ServiceNow Tokyo Release – Dave Wright, ServiceNow

This is Textron TV. Of the great pleasure and be joined by Dave Wright Davis David Chief Innovation officer with servicenow. Hey, Dave could be talking with you.

Hey Mitch. Thanks for thanks for taking the time and other meal. Welcome.

Welcome. Well, we have some exciting stuff. We want to get to some news but first would you introduce yourself?

So they're about you and and for the few people on the planet who might not know who service now is maybe give us a brief fund service now. Yes, so so, my name is Dave Wright, as you said, I'm the chief Innovation Office of the service now, so being here for coming out for 11 years now and but people who don't know who service now is what what service now is all about is is making the world of work look better for people. It's it's about looking at all complexity to happens on and surprise level when people are trying to get work done and I'm looking at how you can simplify that so looking at how you can make things easier for employees how you can make things easier for customers and how you can make things easy for your business as well.

Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, I'll let you make the announcement tell us about the new news Okay.

So so what we're announcing today is the release of our Tokyo release. So we are we name all our instances after sissies. We do two releases a year.

So earlier in the year, we had San Diego but now we're doing the the Tokyo release and the the interesting thing for me about the Tokyo release is we're very Whoever he customer focused. So so, you know, we look at what's happening with our customers and get feedback from them. And I'm look at how we address some of the concerns and the needs that they've got and I spend a huge amount of time talking to customers but over the over the last two years.

I suppose as I've spoke to people was more and more trends that have emerged and most Trends I kind of uniform. It doesn't really matter what the industry is. I tend to find people have the same type of issues.

So so now I'm still hearing people talking quite a lot about How do they how do they not just attract talents into an organization? But how do they retain Talent within an organization? And that that's become different to what it used to be especially if I look at if I look at my world in in kind of California and Silicon Valley the whole the whole concept around how you keep an employee used to be you'd make it so that they never want to leave work you'd make it so that they had everything they possibly needed in that work environment.

But now with this new way of working with this more distributed hybrid working model you need something else to do that. You need to focus much more experience. The the next thing I find comes up quite often is people are concerned around both the rising costs the things that we see with inflation currently the way it is and also with how do people get supply chain resiliency and deal with supply chain issues.

How do they how do they get something to the point where they're not going to be affected by that again? And then Common elements the final common elements to come up. People focusing on business operations.

So people see more and more increased complexity the same more and more regulation the seeing this this focus on compliance. How do they deal with that? And how do they get that visibility to make sure that they can cover all those areas off.

So the Tokyo releases very focused on addressing some of those problems. Excellent. Well, I definitely concur with those Trends.

I think that that those would be broadly shared things and I would just kind of tweak a little bit add a little bit to the supply chain. I think it's also expect further disruption right because there's all on showing and you know, the batteries in my car have to be made in the US now. Okay, How's that gonna happen or whatever industry you're in I think everybody's being affected by sort of kind of localization if you will within different economies and it's an interesting time, isn't it?

Oh, that's why I think took Everyone by surprise, especially the supply chain side. No one. I don't think anyone was suddenly prepared to have a whole group of supplies.

Just say yeah, we we haven't got any more of that. Oh, we can't get it for for a few months. We're not in that business anymore or whatever, right?

No, no one wants to be kind of fenced in like that anymore. So people looking at how do I how do I have Alternatives that enable me to always be able to to go to different supplies to get what I need and be able to have that insight. Enter when I'm going to have any issues.

So those are fairly macro kind of things. How does that translate into Tokyo and the things that you've done in this release? So I suppose at some level if you look at the platform on its own there's there's a lot of ways that we we kind of address various areas of that.

So we we optimize processes to to help people to do the best work. So that's kind of a core function of what we do with the the workflow side of the product. But also what we've done with the new UI side The Experience side, so we first released what we call the next experience in the San Diego release, but we've enhanced it more as we've gone through the Tokyo release and then we start to look at how we connect that data together and start to create some of those more more seamless experiences across employees and then finally because of the nature of the platform, we allow people to to kind of Accelerate Innovation but accelerate innovation in a way where they can do it at scale.

So what we've done is we've we've kind of looked at the different products that we we could create and how they get put together and we've we've sort of grouped the products together. So so what we've done is we've looked at three areas where we say. Well, how can we affect these areas we've looked at what can we do to boost engagement productivity and get better customer and employ experiences?

We've looked at how we can supercharge what we do from an intelligence perspective and how can we start to get trust for operations and security and finally the last one when we talk about accelerating Innovation for is how can we how can we actually also help accelerate value by providing some solutions that we didn't have before so that's that's the way we group them. If you want I can I can talk a little bit about what's in each of those areas. I'd love to hear about that too and just maybe to if you would think about this too my own experience is Yeah, there's been a lot of sort of automation that we focused on through covid and other other reasons, but there's also a re-engineering of those processes too.

It's not just continuous Improvement making things incrementally better. I can I can count on probably two hands how many times you've had to rebuild redesign processes as business conditions customer offerings doing new innovation. So it part of it is that velocity of being able to not only create the Innovation but rebuild the systems and processes and support that people need to do that.

You see the same thing. Yeah. Absolutely.

I think the the challenge that people have had is having that having that visibility. And so what the process actually is, so The the worst thing I suppose the worst thing you can do. When you you look at digital transformation in general is just go in and take the existing process that you've gotten digitize it because quite often you end up with a bad process that just runs a bit faster.

It's a it's an opportunity to to look at how you can address those processes and and think more like a more like a digital native. There's a there's very much a feel a lot of processes were always designed by people who think in and analog way and and that capability to say. Well, let's not just take that analog process and change it but let's think of it how a digital native will look at that.

It'd be the difference between You deciding you were going to download music onto a device as opposed to immediately thinking well, do I need to download it? I could just stream it. So then I haven't got to worry about storage or capacity anymore.

And that's kind of the difference between those two ways of thinking that the concept of downloading music to a device is an analog way of thinking because that's what you used to do a cassette tapes a digital way of thinking would be I don't even need to do that. It's not just another format. It's a different way of the having the experience in this case a digital experience.

And absolutely absolutely I'm sure your thoughts because on this because creating new digital experience isn't necessarily in an easy thing to rethink right kind of live in the the soup that we live in right the world. We live in and the bubble we live in how do you help customers with thinking about it in a digital native world or redesigning it from a digital standpoint so that you're you're appealing to all people folks that may be new to digital experiences folks that may live it every day. so I think a lot of it comes down to understanding the way expectations have been set a lot of people talk around consumerization of the Enterprise and the interesting thing is when you look at some of the the big companies that really have changed the way people do business.

The people that have changed the way that we we order things online or the way that we book holidays or the way that we get cars. They haven't actually come up with something. That's a New Concept.

They've just made the experience so good that you you would rather use their Service than anyone else's so I've always been able to buy things online. I've always been able to get a taxi, but now we've got companies out there that provide ways of doing that that are so much easier that I tend to favor them and I think that's that's what you need to think about when you actually look at putting transformation in place. You need to think about it being experienced-led and an experience to me.

It isn't just that it isn't just that UI side. It's also being able to hide that complexity. So, you know when someone initiates a service they make their choices and they get notified when when they can expect that service to be fulfilled everything that happens around that in the background the workflows.

It's in the system. The things that you shouldn't have to worry about is a as a consumer and that's that's very much what we what we think about when we look at some of the new features in Tokyo, for example, so I if I think of an example of that for a while we've been able to To allow people or employees to come in and go into a portal and be able to raise issues or issue requests. But what we can do now is we can say well.

Is that really the way people want to work the people want to go in there and and have a conversation with people the people want to go in there and and raise a traditional ticket the way they would of by sending an email somewhere and in most cases no, if I think of how I solve my challenges in the real world, I tend to go online and find out what the problem is. So part of the Tokyo release. We have the concept of issue also resolution where we've been able to use natural language processing being able to provide that that virtual agent front end that as someone has an issue.

They actually go in and have the solutions suggested to them or take into the place where they can they can resolve that themselves to try and make sure that they don't lose any efficiency that they're not waiting for replies that they get that also resolution in place. So so focus on that experience to me is very It's interesting. It's it's not just about being digital.

You know, that's just being online. Right and sometimes rethinking those experiences is equipping other people not making what we have better right not a better ticketing system or a better workflow maybe giving them part of that workflow. So there isn't handoffs.

So there's not delays in the process that they actually get what they need much quicker, but it's you know, the simple sometimes is hard though, isn't it simple, you know, and that's why that's why when we start to look at it features and enhancements we put in the product. That's why things do change. So like a common question that we used to get was.

How do I how do I actually go about building these processes? How do I what steps do I go to and when should I do certain things and we realize that we we had so many customers that were alive that we could we could kind of build some of that awesome amazing intelligence into the system. So So one of the things we came up with was this concept called admin Center and and what people can get very confused by when they have a SAS based solution is is am I getting all of value that I need from it and and by that it's you know, am I using it in the right way?

Am I doing the right things? So what what admin Central allows you to do is it allows you to to visualize everything that you're entitled to and then overlay that with how you're currently using it. So you make sure you haven't you haven't bought something.

Can you you're not optimizing what you can do with it, but the system can also look at how mature you are from a process perspective. So on, you know how you deal with customer service issues. How are you dealing with it issues or how you dealing with employee requests it can.

It can look at that system and say well well based on how you're acting you're a certain level and maturity. You're probably now ready for this next stage of implementation and that could be deploying a product that you already have in a different area as opposed to to necessarily needing a new product. This is a like a guided path that shows people how they can administer and how they can develop what they do on the system, which is is something that the people have asked for for a while.

But this I think this this guidance and visibility kind of spreads throughout the platform now because I if I look at if I look at another product manager hope that's very focused on how do I get that holistic view of all my team so so manage your hope allows you to to visualize your team to understand what requests they've got outstanding to understand what career Journeys their arms to understand what promotion paths are on to be able to to have those employees spread around but still have that feel Got that team around you. So again all that that kind of referential linking of different things together. The only things I've enjoyed and this is pre Tokyo release is the online commercials that that have people talked about I created such and so and I'm not even a coder right?

That's it's it's really cool. I enjoyed them very much. Yeah curious.

Okay, so I'm curious how you create a platform where you know in the tech world we might say well that's a low-code no code citizen developers. We've put all these wonky words around it and you know the average person in the organization who can use a platform like service now, they don't even thinking those terms right? They think of I'm a manager of people and I have to do these things, right?

How do you put put that to them so that they're equipped. Well at the same time you do have to handle some more than complexities of software and integration and those kind of challenges. So so a lot of the times it's it's just getting people to think.

think in terms of service and workflow so So if I think about a specific task that I'm going to do and it's very easy for me to them to then break that down into process. So it's very easy for me to say. Okay, what what type of work are you doing?

And when people say everything they do what they're doing then is the categorizing work and then when someone says well If you get that type of work to do who does it they'll they'll say which teams do it. Then you're starting to work out your links between categorization and assignments, then you can start to deal with things like the relative importance of things and you can build up that workflow and what we try and do is we try and allow people to have reusable components. We try and put tools in place that allow people to to be able to build those apps to be able to visually also what happens to my workflow perspective and to be able to to try and get people to think about things in a different way.

So I A good example of that was we now have a solution called Supply a lifecycle management where it's a kind of addresses what we were saying at the park with the stop about how do you deal with supply chain distribution? But but the process of onboarding a supply for example is is a very well known process in most companies. So so rather than using email and getting people to fill in forms getting people to understand what's actually needed to be done to get the certification to get the legal approvements to get someone into a preferred supplies list is something that you can automate the way the way it works the best for me in my experience.

When I when I speak to people is it's that combination of having subject matter experts work with people who understand basic coding because as you said when we were we were talking on the intro Mitch, it's It's getting people to think like a programmer isn't necessarily what you you want to do. But having someone who just understands the concept of things like if this then that it's very easy for that subject matter expert then describe what happens and and sit with someone who can actually start to build that house without that person being a fully qualified program. I just someone who's used to administering A system can easily do stuff like that.

I feel like we are in the Era of what we did for spreadsheets and financial people to model things, right? They're understanding of the world. We're in a new world of think about work and process and outcome and value and that's what platforms with service now are about Yeah, that's what it's all about.

How do you how do you make things scalable? How do you make things your peaceful? How do you get how do you get visibility into what sexually happening?

How do you how do you take things that you're very familiar with and then scale them out. So everyone for example is is very familiar with the concept of it asset management. But all those principles can be apply to something else so you can move that very easily as we've done in this release to to look at what you do around and surprise us at management.

How do you how do you start to deal with things that are important to a business? So it might be your managing service and networks, which is it might be your managing MRIs and x-ray machines or it might be your man your your managing welding robots or it could be something that's an intrinsic large asset to the company but it still needs maintenance to be in compliance. It's still needs to be service.

It's still got a depreciation factor. It's still going on. So, how can we start to wrap things like that?

As well, excellent. So so go with me for a moment kind of a funny question, you put a lot of work into a big release like this like Tokyo what what sort of your hopes what if you saw a customer doing something with the Tokyo release they couldn't do maybe before Tokyo and using it in a way they would say that's why we built it. That's exactly why we created this release what might be an example of that that comes to mind.

So I think an example if you again if you think of how the world's changed now, there's there's much much greater focus on. And this sounds big but much greater focus on survival of the planets. So so I speak to a lot of people now and they have any SG strategy, you know, an environmental social government strategy.

And and one of the things that people have always struggled with is if I've got all these separate initiatives running around an organization to try and do something that's better for the planet then. How do I prove the effectiveness of them? How do I understand that we're going in the right direction.

So one of the things that we put into Tokyo is the the concept of ASG management where we could we could actually go go down to a carbon accounting level to allow people to understand if they're initiatives around reduce travel there initiatives around using energy efficient data senses, or the the concepts around energy efficient buildings, what was being saved from that and how could that actually be understood so that you knew you are moving in the right direction and I think that's probably something this new in Tokyo where when I joined the company all these years ago. I never thought anyone would actually be using it to look at the impact of their company had on the planet as a whole. So that's something that we couldn't do that's value with the purpose.

It's very much. So well Dave fantastic talking with you. Congratulations on the release working folks go find out more about Tokyo or about servicenow in general.

So Tokyo is Tokyo is out now. com, you'll be able to find a full list. Not just of some of the features I've saw but of all the ones improvements and new features that have been added to the product.

And as a SAS platform, it's there ready to go rock and roll right ready to go all that ready to go right now. Okay. Thanks.

Again. Dave Wright Chief Innovation officer with service now. Hope you'll come back again soon.

Absolutely. Thanks a lot.