess the, the reason I'm interested in it is, what we've seen thus far is, it would take a huge play, to make a switch into a different technology, just because of how integrated we are already into others. We're talking, you know, 45 plus different risk specific programs housed on one technology. And, and kind of what, you know how you make that case? How that how best you build that case, study, and prove the value of making such a big switch?

Greg Irwin 35:41

I appreciate it. I'm going to come to Jesse and Monica was also as anyone else, raise your hand, if you've if you've tried to put together that business case, if you have put together the business case. And of course, if you rolled it out, Jesse, Monica, have you? Have you seen IRM cases come together?

Monica Blandin 36:08

Not Yeah, I'm not at the I'm not sure I can provide an example to what to what Andrew is referring to. I've got to I'm gonna have to think here for a second. Sure. Sorry. I was kind of I was trying to think of that it was as he was talking. So now IRM. Example. Let me a second to think.

Greg Irwin 36:30

You got it. Guessing copy stump me on this one? It's yeah, it's hard, because things are changing so much. We're talking about HR Service Desk, we're talking about chatbots for service management. Now we're talking about, you know, risk programs. It's actually part of the problem. Right? It's it touches so many, so many organizations in use case, Jesse?

Jesse Nocon 36:57

Yeah. So I think that, you know, not, you know, just hearing what Andrew said there and not, you know, having the chance to dive really deep with him, that I think the the biggest use case, in driver for ServiceNow, being the place to have those IRM or GRC processes run through is the CMDB. And being able to tie, you know, those different systems that you're already using and the data that they're getting, and being able to enrich that with ServiceNow CMDB data, right. So, you know, good example would be something like a vendor risk. structure where, you know, we're bringing in, you know, those risk calculations and qualifications and numbers from a system like a tenable, right, and enriching it with the CMDB data, putting together CI matching rules. And then you're getting right the value from the systems that you already have in place. And you're not losing the value of those systems, because you're connecting them with ServiceNow. And you're enriching the data with ServiceNow CMDB data. And then of course, you have those great user experience, right. And to me, that's what the future of ServiceNow is, and, and that's going to be a driving factor to move things into ServiceNow, holistically across an enterprise, right, so that people are having the same experience. They used to go into a tool, right? They're running an approval, maybe they get an IT approval, for some reason, they then they get a vendor risk related or security incident response approval, right? It's the same thing. They're they're functioning on in the same way, and they're going to the same tool to do it.

Greg Irwin 38:29

Excellent. Thank you. Anyone else? Jump jump right in. Otherwise, I'm going to keep going and we'll we'll keep pulling the group and hearing some stories. Now let's, let's invite in Rhonda, Rhonda, I hope you're on the line with us love to hear lie, it stands out close. I'm curious, what's what's on the roadmap? What are you? What are you thinking about it loads?

Rhonda 38:59

We are definitely good afternoon. Awesome conversation, awesome discussion. We are definitely working for it expanding our overall platform from a ServiceNow perspective, just to assure that we're staying close to cutting edge, complete overhaul in terms of, again, how to work smarter in order to get things over the finish line. So lots going on. Lots of transformations going on. We're in a really great place where we're able to stabilize a lot of our environments, as we look at key metrics over you know, the years everything is all about OKRs. So how we're measuring how we are even measuring against what past performance so yes, so just a lot going on there.

Greg Irwin 39:57

Is there what area so you're I think we all agree, like in terms of the opportunity, what do you tackle? The taxman? ITSM? What's what's what's on the list? Providers? And community partners? Sorry, folks. MANISH I just muted your line. Sorry about that. Rhonda, can you tell us one or two things that are on the roadmap? What is

Rhonda S 40:23

actually it? Is it SM? And then overall stabilizing platforms within the stores? But definitely ITSM is the focus here.

Greg Irwin 40:34

Yeah. All right. All right. Excellent. Any questions you have? I mean, we're gonna keep talking. I'm gonna try and pull out as much as I can. But is there something you specifically want to hear about?

Rhonda 40:44

Now? Just great dialogue, great conversation. And yeah, this is great. But thank you so much.

Greg Irwin 40:50

All right. Thank you, Rhonda. Thank you. Let's go over to Lisa. Lisa, nice to speak with you again, you raise a great point here, aligning disparate customer experiences into a federated environment. Yeah, everyone's on service. Now, everyone's on Salesforce. Tell us a little bit about the challenges or maybe successes of kind of melding these big platforms, or the data from these big platforms. So

Lisa 41:19

I mean, we're University and and when I'm, when I say highly federated, we are highly federated. So we have some several completely separate ServiceNow instances that are not linked. Right. So we when when you started the discussion around HR, service management and workday. Yeah, that's being done in another area of university, while we have some aspects of Workday that we support here. So there's a completely disparate customer experience and completely confusing. What one of the things we want to do in the future, is kind of look at how do we improve the experience, not just of our students, but if anybody in it who needs to come to get information across these multiple situations? Like do I go to my local it? Do I go to central IT, which part of HR am I going to which helped this guy am I going to so the understanding how to build those things together will be really important. And, you know, when you speak to ServiceNow people, they want to reinforce using ServiceNow sales, you know, customer experience, and having customers come there when you talk to Salesforce people, like I service now behind the Salesforce platform, so we have bad experience. So I'm really interested in how people are handling this because you don't want to have a Franken now a Franken service. Now you don't need it, we need something that can be functional. And so that that's just a concern of mine. Other than that our big thing right now, is it.

Greg Irwin 43:02

Okay. I'm leaving. Yes, I'm

Lisa 43:06

looking for answers on exactly how to solve that first problem. So thank you,

Greg Irwin 43:10

Lisa. One, a little point of direction. And Jesse, I'm gonna come to you here for next but Lisa, is the current path to keep these individual instances of ServiceNow up and just create bridges between them? Or is there a thought that you're gonna actually consolidate the systems? Neither? Okay, just run them run them independent? At the moment? Yeah. Okay. Jesse, you I know, you've seen this, you go to a large company, they're they're their departments and groups and divisions? What are some? What are most customers do not best in class? What are most customers?

Jesse Nocon 43:51

You know, I definitely think that most, you know, folks are not at that place where, right, there's a unified experience, that that certainly right is an end goal for most organizations. And you know, from what Lisa's saying with, you know, her federated university status, that that ultimately doesn't sound like it at the moment, at least is a possibility. Right. So I think in order to bridge those gaps, right, ensuring that your folks have, I think the biggest key there is ensuring that the knowledge management strategy is coordinated between those different federated instances, and that there is an easy, accessible way for knowledge and guidance that doesn't have to have human intervention that somebody can do on their own right especially a student or a professor right when we're talking to a university instance who wants to get something quick, get in and out and get back to their already hectic busy schedule, you know, has a way to get the information they need right away in in a in a central repository. Right and I know all the different instances are federated and such but you know, having A single place for knowledge that's coordinated between those and then curated in a way that is tailored towards their end users, I think what helped bridge a lot of those gaps,

Greg Irwin 45:10

got it focus on the data by k, it doesn't matter if one system is feeding these users and another one's the other, they're both pulling from the same knowledge, knowledge library, that's a good start. Absolutely. Like that. Are companies consolidating or creating bridges between their environment?

Jesse Nocon 45:33

So we're working with a management wealth management firm, that we're in discussions with, right now with them on how, you know, we can look to support them, because they have an intranet in a SharePoint and an IG portal, and they're looking to bring in an HR portal, then they have their customer service portal, you know, for, for their clients and such. And it's getting difficult for them to manage all of that. And the conversation has been really focusing around, you know, nailing down those areas where, or nailing down and creating that taxonomy. And looking to have a content focused taxonomy that is geared towards the end users that can be supported in the new employee center, and then in the backend, still have that separation, and still have that. Almost like federated environment. It's not federated, but almost like federated environment where you know, the different silos within that organization are still handling their services. And so and that's something that wasn't possible in ServiceNow. Until very recently, and with the new employee center, you're able to have a front end user facing taxonomy that helps bridge a lot of it can even bridge multiple instances, actually, to present a unified a unified front end.

Greg Irwin 47:02

What's it? Lisa made a great point? And I'd love your feedback or others. How do you make the case you want a unified interface? For employees? How do you make the case that it should be ServiceNow versus Salesforce? Presuming they're also have a significant? You know, the company also has a significant investment at Salesforce? How do you make the case for ServiceNow? Relative to the other options attack?

Jesse Nocon 47:36

Monica, you want to take this one?

Monica Blandin 47:41

So at the simplest level, right, well, I'm pro ServiceNow. So I guess, you know, that's not the right answer. But But no, i. So, my level, right, I'm looking at it going. I've worked with ServiceNow. For years, I've worked in Salesforce, but ServiceNow, I just in general find a more comprehensive end to end tool, right at a very high level. Right. And I've heard people talk about, you know, at least I mentioned ITAM, and ITSM. And all these other options. I think, in general, the, again, my opinion, the implementation, and the ROI for the cost is more efficient. That's, you know, that would be at a high level my justification for the ServiceNow versus like a Salesforce. Yeah,

Greg Irwin 48:24

I think yeah, there's a Salesforce team and a Salesforce COE that has Salesforce in the Salesforce bars coming in and explaining why, you know, their, you know, their employee service center should be the the front end, and I'm looking at this, we've got a ServiceNow, how do we arm how do we are in this group with the right information, so that we can continue to to drive the value of this platform where it should be?

Jesse Nocon 48:49

Right, I think for me, it comes down that ServiceNow is a true enterprise platform, right? So when we're talking about the ability to model our CMDB data, so that it's enriching our processes across it, enriching our processes across CSM, HR GRC IRM security operations, right, that's capability that just doesn't exist and Salesforce, and you know, if it does requires a lot of customization. And right, additionally, you know, being able to present all of those, you know, areas in a single unified place for our users, whether that's from a mobile experience, a desktop experience, a chatbot experience through integrating with outside systems that people are using every day. Why are we at a Korea we use Slack every day, but our partners at NTT DATA use teams, and we're able to integrate and connect with those and reference those back to our ServiceNow instances, right. So. So why it's the enterprise solution, our true enterprise solution, and on top of that, right, it's the experience,

Greg Irwin 49:54

if you've done your view, sorry, if you've done your HR integrations, you have Your employee data, you have all your asset data, all your all your IT asset data. It makes sense Salesforce. Look, it's got your it's got your CRM, it's got your customer data and pre marketing initiatives. Sure. It's as close to that data with greater fidelity and, and extensions that makes sense for employees employee assets, Employee Services. Yeah, I think I think you could probably make that case here around ServiceNow. Pretty clear. Yeah, yeah.

Monica Blandin 50:30

And that’s what I was referring to at the end and comprehensive right. I didn't want to belabor it. That's where I was referencing. You know, there's been questions on ITM and HR and ITSM. That's absolutely I'm referring to Salesforce in my mind is more siloed. I look at Salesforce. And again, not just because I'm pro service. Now. It's like, that's something I'm going to reference in Lincoln too. But I want ServiceNow to be my, as Jesse said, It's my enterprise tool. It's intuitive, it's end to end. You know, if we were to pick apart the different modules and compare, I don't think there would be a comparison.

Greg Irwin 50:59

Yes. Great stuff. Let's bring in one or one or two more stories. And and then we're going to call it we're going to call it a day. Why don't we go Alex. Alex, it's nice to Nice to see on the line. Do us a favor. Give a little intro and tell us, you know, some of the things you're thinking about over at? I think you're at.

Alex R 51:23

Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Greg. We are looking at implementing ServiceNow next year. Today we use remedy. And the plan is to basically start with the ITSM. And then look at not just ITSM, but also business applications of ServiceNow. And then collecting use cases that I can put together into a business case next year, so that we have approval for expansion of their licensing or service now, but ServiceNow is not making it easy for us because I think they have one of the most complicated licensing models I've ever encountered. That's like, one concern we have right now. But I'm sure we can get through

Greg Irwin 52:16

1. Got it. What's the driver, I'm sure. remedy has capabilities. But why Why go through this transition?

Alex 52:28

It's the first of all, is the ability to integrate, we will be able to do integrations that are just not available with remedy today, the user experience and self service, and then the metrics that we can get out of the system. That's what's driving it right now. And for the business side, this is one unknown to us right now. Like I heard a lot of stories, and I'm reading a lot of marketing literature on ServiceNow. That says, what is possible, but until you actually try it, you don't know. Yes.

Monica Blandin 53:10

Can I ask something, Alex? So when you talked about the complexity of the ServiceNow and in the licensing being a bit of a roadblock? I'm going to put that aside for a second, have you been able to see enough of the tool to at least kind of like are you excited about going from remedy to ServiceNow? Starting with ITSM? Is it just that roadblock? Or are there a lot of other things standing in your way? Just for my own clarification?

Alex 53:40

It's definitely exciting to go to ServiceNow platform. And remedy is not meeting the requirements anymore. So this is the way to go. But as any responsible Corporation, we want to go with the new platform making sure that we have reasonable costs attached.

Monica Blandin 54:04

No apps. Absolutely. And I would say I started with BMC Remedy in my career I've worked with that share Well, IP senator and ServiceNow. So I definitely understand the driver behind that I think remedy is a little bit more rigid, or ServiceNow is it's it's more. It's more dynamic. You can it's more user friendly. But yeah, I definitely would be interested to have like a follow up conversation to see if I can address some of the concerns. That's it's always a little disheartening to hear that you're having a challenge working with ServiceNow. So appreciate that feedback.

Alex 54:37

Thank you.

Monica Blandin 54:38

I appreciate it. You're welcome.

Greg Irwin 54:40

Can somebody here share a story on licensing? Because I think there's an ROI. I saw the word are the three letters ROI, like six times in the chat, like what's the ROI for HR, what's the ROI for ITSM or for AI for? So I'm interested if somebody here has gone through licensing and has a word or word or two of advice for, for Alex. Anyone want to want to share? Or Is anyone in a position where they can share, you know, generalized course.

Monica Blandin 55:15

So, so my recommendation and this is where I think Acorio is good, we don't sell the licensing, right? So there is no, I think it's good that we're able to separate because there's no incentive, if you will, for us to sell licensing. So it's pure honesty. In a previous life, I've worked with, you know, the entire enchilada selling the licensing, you know, third party and then doing the implementations, I would say that, at the highest level, the best recommendation is to really evaluate your organization and who needs what, right, because any, any software management company is always going to try and sell you the right they're gonna say, Oh, you need this, you need the Cadillac, you need the trim, you need everything. I think it's being able to look in your organization and maybe using some, you know, advisory to, with a, you know, kind of a consulting firm did okay. What do you really need, right? Who needs access? Who's doing your day to day? Because that's where companies end up with 22,000 Different software. And you've got one guy that uses one software, and he expenses on his personal credit card. Right? I mean, I think it's just getting down to that elementary of what are you trying to do? What is your business? Who needs it? And I think that gives you the leverage when you're negotiating on the licensing to what you really need, and understanding the different options. I mean, that's just, again, very, very high level.

Greg Irwin 56:39

Awesome, Monica, thank you. And I'll be happy, of course, to help connect. And I think that it should go without saying, We love doing these sessions with a choreo. Because you really see so much and you're you're a great, you're a great perspective on what can and should and should not be done with regards to ServiceNow. So all my plug is please take up Jesse and Monica and their team on any questions that you have. I really hope this was was helpful for you all. And please also think about connecting across the group, I'm going to follow up with that email that has everybody's names and just reply to us. And it doesn't have to be a connection to be WG or choreo. Just build the community. I really believe in like paying it forward and and it takes a village and and I'd found this community as much as any other really, really supportive in that way. So with that, Monica and Jesse, Jesse, thank you so much for taking the time and sharing with us any closing comments you have here before we call it a day.

Monica Blandin 57:47

Now really appreciate apologies on the internet weirdness today. Hopefully, hopefully, I addressed all your questions correctly and heard the question correctly. So great speaking all of you really appreciate it.

Greg Irwin 57:59

Thank you, Monica.

Jesse Nocon 58:01

Thank you everybody for your time today. Really appreciate it.

Greg Irwin 58:09

Happy Holidays, everybody.