well good afternoon i'm chris howard i'm ceo of crossfields and i'm with michael robertson cio of shutterfly and i'm really fortunate to have a conversation with michael today about the things that crossfuse and shutterfly have been doing together for the last several years i think it will be really insightful for some of our other customers about the challenges that i've taken on and the things that we've achieved in terms of business transformation and using servicenow as a platform to really impact their day-to-day business so thanks for doing this michael i really appreciate the time you're welcome i'm glad to be here why don't you give us a little bit of perspective on sort of your information strategy and the kinds of things you're thinking about from digital enablement of the firm to really be competitive and effective in the marketplace sure well you talked about the importance of a common platform and that's very much our core vision within my organization is to enable wherever possible the processes functions within the company with common platforms and common processes so the way we think about it is you can be more differentiated the closer you are to different customers of different business units but there are many process areas many functions that can really rely on more of a common platform across the whole enterprise that ties it all together and so within my organization that's what we're working towards every day cool so so that fits well with in terms of the notion of servicenow as a platform within that context tell me a little bit about how that how servicenow sort of interwebbed itself in terms of those objectives and sure you made progress yeah well initially when we first came to the evaluating service now we were using another ticketing solution it was good for its purpose but it didn't have the full i.t service management breadth of process enablement and so that was very attractive for us it was in our vision right from the start to do more than just incident management and request fulfillment right we had the vision of problem management change management release management and getting into enabling it all through configuration management and a real strong focus on the services that are being delivered and so servicenow shared that vision as we evaluated the solutions available to us it looked like the best bet and so so far it's that vision is playing out it's not been without some hiccups and some challenges along course obviously yeah but uh in general we're pretty pleased with the direction that we're going that's that's that's great it's as you well know all of these platforms and and new technology today it's a journey and and it's a and often it's a journey of discovery to find out okay we we need to go two degrees to the left now from where where we initially were thought we thought we were started is there any is there any sort of pearls you could share with sort of other leaders in i.t about you know that discovery process and and what's important in terms of either being open to that learning or you know knowing that perfection perfection is really not attainable it's about progress yeah like those are my words i don't i don't well i i we very much ascribe within my group to an agile methodology uh that itself is a journey for our organization so it's absolutely something we're trying to get better at but in that spirit of incremental forward progress and looking for where we can get near-term wins that build allow us to build and move forward that's very much the approach of the implementation so there are initially we were very much focused on the ticket tracking and the ability to enable uh knock in a service desk we move beyond that into problem management and change management we're sort of knocking these processes down right as we go and and how did how did you leverage or did you leverage cross-views and and in our expertise you know we've done almost 3 000 projects on the surface now platform over the last several years i'm hoping that that there were sort of insights and and guides that we were able to provide that helped you avoid some pitfalls and get get further faster than you might otherwise have done yeah i would definitely agree with that we've been impressed with the cross-views resources in terms of the depth of their knowledge from an architecture and a solutioning standpoint and i think they've been good partners in helping us see where we can leverage the native capabilities of the solution rather than getting out into customizations which we try very hard to avoid yeah uh we've learned all that from prior lives right and we know the perils of that especially uh when you're talking about a sas solution yeah hard lessons right yeah and so the expertise on hand to be able to have an answer right in the moment we don't expect that everyone will know everything but we've been pretty impressed with their ability to tap into either their own knowledge and experience or quickly the knowledge and experience of their colleagues to be able to get some answers and provide some consultative direction back to us and especially in those areas where there's recommendations around how to avoid customizing right well that's good to hear i'm i'm thankful for that we really pride ourselves on on our talented professionals and it's really great to get feedback that's that says that indeed they're doing their job you've shutterfly has been through a lot of change a lot of acquisitions over the last couple years and um and that's always an interesting challenge in terms of trying to integrate other large organizations into an existing organization with their existing systems and platforms and ways of doing business i know when you did the life touch um transaction they they had they had a competing itsm solution and and tell us a little bit about how how how you made it through that journey and got to land on on us on the solution and get and get buy-in from your new colleagues sure so there are a couple things there uh the again back to the premise of where can we leverage a common platform there was a vision that was broadly held as we completed the acquisition began to look at the opportunities again there's a lot about lifetouch that is very unique and specific to the markets that they serve and the lines of business that they have but under the covers there's a lot to be gained by being able to enable this company with the same set of processes and technical platforms that we're using elsewhere and so with that in mind it was a question of do we all get into one or all get into another we really did not want to maintain two different i.t service management solutions in parallel and so as we looked at it there were a couple pretty compelling feature functionality differences notably the we have a very large mac user population and so the ability to offer to all of our users a solution that would work equally well for them browser-based and not require thick client usage was very important the ability even from an administrator standpoint to have a browser-based thin client solution was compelling and again down to the richness of the solution capability the breadth of processes that are supported i won't say a bad thing about cherwell because again it served the purpose very well but again as we think about the broader vision of enabling these i.t service management processes servicenow looked to be able to carry us better going forward also it's worth noting that the solution had been fairly highly customized and so again not a good candidate for bringing the rest of the organization on to right well so that that's an interesting set of system and technical choices and and and and it makes it clear what might this best solution be but you've got a whole bunch of people on the other side of that equation what was what was the ch what was the challenge and how did we maybe together figured out how to affect organizational change management and adoption by your new colleagues at lifetouch yeah and and that was the second part of your question because having the solution and maybe objectively the clear leader is often not enough you know sometimes it's a little bit of a religious argument yeah or at least just having people go through the change curve because they're not used to the new product there's some trepidation there's some feeling that they know this you know part of their inherent worth is the knowledge that they have of the system they're using so i think a couple parts one is i'll credit my team with doing a great job ryan paul melanie iv working with the local teams to have them see what the possibilities were with the new solution and where we could do more than just lift and shift functionality or capabilities that they were enjoying but also open up some new opportunities or get some new synergies or benefits from it and i mean synergy's in the sense of deficiencies in the process uh not getting out of a lot of the manual work that was in between the use of the old solution right and so that's that's a set of steps that you can't shortcut right it takes the time to work through with those teams to have them see what the new world would look like and this is an area where again i think the crossfuse consulting team was very helpful oh great uh in helping us socialize and share what the the the future could look like right yeah we're finding interestingly enough in companies like your almost every client that we touch these days the the adoption issue the the or frankly the organizational change is is as big a hill to climb as any technical challenges that we might be faced with so it's becoming a bigger part of almost every engagement that we find ourselves in involved with so i'm i'm i'm i'm not surprised to hear that story but i'm it's it's it's great that you're that you were embracing that from the very very beginning because i think it's easier to get get through that knothole you've got it we try to embrace it but you're right i think it's an area that we collectively probably everyone who's watching this habitually under resources yeah and and so it's something that you you either begin with the plan to do it or you end up having to do it at the end and and uh we are still trying to get better at doing the former right it's those soft things that are always hard to pinpoint investments on and make yourself feel really good about them until you're in the middle of it right right yeah interesting you're in the middle of of or i guess just at the at the close of another acquisition integration and um i'm i'm assuming there was a bunch of lessons learned from the life touch thing that you were able that able to be more effective and efficient in the uh in this in this newest one is there yeah any new insights there yeah the life touch integration still is very much underway and but real-time lessons that we have drawn out we are trying to apply as we look to bringing snapfish and cafe press into the fold and so you know one of the things to note about that company is that is really two companies that are in their own process of integrating life touch was in the process of integrating its own set of business units and so it's kind of fractal as we've gone through this so all the lessons around change management and the importance of understanding the human impact what will be the change for the end users is key also to the extent possible going quicker rather than more slowly because the amount of friction that the whole organization has to live through in the interim it it is very painful right and i think in retrospect many times we look back and say we should have gone faster you know all other things being equal right yeah yeah we just we we ourselves did our own uh acquisition in we that we closed in april of 2019 and we we purposely sort of having done it having done it before sort of applied some of those principles of of how do we integrate as as fast as possible and where can we pick those spots to go maybe at hyper speed to demonstrate that it is possible and it i'm i'm knock on wood i'm happy to report that you know that our plan was exceeded in terms of our ability to get there but it was we had it was enabled because we had a very light culture that we were we were integrating with makes all the different people makes all the difference in the world so tell one of the things that that's triggered in terms of this conversation is is is the thought about the objective measures the kpis the the things that you can demonstrate to you to both within your organization but to your other colleagues on around the executive conference table that these investments are really making a difference what what are the things that you've grabbed on to in terms of of process improvement and you know employee engagement uh in you know ease of use uh and improve productivity that that that makes the investments come to life in terms of everybody else you're talking to around the table about the business yeah i think the obvious ones we look for in the case of getting to common platforms you look at the financial synergies that you get from not carrying and this is not just the let's say the subscription cost of various solutions but all the other ancillary costs that go into it right there is of course the uh efficiency and clarity of getting to a base of data that gives you a perspective on the whole organization and it's not to say that everybody's using servicenow in this case in exactly the same way across every team but it does give us the ability to get a better sense of where certain processes are automated and where there's still work to do and so you know the examples i gave in the lifetouch world it was pretty clear in those cases where we were able to identify in just what i would call arms and legs terms how much time and effort is going into supporting a certain manual process then we can look to see if we have successfully uh removed that effort in theory that helps people re pivot their attentions to more value-adding activities right that's a little harder to validate after the fact right but we are looking at where we're building in those process efficiencies and then in terms of how the solution is being used there are the usual kpis that would be in place for those teams that they use to measure their ability and inherent in the ability to achieve uh time to resolve for example is the ability to use the solution well or collaborate well right that's great yeah it's important um these these things are not without significant investment and it's important to be able to demonstrate i think reasonably quickly that that the impact is being felt and and making a difference to the business so that's that's really good news one uh one of the things that's really true about the servicenow uh ecosystem that we're in and the hyper growth that servicenow is um is enjoying in the marketplace is great resources are really are really scarce we i live that every day these days in terms of building our own team but i know i know that you do too one of the things i was intrigued by when i was getting a debrief from the from the account team was how you've used an interesting what we think is a very interesting solution that we have managed now in in our portfolio in terms of being able to create the ability for you to access our talent uh on a neat as needed basis to solve particular problems and and i think you've come up with a pretty interesting use case around how to get at a set of a set of technical technical capability requirements across the spectrum of the platform knowing full well that that doesn't reside in any one person can you give me some sense of how that manifested itself because that's a that's a really interesting outcome that you've got i think you've said it well it's good where where you know at the size that we are which uh some of the the other companies would look at us in the space and say we're very large but within our teams we're very lean teams wearing a lot of hats and so it's difficult to find especially as we're bringing on a new process area like configuration management to find out in the market the people that would have the expertise that has to be deep enough to be effective for us and broad enough because we can't have people that are hyper-specialized right and so i think that your offering is a really good solution for that we do have the intention of continuing to build up the capability in-house but from a time to market standpoint this gives us a leg up it gives us the ability to tap into expertise quickly as part of our maturation of those processes and uh it really takes away a little bit of the role of the dice that you have right in bringing in resources well that's great because i i mean we've seen managed owl used in lots of different variations but this this one is is a slight twist on the theme that i think other as we'll be able to talk to once we get some experience and being able to say it's really worked well for shutterfly i think we'll be able to take it to some other clients and and solve similar problems for them so it's i'm i'm intrigued by i'm intrigued by that i'm i wanted to switch gears and talk a little bit about sort of it's brand within shutterfly and and and how how servicenow and crossfield maybe have enabled that to get to either a better place or maintain its good stature within the firm is um do you have any stories that you can share with you with your colleagues about how you've used these kind of projects to to to demonstrate improvements to the rest of your community so they feel good about it yeah it's interesting we have especially for the servicenow products a lot of the customer base if you will for those solutions are other technology organizations right and so in that regard and this would be familiar for many cios in the audience we don't have the monopoly on all technology that's used to run the business right and so we just consider ourselves to be the organization that is providing this set of capabilities is accountable for managing supporting and helping to drive the roadmap for that set of capabilities and that's working across all of our other technology organization stakeholders to make that happen and so in that respect i wouldn't say it's any different from the way we would look at any other enterprise application but it is maybe a little unique in that it's a much more predominantly technology oriented set of stakeholders which means that of course you have in some respects maybe a higher bar that you need to achieve but again as i shared earlier i think our team has done a great job working with them and really trying to understand how they use the solution how they could be using it better and continuing to work with the teams to find ways to drive even more commonality of process more consistency in how we're leveraging the solution interesting is there do you see sort of the next step of let of leveraging the platform beyond sort of your technology uh colleagues to other sort of workflows in the organization whether it's customer service or or hr that are you know obviously mainstays for where servicenow is taking the platform but i'm wondering whether or not within your organization you see a role for servicenow and some in some of those workflows we do and it's an area where in some adjacencies we have already leveraged servicenow as uh part of an erp implementation that we're doing there's no shortage of change going on at shutterfly so we are in the process of rolling out a new erp solution that again consolidates the entire company onto one platform and as part of that uh the team is working with our hr counterparts because they're among the first out of the gate with this to leverage the solution uh rather than emails as a way of capturing incidents and requests now you know there's some some nuances to the hr world in terms of the uh the privacy and confidentiality of cases and so those are some things we're working through right but in general there's some indications that this could be a helpful solution for them in certain areas and also as a result of the california privacy ccpa that came in at the beginning of the year we have been leveraging servicenow in conjunction with our customer carers organization to ensure that there's a fluid transfer from the front-facing customer care world where we're dealing with customers to the back end teams that then need to do something from a data standpoint right so creating that closed loop and making sure that all the all all the all that everything's tick contact so that's right as the accountants would say yeah and allowing people to then work in solutions that are already comfortable and familiar to them so our customer care team can be working with their solution for addressing customer needs right and our technology teams who have to work with the customer records can be without um any sort of contravention of the privacy that is the core of that solution uh can at least get the work done in order to be able to satisfy the request interesting so lots of change lots of transformation lots of new system activity at shutterfly when you think about the business three you know three to five years up from now what and and you're sitting around the leadership team having those conversations what are the what are the pillars of a big challenge and opportunity for someone in your in your seat that you see the business bringing bringing to you yeah i think the core of it is how to enable more with less and and that's across an ever larger organization just getting more operating leverage out of the technology solutions that we are supporting and that's where we get to that common platform common process vision because that enables other functions to also do more with less across the board one of the other things of course at the core of it all is data and not just having data but having insight that you can derive from that data and that's one where there's still a lot of work to do and but as we look ahead this is an area that we continue to lean into uh but frankly at this point a good amount of of the work we're doing is the unsexy stuff of just consolidating groups together and getting to commonality of process and platform no trivial task no yeah and we continue to find new challenges for ourselves in that area so the work continues yeah i i understand and i have i have empathy um but i we appreciate the opportunity to be working at least in small in some small way along with you in in that journey well michael this was really insightful and i really appreciate the time that you provided to us and i hope you and the audience really are able to to lean in and hear what the shutterfly experience has been and what michael's been through and the challenges that he's he and his team still face i think there's some really interesting lessons to be learned there best of luck thank you keep it going it's a pleasure cheers thanks everybody [Music]