welcome to Glide chat where we give you the rundown of all things service now let's talk about the now right [Music] now welcome to another episode of Glide chat I'm Mike Lombardo CEO of Glide fast and I'm with with Bo bramlet the principal architect at Northwestern Mutual how are you Bo good how are you man uh it's been an interesting uh start to the year I feel like with uh the economy and you know service now rolling out new features it's just uh it's really really been an exciting q1 could you maybe give us a little bit of your background yeah um yeah so I've been in it pretty much since senior year in high school um and obviously you can tell I'm a season professional so that was before Al Gore invented the internet and uh from that just always been involved in technology at that time right was if you can build a web page you're a genius right so just always been involved in that and then that moved me into um server stuff and database and then building software applications then going into storage and just networking uh devops you name it project management for a while PMP stuff all of that and just been involved in all that technology uh and with it kind of rose to the service now platform where now it's like you don't need to worry about the technology just focus on your business outcomes you're trying to accomplish the workflows what you're trying to do encode that in the tool and now with you know some of the newer versions of the platform all of that just gets realized automatically if you will which is really cool it it's crazy how fast service now changes and for like Glide fast who's like a service now partner right at the Forefront of digital transformation like we can never get comfortable we always have to stay on our toes with you know the new releases and it's not just like a new release where they're upgrading stuff they're rolling out new products and it can be almost a little exhausting if you're not if you're not on your game you know yeah well that and that's thing we we've talked about this before but the kind of the saw too or Square wave of deploying technology IES once you kind of get a view of all of them you start to see well the real magic isn't making it a smooth seamless thing and the example we used is when you're sitting at table if it really works imagine it is your dinner place at a nice restaurant yeah and while you're eating a newer better version an AI oriented Fork comes out that is more ergonomic you know counts your calories whatever got accelerometers on it and while you're eating you go to grab a glass of water and they replace that fork with this you pick it up go ahead and keep eating that how technology should be ran very smooth and that should apply to all of the services that you have and so that that that's one of the things I love about the service now platform because it gets you to focus on just what are you trying to do you know whether it's in Lucid chart or Vio now those can go away in my mind and now you just encode everything in the workflow tools and you get the results you're looking for 100% we shouldn't need this huge initiative to train you how to use a fork it should be it should be seamless right while you're drinking that glass while like oh wow okay this is better I'm guilty of this too cuz we all techy nerds like we like shiny stuff so we just want to get right into the tools and log in and start playing with it and there's a healthy balance of doing that but that's more on the R&D side of things but when it comes to making the rubber meet the road right you've got to you can use another analogy your car's driving down the road and then a crane comes up as it's going lifts it up changes the tires puts it back down that is what we should be striving for I love pretty exciting the way the platform is because every app is UI some backend data there's some middle you know there's all that kind of stuff going on workflows business rules and you just put all that into the tool so you don't need to worry about full stack development and databases and all that you just here we go I've got everything I need to get my my stuff working for my business so it's pretty cool exactly and like on the same note everybody's talking about gen AI in service now especially right everybody's talking about it everybody's excited I think it's important I know we were talking a little bit about this earlier like how how important is it to get your system ready for that because I think a lot of people just think hey we're just going to turn it on it's going to do all this things which there's there's tremendous amount of benefit but from your experience like what do you think are some of the items that like a a typical service now customer has to be ready for with geni yeah it all of them need to be ready for having their data at at really good quality so what we put in early on we started with the cmdb was we called it dqm data quality management and what that was is every CI class or every single data set or table has an owner it has a life cycle to it it has metrics it has a way to know if it's good or bad right and that turns into Data certification efforts so now all the spinning plates of data out there we have the right people that own it versus how it normally is at a company where you're playing catchup to go is your data good what do we need here no empower the people that own the data and let them rise to the occasion but now when you get a dashboard that shows a heat map of red Ember green before this group hasn't done their data certification uh leadership cracks on that and all of a sudden everyone's oh they get their data in nobody wants to be in the Red Zone on their data so once you Empower that and get it going now your data is of good quality now you're aligned to the common service data model so now what you're talking about AI can just do amazing things it can turn on a dime and do things because you've got right you don't have Yen and pesos and US dollars of data you have one common you know AI currency that that actually grabit amazing things so I think a lot of organizations are going to have a challenge they've overlooked that stuff and they haven't really done it and then now they're trying to turn on AI and go why is it not working oh well you gotta hold on Trixie take a step back and let's get the foundational layers in place and then that stuff will just you know go crazy yeah and you mentioned one thing that I think another you know group of customers sometimes Overlook is that accountability at the leadership level because we know people right if there I if there's not a governing body that's saying here's what we expect you to own because when you even talking about your seem Tob ownership and own the different classes I can't tell you how many customers just flat out just don't have that right and the ones who do if they don't have the leadership that's not not micromanaging not breathing down their neck because there's automated ways to do this with data certification other levers right but to have leadership say here's what we're we're we are going to make sure our cmdb is is best in class is top-notch and this is what we're expecting you to do and if there if you don't there's repercussions just that direction from the leadership level is is takes you uh light years ahead right and I can't and I can't tell you how many challenges we run into on implementations not just obviously in cdb but overall you know we're moving to service now this is what we're doing we're not taking the old process we have before and just putting it in here we're transforming anytime we have executive leadership involved in that and we're not customizing we're not over engineering it's like the most successful projects we've ever had no totally and and remember like so with me working at Northwestern Mutual we've been around 170 years right we got five generations of people so you would think it would be like you know the like Mad Men kind of thing no we're like even though we're 17 years old we're in a lot of ways like a functioning startup so when we first put the cdb in which is what what I got hired to do is get the cdb in the platform level stuff going it was a while till people started to realize right so leadership was like all right do your thing but we'll skeptic prove it right so once we started showing the value of that and then partnering um with leadership on that and getting these dashboards set up so we have really strong data sciences and performance analytics team uh in my group and then with that all of a sudden it was like oh okay and then once we were able to prove that right you got to you know show me that you can do this we did it then all of a sudden it became a business outcome for the or and all of a sudden it was like exponentially just amazing quality of data now we still have hurdles like every company does but at least we have one kind of way methodology to do it make it a lot easier versus everyone just Reinventing the wheel out there as these data sets now that's amazing and um you know while we were talking earlier talked a little bit about the hack for good initiative that Northwest Mutual runs and can you can you talk a little bit about that yeah I mean a lot of it's still Mol but it's a very exciting um Childhood Cancer is is huge um I know uh a lot of people even working on the project are cancer survivors I think if if I recall I think you are as well and um this was a hack for good where it's you hack it's the hack where when it if it gets picked and wins it gets funded so we're in that process right now but this one is to provide a solution on the service now platform that will deliver for parents and families that are victims of Childhood Cancer give them a way where they can um get connected to the right Services kind of give them a way to find a path to the right information versus a 3: a. freaking out finding out right that their kid has cancer and they're Googling from their phone in the emergency room like what you know and they don't know where to go so this the effort that we proposed was to allow and some of the things we talking about data certification let these providers put their stuff in let them own the data versus playing catchup and now uh patients and their families can get the information they they want and of course there's a lot of great features in there that we've kind of pre-baked in true prooved that we can enable as time goes on but that that's just getting going and and the timing of it is really awesome too because service now is launching their their dotorg right so it's like you know so you've got the regular Fortune you know 1,000 companies that and and below that are using the platform and so that can be a barrier to entry to some uh nonprofits so they're they're addressing that uh one thing I wish service not would do is what I call startup which is why can't you why can't service now do the same thing but for small businesses why is there such a big barrier to entry to that if we can give personal developer instances give them give this business a powered by right and then be with them all the way till they become a Fortune 100 I think that would be awesome too so.org seems like it's GNA be a pretty big deal for it's definitely a step in the right direction and you know it's just amazing because I'm on a board of a a nonprofit that um supports cancer patients financially Joe and juy Foundation that foundation and you know being involved with service now.org has really exposed me to like so much of the good that like is happening out there in the world and how much people care about others and just you know donating time and effort and and just general help for those who need it right and um so it's it's um it's pretty cool to be a part of it and I I really sincerely like wanted to thank you because you were like I think one of the first times we spoke was about was about Alex lemonade stand right and you were just so passionate it felt like we are helping this organization like this is what we're doing so I really want to thank you for for just caring like you know and it's cool to to be a part of it and I I look forward to seeing that successful well and I wouldn't take the credit for it it's like how can you not how can you not be excited or passionate about something like that right and especially with all of us right we have all these great skills and like you know early on in it you might be like oh can you fix Grandpa's laptop and it was like oh gosh you know but now it's like well we have those great skills but there's a lot everyone's using technology now there's a lot of things we could fix in our spare time yeah one of the things realized at our org is that everyone has like certain amount of volunteer time and they have their projects that they they pick for that and then they can build to it much like your PTO well there's a whole bunch of there's an army a sea of people that know service now and orgs have those volunteer hours it' be awesome to have all of them be able to work on some of these projects collectively donate their time um there's some intellectual property things but the good news about service now's platform is there's ways to abstract that so no one worry about what they're working on yeah I haven't seen a lot of organizations and I'm sure they do just I haven't been exposed to it but I you Northwest Mutual is one of the first I've seen really like have a program where they're where they're donating you know to other organizations at time and effort and you know I'm sure a lot of people have those initiatives but first time I've been involved with it so it's it's cool what do you think makes servers now so special I know I'm drinking the Kool-Aid I'm like you know a little bit of biased because I'm obsessed with service now I have been you know 13 years but like what it doesn't seem to be any real competitors or platforms that are even close to like what separates service now from those other platforms that are out there well so you've got the bias view if you will uh from being with service now specifically in your career and then me indirectly on the side for the last 10 years but the last eight like really directly involved but because of seeing storage and you know virtualization and devops and being involved in at a at a deep level and seeing that it's all the same the to answer your question what I see the value is a service now gets rid of all of that worry or gets rid of all of those things and you think oh you could pay for anything no it's you you get the platform and you basically can take and create whatever you want they have the box tools Etc but once you start to look at that and and you know let's not forget that AI is nipping out a lot of people's heels well if you raise those layers of abstraction up and up and up you get to oh yeah the business outcomes that the company wants are X Y and Z here's the product manager team that's doing it here's the process flows and then instead of putting it in Lucid chart or VI you put it in the platform and it does all the rest for you now that's obviously oversimplified for a lot of use cases but in general that's what it is so to me what's powerful about it is instead of making a niche tool for like you know for sales and I won't I won't name names but for sales or another tool for that it's like why don't we just make a tool that's generic and can handle all of it well what better way to test it than starting out as an and I know it wasn't by Design but in hindsight that was actually genius move it was genius he didn't want to do it he didn't want it to be it but yeah yeah so it's like okay we got the first thing is the IT service management well there's a lot of volatility and entropy in just that so that Prov out that yeah this can be done and I think that called the action is what made the design what it is and so much more open because it was forced with you know change and problem and all these things coming in at all these different angles and now you just think well you know what if we reskin this this can be this and this and so they focused really hard on getting like we were talking about earlier data certification all right there's a facility to certify data configure it turn it loose oh here's a facility for presenting information oh and guess what 80% of it is on mobile just by the fact that you've pushed it oh so now you can spend less time get so you just add all these wins together and it's like why would anybody use something else why would somebody start from scratch doing full stack and there's use cases for that I'm not you know but but the more I see it I'm like this is workflow driven that's where the future's going oh yeah yeah it's rapid development and deployment of those Solutions right as you're saying this I never really thought of it but it's like it's all in the same building like if you think about an office building it's like okay this floor is for data certification th this room's for um you know change management it's like all in the same building so we're leveraging you know the common data model right we we have one group of users that every single process can leverage we don't have to update it or integrate it to other systems locations I mean that was like years a that was before all that was just a core platform right and now we've just added there was never you know they've made some Acquisitions but it's all they've all rep platformed those to to actually be in platform you know it's not a Frankenstein bolt on a no no which every other competitor been that you know and I've been involved with those tools and they were like oh it looks cool but then you realize okay there's just Bubblegum and Band-Aid hold it might but in reality it's not going to scale you know so that yeah I totally agree and it's just it's it's just so cool to like see how you can just come up with an idea or solve a problem like I think this is my I I'm in need for media gratification like I have never been the guy that can spend six months building something like I need it I need it like this week I need you know when I was Consulting like to get the satisfaction from a customer like in in appreciation immediately nothing better than that you know that's why I could never be I don't know if I could ever build be a product you know be in the product world because it takes so long Services you're just like it's go go go you know yeah totally we talked a little bit about the hybrid uh delegated model as you called it which which I think is really important because a lot of a lot of customers especially newer ones in the service now World struggle do I build my own team do I Outsource it do you know and I think the way you you were describing it was great could you talk a little bit about that yeah so for us what what we knew from being on the infrastructure side is that the business has demands or areas have demands that we just won't be able to get approval for bringing in people you know so that warrants like a big project you'll get a s you'll work with that provider um what we found over the time of working with almost all those providers is that they have so many profit centers and they're just all over the place that service now is something they can offer but they're not as good at it as someone who is literally that's all they do right so the proofs and the pudding if your main source of Revenue and success comes from service now and you're still in business then you're awesome but the those other companies the bigger ones can just say they are and no one even knows how bad or good they are at it so we realized as well we couldn't hire people to keep up with the demands so we decided well let's get a let's get a Core team of Architects Engineers uh and release people and get that structure set up so it's scalable and scalable by if we need more people we can engage engage not through a big giant s that's like this huge thing to Herculean effort to start up but where we have an extension of our our build team and our architecture team where we can just tap them in and when a cost center says they want to go there you go boom and then now the people coming in we're not like oh we need our own instance to develop no they're part of our team they actually are like our employees and the other options are we kind of talked about is we you go through the the revolving door of people people like head hunters and things like that and we found we were spending 15% of our time just trying to vet out candidates because everyone says they're a service now developer but can they actually can they actually design things are they a whacko developer where they just like yeah give me something I can do it or can they sit back and go oh you know what that's gonna really slow down platform or that's not really good or that's not how itel would do it or you know and and so with that we were having a lot of time vetting people and almost everyone that we pulled in I we don't know how to not partner for success with that provider so we get people even if they're just a head hunter per tingent labor resource where we train and invest them and then we're like can we keep them please you know now they're they're viable a person well with with uh with working you with you guys it's great to just get level two people that know their stuff have been in the industry and and they appreciate our model because they're like oh I don't have to worry about release that's a team perfect let's get in and go solve some problems so it's more efficient versus having all these teams doing the exact same duplicate work yeah and in cost cautious times that's where we go oh let's figure out well if everyone's do needs release stuff let's make make a service for release like make it an appliance that's bulletproof right exactly developers let's what's the framework you know and then we focus on culture stuff too when we bring in a developer so they very clear here's your checklist of things we don't want to do crappy work quality is first you know and then when we bring on someone they're like yeah this is awesome and they can get a lot more done so that delegated hybrid model not citizen development most companies aren't ready for that we're not either no and maybe the future of the platform there's some granular security stuff that that would be needed but today we're being able to get a lot of stuff done really quickly in this delegated model so yeah I I love that because people think it's binary like I either have to build my team or I'm gonna go to a partner you really you need both you need you need experts in house that can can you know that understand the basics of of the architecture of the system and where the bad practices are and and like almost like you know Jacks of all trades kind of thing but these products go so far deep and are so wide right you got best you got best or worst of Both Worlds right where you need certain experts you know and like at Glide fast you know it's like we have different teams that Focus just on different areas of the platform you know I I've said it now for a long time because in the beginning I you know I thought I was I was a little cocky developer I'm like I'm gonna be an expert in the entire platform whatever Lu yeah good luck there show me one person like this is a challenge to the world show us one person who's expert in the entire platform and I mean I don't know we'll give him a million dollars because I don't think that person exists I just don't and that brings up something that I tell my team all the time um kind of resonated with me is you know Big Bang Theory right Sheldon yeah older you you'll remember doy Hower right like how does somebody go get in college when they're in high school what the heck you know I can barely get to you know class on time right and and you know we think that there's like all of those people out there so like you're saying in your example that there's like this one person who knows it all right with their head is probably this big ego and just the brain mass to be able to do that and you go through life with leaders and politics everything everyone is like at that level and then you get there and you're like oh wow we're all the same level it's the people at the jock table and the soci table and this and that the emo and we're the ones that are doing all this stuff and once you realize that it's kind of empowering because you're like oh it is up to us we need to carry the torch we need to and then once you realize that now of a sudden you see the value everyone on your team they're all the same they just have a little bit of focus over here right so now my job is more programming people and processes to get them to be able to you know be the better versions of themselves right not be a referee but be a coach get the get the Bad News Bears to the major league baseball games right so that back to your thing it's like yeah we have leadership that would at first go yeah we need someone who's like and I'm like there is no one person you need to have a methodology where all of that Innovative ideation demand can come come in and it just goes in a continuous fashion and leverage the people that have the skills in certain areas so we're actually retooling again our subject matter expertise domains because before we had our one of our data scientists uh she was awesome she was getting more into the cbdb well now she's like the expert on seem to be in data so now she's going to be more the common service data model data governance person and just all these little areas so we're almost kind of mapping what needs to go on behind the platform if you will like who does process flow stuff okay we need some business process an analysis people we need this right and right so from that there is no one person and there's so many we have 14 products I mean we have cnbb we have and we have a very small team but we have cnbb we have itom software and Hardware we have APM we have SPM itbm we have uh HR Service delivery yeah um we have God there's so many now uh we have irm GRC H and the vrm stuff that you are working on right now like there's just so many of them so now we're trying to get to okay well we're a restaurant so think of it as a a shopping mall I'm a shopping mall I own the platform I own the mall and I want everyone to have their little sunglasses huts and their pizza places food court has different restaurants so we'll take care of security trash governance we'll make sure all that the parking lots are clean we got all that and balances yeah and when a product person comes in and they want to open their new dream Vision what we help them get them onboarded get them set up show them the training you know take these classes at service now through the IMPACT program on and on and on and hope them get them to be a viable part of the store right yeah and then with it yeah you've got your idea your your business outcome you want to do come into our come into our safe environment and we'll make sure you're successful and that's where we like okay yeah no one can know all that stuff let's just build it where everyone can be successful and Thrive based on their domain expertise and that's been working for us you are a fantastic leader really thank you thank you so much for being on the Glide chat and uh really looking forward to continuing this partnership and and thank you for trusting and giving Glide fast a chance yeah definitely thanks Mike do you have a topic in mind that you'd like to discuss reach out to us at glidefast [Music]