[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] you're listening to the Alis podcast service now series Our Guest today is Gino safera Gino is managing director of platforms at Accenture Federal Services Gino welcome to the show my friend JP thanks for having me yeah we're delighted to have you looking forward to this one so Gino let's start with yourself please as we do all of our guests can you give us a bit of an overview of your background in technology what your journey has been and What's led you to where you are today as an MD over at Accenture Federal so my name is Gino safera I'm a managing director with the accent Federal Services platforms capability I serve as the service now business group lead for our Federal Business which means I'm responsible for our go-to Market strategy our talent retention Recruitment and training approach and also overseeing delivery quality for our service now work um across the federal space I've been with Accenture for almost 10 years now and throughout that time I've been focused on helping government clients navigate the challenges involved in adopting low code platforms like service now but I've also worked with Salesforce Microsoft power platforms Pega appion a lot of these platforms have similar challenges especially in the unique compliance world of the federal government um it's been a great place to work uh but before I was at Accenture I was actually in higher education which is where I had my introduction to IT service management and Frameworks like iil so I cut my teeth on service now actually at a large University in DC and like a lot of folks in the service now ecosystem my introduction was with a remedy replacement so this was back in the days of the Calgary and Dublin release of service now so I've been in the ecosystem for a while but we were replacing incident and problem and change management processes with with service now and I got to see firsthand the value that these platforms can provide when they're providing these outof boox Solutions aligned to Industry best practices in this case it was itol and the way that it could help organizations realize value a lot faster um it became pretty obvious to me that service now is going to be a big part of my career which wound up being true that's that's why I wound up getting my gig with Accenture and at the time when I joined service now to joined Accentra to start working on service now our practice had about 40 people fast forward about 10 years we're now uh about 400 people and all of that growth in Accenture Federal has been organic we haven't had any Acquisitions that's all been in response to increasing steadily increasing demand for service now services in the federal space and so uh now I'm talking to you today excited to be in a role where I'm leading our federal service now business into the next phase thank you for that Gino I appreciate you sharing the background and obviously your your long-term role with accent Federal which you know you've had various responsibilities but you're now leading the charge for service now and and given accenta federals role within service now in the in the federal space youo being an an Elite Diamond partner working with so many of the various different um government agencies there's a lot that we can cover here today so I I want to I want to give the audience a little bit of insight as to why a cental federal is being so successful within in the federal space some of the interesting projects you're working on so can you give us a little bit of a highlight re of of what you and your team are responsible for maybe some example projects that you're particularly excited or proud of absolutely when Bill McDermot the chairman and CEO of service now took the Reigns a few years ago he shared his vision that service now was going to be the defining Enterprise software company of the 21st Century and Accenture is uniquely positioned to be the defining partner in that Journey um we are number one in this ecosystem and we're one-of-a kind we're we're number one by market share globally and in every Market um industry analysts like uh Everest and others have declared us the number one partner and so what this allows us to do is to make really significant Investments at scale eent put a lot of press out about the Investments that we're making in AI we're investing $3 billion doar over a three-year period and one of my favorite investments in that realm is something that we started last year so our Accenture commercial service now group partnered with service now and Nvidia on this program called Lighthouse and the whole point of the program was to Pilot in a production set of use cases for commercial customers generative Ai and so we've been in advance of service now's product being ready for market right we know that itsm plus service now's native platform generative AI solution is coming we've been working with commercial customers to Pilot gen functionality for the last year and one of the neat things about this is that the lessons that we're learning and the features that clients are requesting are actually being funneled back to service now and informing their product road map for Gen and so it's one of those things that we as as such a big partner to service now get to do and so you may ask where does Federal fit into that since I've taken this role as our Federal Business group lead um I've been able to to see just the relative scale of our our Federal Business versus the the commercial uh practice globally we're we're a big percent of our Commercial Business and the way that we've done that is really um in federal addressing this misconception that there is about service now in the marketplace a lot of folks consider service now in it ticketing system I would say that service now competitors have done a an effective job of pigeon holding them right as an IT ticketing system and it is that I mean service now is the best it service management solution in the world it hands hands down but that's not where its value ends and frankly it's not where it begins for the last decade um and and more Accenture Federal has really been leaning into service now's other non-it use cases like for example we were thinking of service now as an application development platform 11 12 years ago before service now had even realized it and so some of our earliest wins and and value ads on the service now platform were outside of it um I can't get into the specifics of a lot of our use cases because of the government nature of the work but what I can share is that we've helped some of the largest federal agencies work on some of their most complex challenges um and these aren't in it one of my favorites is tied to Grants man management so uh we've used service now as the platform for agencies to publish Fox as funding opportunity announcements on public facing portals where citizens can apply for Grants then the grants get sort of reviewed internally and then issued using service now we've also used service now with large cabinet level agencies for permits um so public facing portal you can apply for a permit to do something if there's a payment required as part of that permit we've Integrated Service now with pay.gov and we can the payment and the permit get gets issued but it's not just tickets right it's not just cases that get routed it's also complex business processes one of my favorite stories is really tied to permanent change of station so federal employees occasionally get shipped overseas right whether it's on a detail or something like that and when you're when you're doing that when you're relocating an employee it's not just the employee that you're moving it's the employee plus their family plus their stuff and you need to make sure that all of that gets where it's going on time safely you need to know where it is you need to make sure that that process is repeatable and we've partnered with um agencies to solve that problem with service now and service now becomes a key component of that that complex process integrated with different teams different systems different tools but service now is a workflow engine allows you to do um incredible things and and it's this kind of non-it use case where we've had tremendous success in the federal space and we we don't see that stopping anytime soon I'm so glad you finished on that point because I think that Segways really nicely into your outlook for what's next because based on what you've just told us you go we're reading the tea leaves about the potential for service now within the within the federal space so much more so than just you know itm management um so of that same mindset when you guys look ahead for the next 12 24 36 months what can you share with us what are you excited about what do you see as being the next chapter um for Cent Accentra Federal and how will that then play into your decisions on where you invest in people so Accentra Federal Services has spent a lot of time and energy thinking about where the federal Market space is going with low code platforms and one of the biggest areas of opportunity and one of the biggest challenges that we see government having to address in the coming months and years is tied to Erp systems every cabinet level agency every agency has Erp systems whether they're human Capital Management systems or financial systems or supply chain systems and they're looking at in the next couple years Erp modernization requirements whether that's upgrading existing systems or migrating to the cloud or replacing those Erp systems with a with a new platform and these Erp engagements they're complicated they're hard they're expensive they take time and what we've seen is that our federal customers don't have an appetite for those longterm project schedules anymore they don't have the patience and so we have found uh a lot of meaningful value in pairing low code platforms like service now with Erp modernization we call the concept Erp plus but for us this is a huge Focus area uh especially over the next couple years because we've had success layering in service now as an engagement layer uh it's where your your employees can interact with service now through a portal to handle that workflow that may be very specific to your agency whether that's onboarding um or offboarding you might have a bunch of custom steps that need to happen that are bespoke to your agency and you can do that a lot more quickly and less expensive in service now versus in the core Erp service now calls this this concept clean Core basically you can do all the configuration that you need in service now and then leave the core Erp system untouched to to sort of lower your ongoing cost it's it's difficult to customize those Erp systems but you can configure service now pretty quickly and so we've and it's not just HR right we've done this with um large agencies for supply chain right people can come into a service now portal and actually order order equipment and track where where things are um and financial systems uh we at Accenture actually use service now as part of our fiscal year closeout the endof year uh closeout workflow approvals happen in service now it's a critical part of our business now for for end ofe close out and we've worked with um agencies on similar kinds of processes where where we've used service now as that um Financial component and so this is a huge Focus for us in in the Erp space that Erp plus another Focus for us is of course generative AI um I I mentioned that uh our commercial group has been working with service now and Nvidia on this Lighthouse program but in the federal space we've actually been working in the AI realm for a decade working with ethical AI we have data scientists on our team um and for the past several months we've been working to get ahead of itsm Pro Plus in the FED space um exenter Federal Services is working on our own llm for the federal space um building out a a a Fed GPT um tool for for folks to be able to adopt and and integrating that into service now to provide secure gen options in advance of of when service now's native functionalities available and that's what's neat about Accenture right is that we're able to invest in some of these accelerators to help our customers because we know what they're looking for get to Value faster so Erp and gen are probably the two biggest Focus areas this year um the third I would say is tied to the cyber security realm um um with mandates that have been coming down from the executive branch around cyber EO the the zero trust architecture guidance that's come out continuous Diagnostics and mitigation requirements there's a lot of work that uh Federal cisos have to do and so we've pulled together what we call a siso Playbook uh that has a number of tools for cisos one of which is we have this neat tool for uh a zero trust assessment so agencies actually have a framework for assessing where they are in their zero trust Journey and figuring out sort of what the road map is for moving next service now has native functionality for security Operations Security incident response and vulnerability response um Accenture has worked with service now to develop an atto automation solution to help with ongoing AA activities and generating the SSP and your listeners may not know what those letters mean but folks in the federal government do and we've found ways to streamline and automate a lot of these paper based processes which are you know it's really exciting and valuable because service now has the ability to tie all of these processes together natively so between Erp gen and and sort of zero trust cyber security those are our top three for the coming months outside of that like we're also having conversations about process mining um Enterprise Asset Management managing non-it assets and service now and an undertone of everything I just said is if the federal government or any customer really is interested in using service now to its true potential you have to be really thoughtful in terms of how you govern it um and so we we also partner with agencies on establishing centers of excellence to to manage that Technical and functional governance throughout so uh that's where where we're really putting our bets and and our focus on uh on the future for the platform and the government space incredibly exciting and that Segways nicely into the the portion I wanted to talk to you about which is the people aspect you know you talked about the incredible growth at Accenture Federal on the service now side over this past 10 years and I know from conversations I've had with you your team and and Amy that you expect that growth to continue based on the the plans and Investments that you you've just mentioned So speaking to an audience of of service now professionals uh specifically within the federal space we spend a lot of time encouraging people to direct their attention to it just based on the opportunity and and the need for people who can work in this field so a as a leader of of a of a major team doing some incredibly exciting work when you're speaking to the service now Community what is it that you tell them about the federal space but realistically exent Federal specifically that has encouraged people to to come on board join you on this journey and be part of some of these amazing projects that's a super important question and I I'm glad you you asked it there's there's two parts there one is the the kind of people that that we're looking for and the second part is what what gets them excited um I'd say if you're in the audience and you're listening to this right now and you're a US citizen and you're a service now professional I want to talk to you reach out um but I don't want the folks that are listening to think that you need to be a service now expert to be successful in in the federal space I talked a lot about Erp plus we have found that folks that have skill in the Erp domain whether it's Finance or supply chain or human Capital Management and I'm not just talking about developers I'm talking about functional expertise right if you have domain expertise that sometimes it takes decades to become an expert in this area I can teach you service now we have training we have certification programs but if you have domain expertise in something that's relevant to what I just talked about we can find a way to to plug you into our delivery teams and You' be able to add value on on day one so it's not just service now experts it's it's folks that um have helpful knowledge that that want to learn um so I encourage them to to look into careers in the federal space as well and then bonus points on top of everything I just said if you have an active security clearance uh a lot of our folks uh need security clearances in order to deliver their work and we're always looking for for the that cleared support but in terms of what excites people and and how I would would talk about the projects um I would say that that the type of people that are motivated by the mission are the ones that tend to thrive in this environment what I mean by that is at Accenture Federal Services we do work that matters we're helping federal agencies deliver on their mission to help whether it's citizens or federal employees or service members or their families or refugees or any other sort of member of the global Community uh if you name it it's probably a constituent of the US government and some way of a service that it provides and so if that's something that excites you um a lot of the other stuff falls into place and so the folks that I've seen have genuine success here are the folks that are are motivated by the the mission of of government and so uh if that sounds like you i' I'd strongly encourage you to to reach out to Accenture Federal um I know that I've shared a lot of information uh so far around marketing and around um what we do uh I I wanted to plug and encourage listeners to do a couple things one um check out on LinkedIn the Accenture Federal Services page we're constantly sharing information about um you know white papers and articles about the topics that I've discussed here you can also check out my profile on LinkedIn I'm posting things as well um and if you have specific inquiries folks can reach out to us directly um we have an email address it's digital. platforms ats.com again that's digital. platforms ats.com we'll be Fielding emails from folks and responding and getting you directed to the right people but uh if folks want to learn more that's that those are some good ways to get get in touch with us Gino thank you so much for coming on and doing this my friend I know we've been talking about this for a while and uh it it didn't disappoint I knew we had a great episode here just knowing what I know about you and and the group so I really appreciate you giving us such incredible detail into all of the amazing work you and your team are doing at Accenture Federal for the service now Community um and a lot more to come in the months and years ahead so we really appreciate it we should we wish you and the team the best of luck in the months and year ahead and we look forward to having you back on the show again in the near future thank you so much my friend thank you JP thanks to the Aldis team we appreciate the opportunity to talk about AFS service now in the federal Market this has been great thanks for listening to this episode of the AL this 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 rolles and stay up toate with industry news thanks for listening and stay tuned for more great episodes coming very [Music] soon