you're listening to accelerate a service Now podcast series about achieving your business outcomes where we talk about how to get the most value from the na platform hey everyone this is Crystal Clevenger and this is Dri we're your hosts and excited to talk to you about service now value acceleration solutions that include expert Services training and impact Hi D it's nice to have you on the show again thanks for joining me hey Crystal always good to be back I'm always always always excited about these we have awesome guests no different today I know I know so today uh I'm very pleased to be joined by Cesar negri Oliva who is a product owner at British Telecom cesara is joining us from Brazil today instead of Hungary uh where he's visiting so uh cesara hello nice to have you on the show hello everyone nice to be here it's great great to hear your voice again always enjoy talking to you this is ouru um and British Telecom were the subject of a recently published case study um by service now and we invited you to join us to talk about what British Telecom has decided to do with rise up what service now but before we do that why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your career and how you ended up at British Telecom sure uh I started long ago on this journey on the IT world right and then eventually I arrived working on multiple companies mostly on service IT service operations roles and then eventually I I I arrived in in British Telecom BT uh nine years ago I'm this year I'm completely I'm about to complete in April 10 years on BT which is really a great milestone that I'm I'm excited to to get there um and so my experience it's really broad on the service operations as I said starting from being really an agent uh even before that I was a food service so I understand everything about the the company the the operations and all kind of stuff on on service operations so and then I was glad to be um stepping up on multiple roles like uh on the technical part as well from as agent to senior engineer and to operations manager and then recently I I could get an opportunity a really nice opportunity to join the it's like a internal product team right we have a a capability we call capability team it's a mix of of of it's a lot of product management project management so and we are responsible for uh all kind of internal system and the main piece is about our digital transformation Pro program right so at the moment I'm really happy to be part of this journey on B and helped to achieve the next uh um the next goals that we have the the things that we're aiming to to to to leverage our our products and our services with our customers so that that's a bit of me at the moment right a really quick intro of my my experience and uh personally I really I really like U to be with my family I really uh enjoy uh to be I'm Brazilian so you're not surprised that I love barbecue don't we all that's that's awesome that's really cool I mean quite the journey quite the career journey and and it sounds like you're in a you're in a great place and what I wanted to dive into a little bit today would be you know I know that BT has embarked on digital transformation but what I wanted to understand was how has service now helped Define that digital transformation at BT what role has service now played in that digital transformation strategy yeah and that that's a very good point it's uh actually my everything that I'm doing today 99% of my time is talking about service night because service night the it's really the central uh system or platform of our new architecture right so we are moving from legac assistance stch into a really new new system stack more cloudy and if I can say Cloudy cloud is not a good word but more Cloud you know related all kind of things on on cloud um of course we want to reduce cost leverage our internal and external products and service um ultimately to enhance our customer experience and also our our internal operations Service uh right so that's where service now sits on this uh on my work today and also on our digital transformation project so can you tell us what products from service now you used through this you know for this digital transformation exercise yeah I have a lot of products from s now the main the main things that I work today it's related to itm CSM uh we have knowledge uh we have have a bit of security and vulnerability uh what else we have we have some virtual chats as well very very interesting pieces and we're exploring more because we have a really great partnership with service now at the moment so we are always exploring new use cases we talk I talk a lot and the other of course the other product owners the product people internally we discuss with the business so we are day by day identify new opportunities to explore new products from service those are the main ones that we have today for BT itm CSM knowledge and security stuff that's awesome so then I guess the next the next question I have for you is around training right so obviously BT has adopted a lot of service now Solutions and they've been successful with it I'd like to understand what role training had in that obviously service now has a lot of training offerings we position them in a way to help our customers succeed with what they've invested in so two two-part question you know first how has training played a a role in the success of British Telecom with service now Solutions and then how has that impacted you and your team specifically as you bring on more solutions and scale and continue that digital transformation Journey sure is uh of course as we are are really speeding up so we we are uh trying to speed our transformation right so because of that you need to be aggressive there's no way you need to be aggressive and unfortunately when you are uh bringing new system you know uh changing the the actual ways that you are working the people are working you you are going to face a lot of challenges of adoption and all kind of things people that's people is like that right they usually most of them don't like changes right so you need to have a really strong uh plan and project to introduce new systems and a key part of that is train have the knowledge to talk to your people so they can really be trained and understand that that system is really a benefit for then and for our customers right with that in mind it was really great to have the opportunity to have this uh custom Training from from service now right it was really a project right it's it's really something that I I had to spend a lot of time with a project manager in service now really to go into details of our specific needs right which is the most interesting part of of this right it's it's of course you can today a lot of you know guys and people on my team developers and business analysts they do their own training right they self they just do selfstudy right A lot of people find material on on on the on the internet and there's a great portal from service how to do that but at the same time as we were on that situation on the journey that we had to you know start kick off the first you know versus of our capabilities of service now according to our needs it was really important to have this c training right and as I said we had multiple sections with trainers from s a project manager they were analyzing our process our needs how our ways of working and then after that we they came up with a material set recording sections demos and of course we had to approve all the materials and all kind of things and then we said we we we schedule all the training sections with the with our users our agents right the people that we had to train it was really interesting as I said the most uh uh interesting part that I really F found as a a differentiator a benefit from s noids that's really tailored to our needs that's great and and I know that Caesar we or Cesar we we um recently published a case study with you and your story and your team and the success that you've had and in there you talk about some of the benefits and results that training helped drive at BT so I wanted to maybe dive a little bit into that but also you know as the team continues to rise up with service now and and getting skilled and trained people on the team you know how has that continued to to not only drive benefits day-to-day but also open up potential avenues for additional revenues for BT yeah what we achieved was really what we aimed for right we were aiming for uh this first let's say MVP of our our new system stack so we could uh train um it was not a lot of people of course right we we had like a a small team of service operations people that we it's like a ring fence team that we want to test with some very specific customers some PC's and MVP environment right with with a new product as well by that time we had an opportunity to also use some customers that were willing to help us to run PC's so it was really really uh important to first to achieve the those launch first launch dates of those products enabling all those um because we were on a go-to market situation right and we had to really train people very quickly to support that product and those customers there we be calling and using service now to log our instance as an example right so we could uh really achieve uh those uh Targets on launching products and of course enabling new Revenue because more when we started to launch that products there were multiple opportunities of customers coming and asking to buy that product and consequently part of that product sweet you you must have trained a lot of people through that custom Training uh exercise that you did with service now can you talk to us about that like how many folks did you train what did you train them on and so on so forth yeah we we trained on that first you know round was about 10050 I believe if I'm not wrong and but of course among those we had the really uh our own trainers right because we have our training team of course internally so it was really interesting to uh bring the the our people our trainers to those sections because we also had special one spe special section that was train the trainer right so we can we we could just train the trainers to scale the train that's what we're doing today actually so that's what you keep doing that that makes sense so you don't have to train everyone you train enough folks that can train can train other people essentially yeah exactly it was we just pick up really the key agents the key people that were on that uh the journey the support Jour that we had to launch those products the new products and the new MVP version right so in and along with the trainers so now that we are scaling we can just because it's a lot we have thousands of users so now we can uh use our training team to do that that makes sense um and to wrap up our conversations say are do you have any advice for anyone who may be interested in taking advantage of the pool of talent that rise up what service now can help build and offer to the broader service now ecosystem yeah it it it's really rise up really now that we are going on a scaling mode right and we are looking into all kind of new actually new products and capabilities on service now which is really really interesting and I'm very excited about looking into predict analytics an example cognitive AI uh see how we can automate our process with other you know some of other products from service now which are really interesting uh but of course we need a couple of things to to do that right it becomes more let's say hard level of the game now that we we went through the MVP we have our first version of our our our service now internal version let's say right now we are going to the next level and a lot of data analysis now in qual data quality analysis needs to happen so you enable AI as an example right or AML you know capabilities otherwise if you don't have good data how can you do that anyway right um but then you need to upscu your part of that you need to upscu your people right we need tocu our developers we need to upscu our service operations people to really be ready to not only build the things on service now or product and development teams but also use that right those new products and and capabilities so that's where rise up really is helping us to upskill now our people um and also it's really great to see the consequence let's say some things are happening to those guys that took the training like one year ago or more and they are I see the guys you know opening new avenues for them on their careers they're moving to more exciting roles because they took the training they can you know I share a lot of information on rise up for them to go to the careers no paths so they can take like business analysts or developer you know paths and they can really go to the next level on their personal careers right so it's really really that's what I think what the most important part not only for your business to achieve your your goals to launch products as us or to enable new business and enhancing our customer experience in NPS but also to give your you know your people opportunities to go on their careers it's really interesting well thank you Cesar for your insights into the rise up with service now program U really appreciate your time and you sharing your experience and uh thank you and best of luck with uh your 10th year at British Telecom yes thank you Cesar always good to talk to you and to Crystal's point I love hearing about rise up with service now with MBT how it's helping you you succeed and people Advance their careers and and yeah it's always a pleasure to hear hear your story and talk to you excellent no very good stuff I'm always a pleasure to talk to you guys and if anyone that is hearing this is just you know if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn just if you want to Deep dive in any kind of topics that we mentioned today and anything related to that I'm happy to to talk I'm Crystal Clevenger and I'm dri and this is the service now accelerate podcast series you can find us in other service now podcasts in the service now community at community. servicenow.com be sure to follow us in your favorite podcast app so you don't miss our next [Music] episode