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 Joshua Young and I'm Paul group and we're taking over for the may may Paul uh really good to be sitting in a room with you talking face to face it's so nice we get to work together all the time but uh rarely do we get to spend and a lot of time together in person really curious how you got started in your service now Journey what kind of brought you here uh very happy that we're here but tell us a little bit about your story yeah sure uh hopefully you brought some popcorn and and a lot of listening because you're going to need a lot of time to get through this story but yeah so I started my uh you know service now Journey over 10 years ago uh I actually did retail management for nine years and decided that that wasn't for me um so got back into school and then ended up getting a networking degree and became a level one help Des analyst for a customer that was using service now um did that about six months and ended up transitioning to development on the platform to grow their Employee Self-Service and kind of take off from there um visited with one other customer for a year and then ended up here Glide fast the last five years um the mayor as as we all know that we're taking over for personally hired me it's it's been a great journey I wouldn't trade it for anything absolutely love what I do and uh yeah so what about yourself how did you kind of get into the ecosystem yeah like you started uh as a customer about 17 years ago at this point was at a little known place called General Electric and and we implemented the I think this is true still it was at the time the largest implementation of service now in the world we had something like 650,000 users all across the globe and we did it in about a year time frame to retire all these homegrown uh Solutions and workflow tools and uh as soon as we were done we realized that uh about three other organizations inside GE had also stood up service now and so then we got to do the fun thing of consolidating all those and then I went to a company called neelen to basically do the same thing and realized that in a Consulting format I could probably help more than one organization at a time and really thought yeah service now that's where I really have passion it's something that we can use in any area of any organization to make their lives a little bit easier to give them the metrics and kpis that they need to ask for a raise uh save the company some money but ultimately just build cool new fun stuff and so uh joined Glide fast maybe only about a year ago at this point so still have a ways to go to work up toer five but um I've loved every minute of it you and the entire team have been so welcoming really appreciate the opportunity to be here and uh you know share our experiences with our customers to hopefully solve some problems for them and I'm curious maybe uh what's kind of the most fun thing that you've you've built in your career uh you know I I think looking back on it one of the fun things we built was um you know for the customer I was at we had uh customer online ordering through a different system alog together but we ended up being the support backbone for it and this is before the days of CSM for service now so building all that from scratch integrating with our Homegrown Solutions and really being able to bring a level of customer service you know to those customers before service now was even at that point offering it that's awesome really pioneering I mean I think people used to say like service now is the great Innovation platform and I remember you know that was always kind of the the push and um now even more so being able to see things that customers have created getting built into the platform not just you know bolted on for one organization I did the same thing built event management before it existed as an offering and then so what do you think about uh you know this geni and all this new stuff coming out really excited about gen generative AI obviously being kind of the the next Evolution from an AI standpoint leveraging large language models is really exciting to be able to proactively create case summarization maybe enhance the natural language understanding of either an employees or an end customers interaction with something like a virtual agent but even more exciting I think is where gen is going to be able to take us into moving from the large language models into large action models and being able to not only create convers ational content interactively and and ad hoc but then being able to take actions based on that for you based on the the conversation you're having with it so being able to not only live in a time like this where you know AI is eventually going to become our overlords and they'll take over right was reading some quote recently where someone said um we live with uh prehistoric emotions we live in a society that was built on medieval Frameworks and we're living with god-like technology and really just being able to help shape that for companies to make money is really empowering so more than that thinking about how ultimately again we can minimize some of that nonv value Ad work for our customers and uh really leverage gen in a space that makes sense for them I think that's one of the reasons why we built that gen Readiness assessment so that we can hopefully help our customers understand where they are on the maturity journey to be able to leverage gen effectively I think for a lot of folks it's a buzzword and they don't necessarily understand what the potential outcomes or outputs might be they also don't understand what necessary components need to be in place prior to being able to leverage some of that functionality we've got some customers who obviously excited to to move forward but curious what what's your experience been like with Gen and you know where you where you see it kind of taking us yeah I mean I think it's you know it's bringing a lot of positive really helping streamline um the customer support model and being able to summarize you know some of those cases and stuff a lot of customers like you said it seems like a buzzword and kind of help them understand that you know the biggest key to that is having value ad data and being able to learn based on good data is is really what's going to help drive them to that next level be able to make those intuitive decisions and really streamline their processes and then also you know making sure they understand AI is not going to ever replace jobs it's going to give you your you know your teams to have more value ad opportunities instead of having to do those level one M tasks they're doing more exciting things and really driving the business and letting AI handle those small little things so I think it's it's very positive overall from what I've seen I love that also I mean for those watching we use AI all the time uh it's a great agenda Builder it's a great it's a great bullet maker but um you know applying that in a way that hopefully is going to allow folks to make proactive decisions around um things like app rationalization or where they need to focus or spend their time and energy as well as kind of taking the next step hopefully in reporting in metrics uh being able to analyze data in new ways that um will help us make better decis decisions I think is going to be really key yeah for sure and you know like you said you know agenda building we actually you know we're here together for our two-day you know in person event and um building that agenda usually takes time but instead we used Ai and it just spit on an agenda and so far I would say it's been successful today and we've stayed right on topic and on time um so you know props to AI for for helping Drive our our next two days in the Washington release I know one of the the really cool things that has really been expanded on over the last year that it's really been in the ecosystem fully is resourcing and procurement functionality and tying that into the overall asset life cycle in an or organization especially as the expanding definition of what an asset is with regards to the service now ecosystem has dramatically changed from where it was even what five years ago where now we're not just talking about traditional it and user and infrastructure assets but now we're talking about operational technology we're talking about Co of Sales Systems in the retail space we're talking about medical devices um for for Healthcare organizations the use cases have really expanded and being able to fill that system of action need for a lot of organizations has been really exciting to watch Curious Paul like what kinds of things have you seen either in the sourcing and procurement space or you know what's coming next in Washington that gets you kind of excited for what's next for the evolution of the platform yeah I mean I think it it's super exciting to actually be able to have everything in service now and being able to start from you know requesting new hardware or software going through that procurement life cycle actually procuring the equipment and then tying it all into Asset Management so just in general that whole idea of having an in platform out of the box you're not having to build it yourself so you know it brings it back to my my first days on the platform we actually had to build a procurement process before there was you know again similar story about customer service we had to tie it in and and built the whole thing from scratch to be able to manage the assets and have that asset life cycle and now you just you know you configure it and personalize it and you're really driving and really seeing that recouping and money and savings for the organization and driving that overall process forward so I think a lot of uh you know positive coming from that being able to to tie all that back together and then really see you know how much money you're spending and saving and and really streamlining the processes speaking of Commerce does how about knowledge are you excited for it so excited it's in Vegas again uh never never get tired of going to Vegas and in particular being able to see everybody in the community being in the ecosystem as long as both you and I have it's really exciting because it feels like a tight-knit community we're constantly meeting yes new people all the time but there are people that you'll see at knowledge that you haven't seen in a few years and you've known for 15 I mean it's it's really exciting time not only to see those people and reconnect but also to learn about what's coming and even more importantly I think some of the kind of innovation that that we were talking about and setting what the new standards will be for platform level capabilities get to see what other customers have been building uh you know hopefully with us um or on their own just really exciting to see everybody come together and share all of that information um come find us at our booth and we'll talk to you more about how we've helped others do that but I know you also love knowledge it's a it's a great great conference uh what knowledge will this be for you out of curiosity it's not as many as you would think because of Co and as a customer not going every year but it's it's probably the fourth or fifth one I've been to um well like you said love getting to catch up with old colleagues you know new customers getting the talk and see what's coming out what people are doing how they're stretching the platform um it's it's honestly it's like a reunion every year you know a lot of people that you know you you talk to and you get to actually see them in person even if they live down the street for you you just don't make time to to get together we're all in there together we're all talking the same lingo um getting the catch up and it's really a thrill and you know as Glide fast is known for we always throw the best party at the end of knowledge so make sure you make sure you come check us out and come hang out with us over there that's awesome I I I remember it was uh I forget how many knowledges I've been to but one I was sitting in the keynote and someone was just walking by in the aisle I mean you don't know how big those rooms are there's hundreds of people there someone's walking down the aisle and I go andras it was a guy that I've worked with for years and I hadn't seen or spoken to in probably five six years but he worked in Budapest while I was in the states and just recognized him walking by and that was the first time we ever got to meet in person just really amazing to connect with people we do throw the best parties that's a great way to connect with people as well you've been to so many knowledges what are some of the things that you've noticed in terms of how it's changed over time yeah I mean it's it's a lot of innovation every year we're getting to see these new things that are coming out and how customers are using the platform differently and thinking about it differently um it it's bigger and better every year you know it's it it just just a Big Thrill to kind of see and and really take the time to see what's out there you we get stuck in the day-to-day a lot and we don't get to hear from you know every customer and what they're you know kind of innovating on or what service now is kind of planning sometimes they share some new technology that coming out you know at these events so it's it's a lot of fun um and not to mention getting our team together you know it's a big thing we all work remote you know we never really see each other but getting everyone together in one place and getting to spend some time and and and build our team up as we continue to grow as Glide fast grows couldn't agree more we have tons of content our marketing team is so good um we actually put out a book that folks can download or if you find us at knowledge uh we might have a few of these on hand you can actually see a voice of the customer where we actually have all of our customers for projects that we worked on or completed with them or advisory engagements or training exercises that we worked on with them just giving you know solid feedback around their interactions with us and uh if you're a customer who's looking for uh an organization to work with a partner in the service now space uh and you want some sort of idea of the quality and caliber of work that we do and the uh Impressions that we leave our customers with this is a a great way to get a view into that and we'll hopefully put a link in the Glide chat to uh your ability to download this uh on the web I think definitely and and if you do get the hard copy I believe it's available on Amazon if I'm not mistaken bring it with you the knowledge you get the mayor to sign it you know himself um even I don't have a sign copy at this point I I've heard that the signature increases the value of this book by triple it does it does now as we're taking over for the mayor we could sign it for you too if you would like you know we're not opposed it might add quadruple value Paul this was so much fun thank you for for doing this really appreciate you honestly uh the the culture that you built here is just absolutely wonderful you and Mike together and and our team and particular is just the best in the business I couldn't be happier to work with you and our team uh every day it's just absolutely the the joy of my life really appreciate it I I truly appreciate it you know we we've got a we've got we've come a long way we've got a lot more to go and grow so looking forward to the coming years and and seeing where we can take this to do you have a topic in mind that you'd like to discuss reach out to us at glidefast [Music]