Integrating ERP Workflows with Kirsten Loegering at ServiceNow Knowledge 2024

This is Techron tv. Hello and welcome back to Knowledge 2024 with our friends at ServiceNow. And we're here talking with Kirsten Lowering, and we're gonna be talking about supply chains and finance and how all this stuff comes together around a common set of workflows.

And Kristen, good to see you again. Good seeing you again too. I'm not sure everybody knows exactly how finance and supply chain comes together around that common workflow.

So describe what it is you guys are doing to kind of bring those things together. 'cause in a lot of ways they're managed in isolation, but they could be tighter. Yes.

So, um, we launched finance and supply chain workflows last year here at K 23. Um, and we are building a portfolio of workflow solutions that helps our customers manage everything from finance to supply chain. We are started out with source to pay, which is our first workflow that we've been, uh, bringing out.

We've been, since we announced last year, we've completed this workflow, uh, solution with three distinct workflows to manage sourcing and procurement supply life cycle as well as accounts payable. And now we are looking to branch out from that baseline solution that we have. Supply lifecycle, bringing it into supply chain, how do you manage your suppliers, um, how do you manage supplier performance?

Uh, on the sourcing procurement side, going for indirect MRO spend into the direct spend. Um, and then on the accounts payable side, where we had our first step into the finance world, we are now looking at building finance transformation capabilities as well as accounts receivable. So we are really building an entire product portfolio to push into these spaces.

Do these things replace the system of records that are already there, or they fill in the white space between them and kind of help me automate things that I used to do manually with spreadsheets and all kinds of things That are fair Question. Yes. No, they, they do not replace the systems of records.

Transactional system. System of records have absolutely their place and support how an enterprise runs. We fill in the white space and we become the connectivity tissue between these systems.

So what we do see is in the systems of record that were built to control and to record, um, that oftentimes business processes are not fully connected end to end, that business units are not really covered, that users find themselves in different systems. And we are bringing all of this together in an engagement layer that sits on top of those type of system, bringing the connectivity together and bringing the stakeholders, um, into the process. Does that streamline things on a couple of points?

Right? Mm-Hmm. So a lot of times if I go look at the systems of record, the same company is spelled differently.

It has different iterations, there's different people, but it's really all the same transaction. But when I look at it straight in that application, it, it's a mess. Um, are you able through the workflows, kind of able to improve the quality of that whole process because you're able to say, Hey, you know what, these five systems are, record over here that we've listed are actually the same company and the same transaction and it's all part of the same engagement?

Yeah, so the, what you're describing in terms of many different systems that have very similar data or have belong to a larger system landscape, that complexity is what we see at our customers all the time. And oftentimes that's a homegrown issue because maybe it bought something different than the business wanted and the business went and and acquired something else. Or you have mergers and acquisitions that bring together many different systems.

So nine out of 10 customers that I talk to have this kind of setup and we can, we can elevate the experience that users are having dealing with this complexity through our workflows. We can help with data management, uh, we can help connect the, this, the business processes that need to flow between these systems, but often do not flow today other than by re-keying information, using Excel, using SharePoint at et. So, um, yes, we, we definitely see ourselves as that.

As I said earlier, connectivity issue between all of these systems. And Of course re-keying is just another opportunity to make a mistake. Oh wow.

Yeah. Re-keying is something, uh, first of all, you can't have young people who are coming into the workforce, right? The digital natives, if you will, ask them to re-key anything, they'll walk out the door.

They just, they have a very different expectation of the experience. And to your point, yes, absolutely. Um, there's so much potential for error, uh, and lack of compliance, et cetera.

You want to automate this and make sure that everything runs to the systems, uh, to be controlled, um, and not open up the opportunity to make mistakes. You, uh, as a sidebar to this thing. But everybody at Techron group knows how much I rail against data entry in all forms.

So Yes. And, you know, and it's, it's still even in, in our experience today. So today we're looking, for example, at ServiceNow we have forms, right?

And even there, you still half potentially, uh, errors that are, um, that are entered by the user. But through the intelligent workflow, we can catch that very early before it, it actually hits the transaction. And Gen AI will be a game changer in this as well, uh, when we hopefully can do away with forms at some point in time and really have a natural language interaction with the system.

Well let's dive into ai. How do you think that will be applied here? Because I can think of five things off the top of my head.

Oh yeah. From summarizations to Yes. Um, orchestrating more complex tasks and So, um, it will definitely change how users are going to interact with the system.

We are focusing right now in the intake process, um, which allows, which is the first touch point for the user with this system and allows you to get all of the information that's needed and then manage the information. Um, in order to eventually land at the transaction. That interaction will completely change.

With ai, um, we will be able to surface much more guidance to the user, much more information to the user, um, to make decisions. Um, case summarization is, will be a huge time saver and efficiency driver. When I think, for example about suppliers, you have so many areas we have stored information about your suppliers.

So our customers keep telling us we don't have all of the information really at our fingertips. So through the workflow we can already elevate this into one pane of glass. But through gen ai being able to pull data, do case summarization and surface that to the user, something that would've taken days or weeks can be done in minutes At that point.

Do you think it will become easier to onboard new suppliers? Because one of the things you hear from folks all the time is that, well, we'd love to do business with you, but you know, we need all this paperwork, it'll take you four months to do that. And by the end, the deal has gone south.

Yes. So we already working on this through our supplier lifecycle operations. Um, I'm offering, um, I feel personally that oftentimes the supplier has been neglected in the existing suites that are out there.

Um, it's usually the buyer, the who's the customer, who is the buyer, right? Who is telling us we think that's what our supplier should, um, be experiencing. We want to shift this a little bit and make it much more, um, attractive for suppliers to work with ServiceNow.

So Ingen AI is a big component. This as well to hopefully, again, shorten the cycle time supplier onboarding is difficult at times. You need a lot of information about suppliers.

So if we can use geni and our risk management capabilities combined central, I think we'll have a very nice solution for suppliers to be onboarded quickly. So it's been out now for a year and you're continuing nu but you know, we're here at this show. What are the customers telling you so far about what they're using it for and Uhhuh, have they done anything that surprised you?

Um, I, I wouldn't say they haven't, haven't done anything that surprised me. We went into this space knowing that they are certain capabilities that are simply missing in today's transactional system, particularly around case management being able to capture all of the noise that's in the process. So traditional systems focus on the creation of an object in the purchase order.

We focus on all of the work that is happening before that ever even happens in between and after. And so what I see consistently is that our customers, um, generally start with case management, trying to take the noise out of the overall procurement process, freeing up time to be able to focus on more strategic initiatives. And then I see them move into the sourcing intake space.

Everything that you cannot handle through a catalog that's more complex from an intake perspective where we read more information from the user. Um, so I see the customers follow what we've been thinking about, what these things we can automate and really address with the solution, um, customers, um, I think this is a service now thing. Um, customer are genuinely happy.

They're, they're very content and they're leaning in. We have just, um, started our first pack, our first product advisory council, uh, with a number of customers. They're leaning in that they want to work with us with many design partnerships.

It's a really great experience right now to work with customers. We of course hear about digital transformation all the time, but who wakes up in the morning and goes, darn it, I'm sick of this and I'm gonna go fix this with this. And kind of has that epiphany to understand Yeah, what needs to change in the workflow.

I think, um, so I I I feel we are disruptive in this space. Um, we can do more than just digital transformation in the sense of lifting and shifting from an older version of a system to a newer version. We can really transform how these customers are running their processes and that's where we see customers leaning in as soon as they start understanding the power of the platform and how they can apply it to the line of business.

We see customers get creative, um, and really exploring where can we change our business process with this technology? Where can we make it more efficient? And where we, where can we short cycle times?

Uh, how much more guidance can we give to our users through acknowledgement management capabilities, um, so that users can make the right decisions. I just had a conversation with, um, uh, education, uh, organization, um, and they want to drive a lot of around DEI, they want the users to be empowered. So now they have that capability to bring that information to the users so the users know exactly where they're spending their dollars, um, and follow DEI um, di Today we score everything so everybody gets rated for whatever it is.

But does this ultimately improve the scores and the ratings that suppliers get and buyers and, and the whole interaction so that, you know, everybody goes home a little happier? Uh, I think it does. So we are working on supplier performance capabilities right now, and that's a scary word at times for the suppliers.

But what we are after is to be sure that when, when a customer, when a buyer sees red flags somewhere, something is happening, to be incredibly collaborative and right away be able to surface that information, uh, approach a supplier, be able to, um, to collaborative work together to, um, fix this so that it doesn't become an issue down the road and impact a supplier score, for example. So we are very proactively working on this, starting to release this capabilities here to, to drive a good relationship between buyers and suppliers sort of. And on the finance side, where does that come into this conversation?

We've been talking about supply chain, but on the finance side, I mean, you know, I see people still standing around trying to, you know, match invoices to payment records and it's kind of crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, I have customers who, who literally still stuff and invoice into an envelope and mail it.

They mail to a processing center where Denniss captured electronically and uh, eventually two-way match, three main match is done. And um, any kind of issues are being identified that suppliers have potentially. So, um, we see this still happening.

It's a huge area that we're tackling as well. So with accounts payable operations, that's what we do. We allow the digitization of invoices through our document intelligence capability and then through intelligent workflows and playbooks in the system, we surface if there are discrepancies that need to be resolved, allow the resolution with the supplier through our supplier collaboration capabilities.

And then in the end, the clean payment file is being handed over to the backend system to um, to pay. Now as we are talking to customers about this, um, what's happening is that customers are saying, wait a minute, if you can do this for accounts payable, can you help me on accounts receivable as well? Can you help me with, um, all the noise that I have in the system because, um, users are calling in, users are emailing in because the GL account is blocked because the cost center needs to be created.

Again, case management. So we are looking at um, helping with finance operations, so accounts cables out in the market to address this side of the business. We're incubating accounts receivable, uh, for release and we are looking at clients operations to help take out the noise of the finance process.

Now I have a lot of good friends who are accountants, so yeah, I can say this, but you know, a lot of people make fun of them 'cause they're just kinda like numbers people and they're sitting there crunching things. But if they're spending less time on toil, they're also pretty sharp about what goes on in the business. And if you give them the time, they'll start asking interesting questions.

Yes, absolutely. And I would say similarly for the procurement department, it's an underrated function in the company because if, if you, if you can manage your procurement process really well, you really contribute to the bottom line of a company, right? In terms of efficiencies and making sure that the right products, the right items, the right materials are there and the right amounts, right quantity, right dates and at the right price.

Um, similar in finance, um, it's a function as you're saying that is often laughed about or laughed at or we wanna say they Might not be the part, the life of the party, but they're these people, But they, yes, and, and again, I mean they contribute to the financial stability or instability of a company. Um, so we really want to give them the best experience, um, and allow them to efficiently work so that they can focus on what is truly value adding. Is it value adding to key and invoices now that needs to be automated?

Um, should they concern themselves with trying to identify discrepancies between a purchase order and invoice? No, the system should tell them that and give them the tools so that they can free up time to think about things like, uh, you know, can we do early discounting? Can we do finance, uh, supply chain financing?

Can we work with our suppliers from a cultural perspective? That's what support. Um, so that's what we are trying to do is to automate for these folks so that they can actually really focus on what adds value.

One of the dirty little secrets of business is that there's such a thing as waste and it's fraud and we try to minimize that, but it exists. But if we can take a couple of points out of that, I mean that can all drop to the bottom line. So are you seeing folks starting to think more about my tolerance level for that is gonna be much lower?

Yes, Absolutely. And that's certainly something that our customers are bringing to us to, um, to say help us with this. Um, obviously there are solutions out there in this space, but again, uh, many of the solutions are somewhat monolithic, um, are limited to, to that function.

Uh, but you do have, for example, fraud detection. You have a lot of collaborators and that's again what we're saying from a workflow perspective, we can help augment some of the capabilities out there already, um, and help drive the automation of that. So what's your best advice to folks about how to get started?

'cause I think a lot of times they look at this and go, geez, that's just daunting. I don't know where to begin. And then they know Started.

It can be, yes. So the, what we've noticed with customers and the advice that I would give is to really focus in on a business pain point and some use cases around this. Don't try to boil the ocean.

Um, that's something that has been done in the past and it doesn't work so well. ServiceNow lends itself to start really on use case perspective. So, um, it's modular.

We, we can have a small footprint and show the success, um, in a very short deployment time. Like Dropbox saw success, uh, with sourcing the procurement operations just in case management, 50% drop in cycle time, um, of the purchase order, uh, processing. So that's the first success.

With that, you can go into the business, uh, and continue to then add on further use cases. So don't be afraid of change management because we want to do business transformation. We don't want to take a broken process and bring it into ServiceNow.

We want to make sure that we work with our customers, that they can elevate their processes as well. Identify use cases that are small, realistic, start deploying them, show the success, and everything else will come. All right, folks, you heard it here.

Change is good because it gets rid of all that mind-numbing toil called work. And maybe we could just have some fun. Thank you.

Thanks For coming By. Thank you. And we'll be back in a minute.