[Music] the Aldis podcast is brought to you by Aldis International supplying your expert Ai and digital transformation staffing needs across the US and Europe today you are listening to our service now Series where we interview the best and brightest of the industry to share their story advice and views on the exciting world of service now and digital transformation [Music] hello everybody it's Mark Kelly Chief customer officer and co-founder of all this I hope you're doing really really well wherever you are in the world today and we have got Shannon Chapman on the podcast and we're really really happy to have Channon on the show today Shannon is director of it Service delivery and a platform owner service now working for a company called Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Shan thank you very much for joining us on the show today what we usually do before we get into your current role and your dayto day is we like to tell the story about how you've actually got into the world of service now and what is your journey that you came to this area at my first job out of college I actually uh got exposed as a as a network operations center engineer monitoring the network uh actually for Citrix and uh was exposed into the change management world and it'll becoming in change management knowing uh itsm and iil getting certified and um during you know my several years progressing in in those roles I um actually ended up taking over our our service desk or ticketing tool which at that time was BMC service desk Express and um it really was not scaling to what we needed to provide um for our business so they asked me to go ahead and evaluate other ticketing Solutions um and that's what we would have called it back then right ticketing Solutions and not necessarily a platform um which is what we got but I went to the service now conference I evaluated that and and really found that it was going to be the right solution long term um so we ended up implementing service now this was back in 2016 in about a 4month period very fast uh for for about 10,000 uh end users um and uh you know ended up leading that platform and leading the itsm team and and all the development uh within the platform I can imagine that was a PR frantic four months oh and it was over the holidays we didn't we did not sleep not a fun year I could imagine you learned so much from that experience also right but I could it was kind of like a fire hose in the face on just doing so much there and tell us a little bit about your work in Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings tell us a little bit what you're doing day-to-day you and your team so dayto day in my team now we we work you know 90% on enhancements um you know or or problems so we kind of you know I I started here about just uh almost two years ago and uh they like most companies you know I've heard that have customized their service now platform on the first initial imp mentation right it's kind of a lot of a lot of change involved moving from another system to another so there's a lot of customization that does end up happening just to be able to get by and to to to deal with the change not too much change at one time so um what happened with that is that you know me coming in I'm helping to actually undo that we did the same thing when I was at Citrix too we had to took a couple years to kind of undo but once we um we got there so we've been doing a lot of that we're kind of over that stage now and we're we're really focused on enhancing um so we're say 90% of our time is really enhancements um maybe some problem records or just operational um requests that are that our you know stakeholders request from us and when we look at some of the projects that you've done in the world of service now what kind of stands out that kind of gives you the most satisfaction yeah so um when we were at Citrix and we had just launched a service now um we were really trying to get this is we didn't have a service portal before right we didn't have this we we had it somewhat like it it was a madeup website you know that uh that we had and um so now we had the service portal this great tool for us to use that we needed our users to actually start using so we could actually get that Ro why from shifting you know from users calling our service desk and and and all so we needed to get them to use this new service portal well I actually was we were trying to think of ideas and I had received an email from my bank it was around my birthday in April and uh they they just sent me an email wishing me a happy birthday and I'm thinking wow how thoughtful of this of the bank to wish me a happy birthday it was just a a very delightful um you know surprise I didn't expect that and I thought about what it would be great to have more experiences like that at work why can't we do the same thing and I thought about also your tedex talk that I just I just watched um you know around doing one act of kindness a day uh can change your life and it totally resonates in the same way um so I thought why not you know have we couldn't really do birthday because it was more of a a pip uh issue with with presenting birthdays but we did work anniversaries so you would come to the service portal and and if it was your work anniversary that whole week we'd have balloons pop up on the screen and just say hey happy work anniversary you know show how much we care that they're there and I mean people will post would post it on LinkedIn and it would just kind of you know Chim through or become like almost a rumor or or something in the business and and that really helped to drive adoption and people really enjoyed it I thought and it was so simple your current projects tell us a little bit about some of the work that's kind of giving you energy about now yeah absolutely so I mean everything that I work on to that same you know example too is um I just have a feeling that you know the we have great experiences in our personal lives with different applications and you know I mean Amazon I can get a great experience if something doesn't work and I need my money back I don't even have to talk to a person you know what I mean and I just believe that there's why can't we do that at work why can't we have that in the workplace I think we should be able to do that so that's what um so what one of the things that we're working on right now is is actually Hardware Asset Management not from the server perspective more on the end user Computing side um and uh you know like most companies you know Norwegians had a complex process uh to kind of manage those those computer assets which you know can sometimes lead to inaccuracies in the data or slow response times uh just making sure that we have the right inventory do we have it who has it um so we've been focused on that and um you know not only you know laptops desktops but peripherals right uh monitors headsets all the things that we send to um some of our our highest staff counts which are personal Cruise Consultants who need to be prepared when they first start so they can book your your next Unforgettable Cruise right um so we're streamlining that process right now and and you know helping us to better manage um you know the employee experiences right I mean coming into a company and making sure as a new hire I get the things that I need making sure I have the access to that um you know and in the Journey of if I need something repaired maybe I need it replaced right and just making that really easy and making a manager easy too what is my people have what am I you know if if there is a you know they do become Al alumni or separate from the company we know what we need to get back from them um so that's really what our we're focused on and why if anybody ever wants to see how how many different things that happen when you get onto a cruise ship and then get off a cruise ship and the work that has to go in between terms getting the the food and all the materials onto the ship then actually make sure it goes across all the different departments then people come on the ship people come off the ship like if you do that over like I think they I think they did like a 24-hour recording in in 60 seconds and you watch this it's just incredible all the things that have to go so if you're removing friction from that process and making it EAS you're you're giving so from an onboarding perspective you're giving obviously consistency transparency people are always remember the first day at work or if they're leaving and people want to enjoy that part from the customer experience they want it to be Flawless because you know they paid money to go on this trip they've got aspirations as you always do for your holidays and you don't want any frictions impacting that you want that to be as consistent and as smooth as possible and then also you want that scale and then as you go and get bigger and you do more cruises your experience is really really positive so I can imagine there's a lot of moving parts that you need kind cognizant of and I remember we did the episode with the NFL and they were talking about where if they have to go and do like a super bowl or something like that I think they got like 880,000 items that have to be moved everywhere from like the microphone for present using to everything's tagged to the trophy yeah like it's just and that used to be done by boxes where people literally just have like an ax to open up the box and just unpack the palace yeah so it's crazy so in terms of like the outcomes or impact did you kind of know any of them in terms of efficiencies we're in we're in the middle of it right now uh so I don't have any metrics to to provide just yet um but we've done other you know other big things like for example um we did a recent project uh that we've done a case study on with service now around um our app engine so our first uh application in app engine was actually helping our payments acceptance team um and how they handle actual credit card Merchants so as you can imagine on each of our ships I mean every person that's swiping their credit card in their stores or you know buying other things um we have to track the different types of credit card Merchants we use around the world uh this process used to be done you know via email right and and hey we need to update this Merchant or we need to remove this Merchant or we need to add a new one you know whichever is the case and um this was done via email and then it would have to make the changes and and you know it took about over two weeks with approvals and actual changes being made and you know again with email there's always that room for error so we actually were able to automate the process uh from beginning to end and and now that only takes three hours and that's really just waiting for approvals you know yeah so now we can actually because we have to have that those Merchants correct in order to do our bill our our general ledger um you know at the end of the each month so it helps our accounting team to uh uh to to do that work every month as well so it's really great it just it just allows people to do better work and freeze them up which everybody wants and engages that so tell us a little bit about your secrets because you see yourself and your team to be very very good at the upgrades and not going of get stuck in the weeds uh on that how how do you approach the whole process so the process of upgrading um what I found is is that you know I mean we have this is a SAS platform um as long as you're keeping your customizations low um you can upgrade really easily now everybody's going to have customizations one of the newest things that service now has actually had come out out um was a new automated test framework where it actually can build automated test cases for you I don't know if you're familiar with that um on tables or even just catalog items that you might have uh you know across across your platform and whatever um you know modules you may be using I shouldn't say modules I should say workflows but um that has really been helpful so I used to at Citrix I had 4 50 automated test cases that we built ourselves you know we might start with the the the the box kind that came and then you just tweak right for like problem management and such um but now with with that Norwegian we went ahead and and were able to utilize this new functionality and um it it's just incredible it's it's cut down our our testing time I mean 80% so I mean we're still doing some manual pieces for for things that are customized or looking at Integrations that we still need to kind of validate um but that allows us to be able to actually upgrade within a week and a half all three environments right starting with Dev having test as a backup and then we migrate to prod and then we monitor it and we're good imagine saying that to your younger self that you're gonna have a tool that's gonna knock off like 80% of your time to get it down to like a week and a half yeah like I don't believe it yes but but it's funny like this is we I've had over 150 episodes in the world of service now and I always we're hearing these examples we're hearing this type of efficiency return on investment Improvement on the customer experience it just makes you feel like you know I always think of it as you got a pen and you're clicking through that to-do list and you're putting the line through it and you feel like you're making progress and you're just feeling more productive um yeah which is a really nice feeling right um to to do that and then you can feel like the the team feel engaged as well because let see let's see our productivity because we all want to have impact right I you know I think we talking about those little things that make a difference but also impact feeling like you're adding positive like kind of momentum to the to the organization and your role because I I don't believe people go to work each day to not do work or to you know to evade work it's usually because they're disengaged or they not feel like they're actually making a difference or impact and something that's really relevant there yeah absolutely I mean um that's why I think Ai and and automation are actually really important and and and shouldn't have a negative connotation with it right I mean you know this allows us to be more creative in our jobs enjoy our roles of what we really wanted to do in the first place you know and let let the machines take care of the small things that you know why we call Mondays Mond Mondays you know what I mean we we don't care for Mondays because of all these little things that we have to do let's let's utilize these tools to take care of that so we can enjoy and look forward to Monday's again yeah I'm a big fan of that because for you know for the negative sentiment that's talks about either from a Terminator to to kind of Doomsday or going take your job scenario what I think it is is just the education pieces so the value that can be added and then do you understanding that some training is going to be needed to go on this journey and then once you commit to that mindset of going it's going to be incremental you're going to need to continuously learn you're a part of it and then you kind of you kind of you're more open to trying these different areas yeah shanon looking at the kind of advice that you would offer to people who are are going to start in this journey and you know kind of introduce servers now into their in internal environment or external what advice would you share with them I would definitely ensure you've got leaders um in your in your main areas uh whatever processes you plan to initiate on the platform um whether it's cmdb or any of the iil processes like change management and itsm um or even you know any HR um ensure those leaders that are involved in kind of the decision making of of how that platform is going to look for you um on that go live make sure that they're they're they're trained they've got best practice knowledge um certifications and training in that just helps I think to make better decisions and then if there's customizations that are going to be needed you know make sure they're Justified um at a at a lead a higher leadership level um because that's really like I said you know everybody seems to do it you have to kind of undo that over time as you mature in your processes uh to migrate to the platform um which is you know yeah sure there's going to be customizations that are necessary um but just make sure they're Justified so so people don't you know try to recreate what you have today because that's not what you're looking to do you're looking to grow I like that you you sanity check it with the key decision makers making sure everyone's on the right page with us and then look to continuously move forward um it's it's it's good advice uh which which is great shanon thank you very much for joining us on the podcast today I'm sure we'll be hearing from you in the future as as upgrades continue and new features get added as well thank you very much for your time today yes thanks Mark have a good [Music] one thanks for listening to this episode of the oldest podcast if you enjoyed today's episode don't forget to subscribe rate and review we are available on Apple podcasts Spotify and any Android podcast of choice you can also head over to our website www.al this.com to Listen to More podcasts view our open rolls and stay up to-date with industry news thanks for listening and stay tuned for more great episodes coming very [Music] soon