Welcome to The Innovation Today podcast where we speak with today's technology leaders about how they're innovating to stay ahead of changing industry Dynamics and reaching new levels of productivity and automation brought to you by service now your partner in digital transformation all right thank you for joining us today for another episode of The Innovation Today podcast I'm your host Spencer biller I'm mean Innovation org service now and today we're super excited to welcome Richard moam Chief digital officer at Evan Richard good day hello there thank you for having me I'm looking forward to talking to you guys absolutely thank you for joining on and today we're going to dive into the topic of Erp modernization in the Enterprise but first Richard why don't you tell us a little bit about your role and the topic of importance right now and a brief congratulations on your your recent promotion to Chief digital officer yeah thank you very much yes uh it's it's a very recent troll newly promoted uh taking over some big shoes my my predecessor in this role in the service now practice of evidence looking forward to to making my mark in this space we we we're I'm joining this role at a very exciting time we've got a lot going on in this space and specifically in Evan and service now uh so yeah really looking forward to that my background is is pretty Broad and diverse um but it is all in the service now ecosystem pretty much so I started out back in the day at a company called glass house technology which I think is no longer around but they were the second UK customer to purchase service now as a solution uh so pretty Innovative back in the day and I was their IP tools manager so essentially I was uh managing as an admin uh one of those very very early service now instances we're talking pre Aspen here so when they fall spring releases and I was then hired by service now from that company to help run their support team basically and I was employee number 12 in the UK at service now something like 260 globally I remember the spaceship building when I went out there for induction in uh California so that was very cool uh so lots and lots of history and background and I've been in the Consulting space ever since uh so I jump from service now to a small company called inovis back in the day that was doing Professional Services and Consulting that was the reason for the move there wasn't a Professional Services team in the UK and service now at that time uh because it was so early uh so if I wanted to do Consulting I would need to move and I did and I've been there ever since I've done pretty much every role we have in the practice except direct sales uh so that's technical consultancy senior technical consultancy management consultancy project management senior project management heading our delivery functions and heading our prell solution architecture and now in charge of our D digital strategy in in the practice so yeah lots of History lots of background lots of exposure to service now over many many years and now happy to come and talk to you guys yeah I think you may be the most seasoned guest that we've had on the podcast so thank you for all your expertise and an amazing background it's it's awesome to also talk to another Oldtimer I remember the pre Aspen days myself I think you you got me by maybe a year or two Hands-On support or Hands-On with the keyboards on on early service now es but regardless it's it's good to be with you yeah absolutely what real quick Chief digital officer so this is kind of a a new thing that we're seeing out there in the tech world can you give us just maybe a brief idea of what that entails yeah absolutely so it's really understanding the the transformation landscape out there so digital transformation has been kicking around as a term now for a number of years and what do that actually mean well it's it's your old aages of people process and technology so part of the as as this this role in The Practice in particular and what are the market trends in this digital transformation space and we're going to talk about some of those with this Erp modernization but also geni and the various other things that are kicking around out there right now that are really hot topics in terms of how is technology altering the workplace uh what is it doing to our customer environment how are we uh adjusting and building on those Transformations that need to happen as the business move forwards and in this new new Brave New World of AI and gen AI in particular and how it transforms the mod ment PR yeah that's that's a great encapsulation I think this this term of digital transformation has now been around a while but it's it's not something that's really ever done at least in in my opinion it's something that's continually iterative and and continually coming back into the cycle to see how you can get further like further your company and to have a more digital approach to how they're how they're looking at their business yeah absolutely abolutely and we're seeing this uh knowledge last year at knowledge this year I'm sure it's going to be the same same conversation which is to say this this digital transformation is accelerating and it is not slowing down so the the the increase in the technology its capabilities especially in gen and the AI space and Erp modernization as well it is bringing the the the technology into more and more areas of The Bu of the Enterprise and the modern business not less so this digital transformation is more and more relevant because these Technologies are becoming more and more relevant to the mod business now what what do we mean by Erp modernization so it seems like it dovetails a little bit off of digital transformation but those companies that are looking out are looking out there for for maybe an understanding of how they can start that transformational effort or how they can start to to modernize what exactly does that process look like what does it what do we mean by that yeah exactly this is I've said it a couple of times I've not explained it it's a good point so Erp modernization what what is it what is it so sa is a very very large organization uh that's been around for a very very long time multiple decades and a lot of Enterprise customers have these Erp Solutions in their at the heart of their business and so it's running the business processes of the modern Enterprise and a lot of these are what we would call Legacy hosted environments that have been running on our data centers and sap was was quite controversial about two years ago when they stated that no new Innovations would be released on ECC and that's the the the core inside the the old sap solution so all new Innovations are being launched on what's called S4 Hanna that's their sas-based cloud-based solution uh for sap so essentially if if you're a current customer with an Erp uh specifically sap uh you're looking at this space and saying I need to migrate to westv Hannah here's the problem statement though so I've been building on this solution this platform for two decades I've got an awful lot of stuff here uh there's a lot of applications there's a lot of our business processes uh that are core to our operations are running on this platform how do I do this it's a massive undertaking and what this this problem generates is an opportunity and that opportunity is what we're calling Erp modernization and it's not just us it's sap calling that as well so they're looking at these processes that may have been built 15 years ago well guess right technology landscape has changed since then we have these new sas-based Enterprise platforms that exist outside of sap that may do parts of this process in a much more efficient and modern manner so would it not make sense uh to look at the the enterprise process in particular the application that's been built bu and say well this bit probably is better fitting into what is now Enterprise digital platform SAS space that is serviced now this bit lives in S4 Hannah this bit maybe lives in workday as a HRI for example so taking these applications that have been built a very long time ago and looking at them with fresh eyes with the fresh technologies that we have the Enterprise platforms that we have service now say p and saying this this modernization is really taking these processes and putting their various steps and stages into the right solution for the modern world so it is by no means removing them from sap or S Hanah It's Better Together messaging this process can be more efficient faster as a Better Together solution using two modern Enterprise platforms not just the one that's a great description of it it's it's it's a time that is almost mandated to to have to do this given that sap is is requiring this migration into the cloud and at at such a s at such a pivotal time it's it's it's a great point to pause to look at the landscape of the platforms and solutions that you've invested in especially since they modernized over the past 15 years of Association and make a a a directional decision on what actually is best for the Enterprise what actually is best for the employees and the customers that we serve as such tricky oftentimes the trickiest part in this is not so much the technology choices it's the people in process choices of I've always done it this way this is this these are the areas that I'm comfortable in and I know it's going to work this this tried andrue fashion how how do you set the expectations accordingly with this new Dynamic of digitally transforming with modern platforms but still creating the functionality that the Erp world has created yeah it's a it's a great question the the people and process is always the killer right the technology evolves faster than perhaps the people in the processes can keep up so this modernization effort as we sort of started out on the conversation it never stops because you're constantly trying to catch up with the the technology which is perhaps innovating faster than it it is possible to catch up um so these these modernization processes the looking at this particular area with with Erp we see and and these are customer stories that I've had So speaking to someone last year at knowledge they have a decade backlog of putting this modernization through the sap only channel so btp business technology platform is the sap low code no code option of choice but it still needs an abap developer to look at it which is the codebase that sap uses so looking at doing this through the sap only Channel just putting everything in from an sap to an sap solution with different Technologies was a decade of work for this customer uh and they were saying this is a light bulb for me there's a different Channel that I can put some of this work down that may be more appropriate for these processes anyway right so it's a better solution not only that but it allows me to get this done faster with a better outcome and a better solution at the end of it so this is where this comes to play really mentioned the deadline 2027 is when customers are being mandated to migrate to West for Hanah isap so this is an imminent deadline right this is a lot of work a decade three years these two timelines do not match they need other Solutions right yeah well my my next question was was kind of along the lines of what happens if we don't so with the cios out there that that are are maybe a little bit more cautionary or waiting to see what the the rest of the market is doing from a solution standpoint what's the urgency here like what what happens if we don't do this if we don't make that three-year time frame it's a great question so one you can't get those new innovations that s are talking about right so they are actively investing in S4 Hana um so they are producing capabilities and functionalities that you're simply not going to be able to use unless you put an S4 Hanner instance in so that that's the first thing to say so what if we don't do anything well you stand still standing still in your Marketplace I'll let you make the decision whether that's a good idea or not I suspect it is not the other thing that will impact is of course the ingoing licensing and support costs of those Legacy inations so you just need to look at people trying to run LS XP this far into their life cycle um as to the the size of the checks you hear about in the media being bounced around to try and keep XP on and running and supported with all the security updates so yeah there will be a time period after the 2027 deadline where that that won't be too painful I suspect but eventually sap is going to start to time and screw and and start to make the process of remaining painful uh and more painful than the migration got it it's funny you mentioned Windows XP I I love my parents they are still stuck on aol.com email I've tried to I've tried to show them the path not not to H on AOL out there but you know we all remember the days of what AOL was like when you would call the dial up and it would just have that lovely screeching sound to serenade you to sleep I've tried to show the light yeah yeah fair enough well so it's a bit thank you for that I mean it's it's a bit it feels a bit urgent at least to me but I know this can feel rather arduous for large companies that have that are running their systems on these Erp worlds and and you know it's difficult to be the Catalyst of change even if there is an event that's mandating it so what are kind of what are some of the most common challenges that you notice from that Erp modernization standpoint that you've helped customers overcome in those difficulties yeah the the big thing we're seeing is that most most big customers have a plan now whether that plan is fully funded fully realized so there is I'm sure some denial out there where they're going la la la I'm not listening I'm not moving but most Enterprises do have a a modernization plan for their Erp because they recognize its criticality to the way they do business so they are recognizing that this migration does need to happen uh and they do have even the including of a plan and some have quite mature plans about how they're doing this and I would say quite a few have already started um to look at migrating applications so what's new and what's different with what we're bringing to Market as evident is that we've looked at this and said yes you can just go down the btp Channel with our sap practice in Idan who have co-developed this with service now and us to to say this is a solution to a real problem and you can just go down that btp channel but as we highlighted decade of work AAP developers they don't grow on freeze there's lots of them that they're very expensive and probably not enough for all of the change that needs to happen in the market in the next few years so you're going to have an increasingly competitive space to get the skills to do this migration Journey so RSA pre-practice looked at this and said look can service now help here can service now as a modern Enterprise platform come along this journey and relieve some of this pressure looking at the migration path some of the big big customers that we have this not going to get it done in time just using sa so not only is this a better solution because it's a a modern Innovation platform sap is is hard to innovate on it's it's uh by its nature it's the backbone of the Enterprise it's running business processes at scale so changing it is difficult because you don't want to break anything so having a system such as service now a platform such as service now which you can fail fast and recover you can innovate quickly you can build quickly a system of innovation if you will on top of your system of record your modern backround of the Enterprise that is sap that is extremely valuable that Better Together message is extremely valid we had evid have done the hard work in building a relationship with the sap Consultants on the ground to talk about something that is not sap that is a a big challenge for an sap salesperson to say maybe there might be another option that is something that is not in their lexicon generally yeah yeah because it's it's kind of been a we can solve it all solution in the past but maybe you can't solve it all quickly and we can't sell it all necessarily on a dime cheaply yeah that's exactly it it's it you know there there is a Better Together story here that is very very real and a real opportunity here for the modern Enterprise platform that is service now to really uh establish itself as that as that Innovation system of record for modern Enterprise and and yeah we hear Bill talking about that plenty and and and quite rightly so yeah he's coining service now now as the business transformation platform right absolutely the latest that I've heard in that world so maybe an example of a customer that's done this really well would be useful and I know you gave that example of the backlog of 10 10 years for a customer is is there uh is there one that you've seen successful migration or are we kind of in the midst of it right now is it still happening we're very much in the midst of it but I can certainly talk through one of the latest stories that we have so this is in payments remittance advice believe it or not so this is a wonderful back worth World these are the type of conversations you have in this in this space so this whole process that most people from doesn't even know exist how does someone get paid as a supplier from a modern business well there's a whole process around that so um first of all the pro the the supplier submits the the invoice and that can be in many formats then it gets processed the data extracted and put into ANP system they then run through the approval chains marry up what the supplier is involved versus what we expected and if everything lines up then they issue a green light pay that supplier from finance and so there's a whole process here with approv document ingestion and in the this particular customer that was highly manual uh pretty much every step was manually done and they were looking at this and saying look better together message modernization how do we automate this and using document intelligence in service now we were able to ingest the documents extract the data by AI um put it into a a record format that we recognize using Erp canvas we were able to talk to the sap system we understood it we understood the data mapping that lexicon of sap and service now and we're able to pass that data to sap for processes we extracted out for the approval chain inside service now is approvals in service now really easy to build very very difficult to build approvals yes okay move back to sap process the payment through Finance come back to service now pray successful send them notification to the supplier the whole thing became automated pretty much end to end apart from the finance bit at the very end of the process but uh save them I do not know how many n hours we're still calculating that um but this was a major Enterprise who paid suppliers quite a bit as you would expect so I imagine there's going to be hundreds of man hours saved just by putting this solution in and the net saving over a year could be absolutely gloss that's fantastic yeah that's that's such a great use case on because I heard three or four points where you can do something really easy in a modernized platform you mentioned approvals you talked about document intelligence of ingesting Legacy style either PDFs or you know God forbid still paper format and taking that into a digital system to then make a decision off of it you mentioned suppliers in there like having a A modernized supplier interface where they can go to understand where they're sourcing these things from and get updated live like they would get updated from an Amazon package that's showing up at their door those are all things that are are in the Wheelhouse of modern technology that probably weren't there when these things were written 15 years ago and you highlight a really key Point This Not only was this process automated so you're saving a bunch of manual processing hours but the user experience was significantly better um so previously they were firing a document into The Ether and they kind of had to phone up to see if it had been processed correctly or not about two weeks later uh so suddenly the whole experience Bec much clearer we're saving on those phone calls those chases um so not only is the the whole thing automated now but also the user experience for everyone involved is significantly improved and that's what we mean by that Better Together solution perfect yeah and I think the the example that you mentioned there is source to pay right is is that an example yeah because we we're actually hearing that a lot more from our customers on coming to us on how we can help them source to pay and we we're actually kind of our marketing and our messaging has shifted to maybe a bit less of what the products entail and how to solve that source to pay problem in in sord mastics of the business so it's it's it's awesome to see that demand from the customers and and how we're adjusting it in the partner Market as well and it is an evolution for service now in my mind as well so previously we were having itm conversations it asset conversations then into wharm then into HR case management now we're having business process conversations so we're we're we're talking about how service now as a modern Enterprise platform supports the business not not a specific application conversation this is a business process conversation it doesn't matter what app it's using uh and that is a real shift I think in the dialogue with our customers uh and a real shift in the mindset of approaching a service now conversation and implementation yeah and I'm I'm super excited to see that shift starting to happen because it it just seems like the the natural tendency for growth in in such an area where there's just overwhelming complexity and we can find little moments of ease with great modernized tools that we that we kind of maybe take for granted as we live in them but can show other people the way that don't live in them that that there's some there's some really great functionality here that can help you out well I think we'd be remiss if we didn't at least say the word or say the two letters AI before we we kind of bring the podcast call to a little bit of closure here where where do you see where do you see AI playing in this is there is you mentioned a little bit on document intelligence which is you know a portion a portion of a suite of a hyper automation tendency but what what about geni what about machine learning what about some of these other AI components where do you see this growing yeah absolutely I mean this is right into that modernization message right you you'll be remittent as you say to not mention a in in a podcast these days and and quite rightly so because these tools and they are tools are going to transform the Enterprise and you can think of the obvious Solutions where it does make a big difference so your chat Bots interaction layer for example so having someone going on rather than chatting to an agent we've had virtual agent before now we have now assist now assist is a a step change in that capability the ability to query multiple knowledge sources and get the answers the you need quicker and easier using an AI interface that generates the response is a massive productivity shift for an organization you don't have to go hunting around for a document which I'm still do in modern Enterprise right we're still hunting for where did I find this having an AI assistant that just has the data to a hand learned the locations and read the knowledge and just spit it back out at you that's massive productivity game for modern use cases just across the board and we're seeing the the productivity gains being 2x 4X 10x you know massive differences specifically in eviden we're looking at training videos training videos is a big deal previously you had to go and get a specialist agency generate the video uh you then had to have a a voice artist record the video uh then you had to have it translated that was a massive man effort pretty much all of those those stages now are significantly faster uh with significantly better results using AI uh and this is where these productivity games get manifest previously at cost us X it's now going to cost us Y and be done instead of three months in two weeks I mean this is the kind of conversations that we're having internally as to how we can leverage these tools and you still need the ideas you still need the content and J can help with that it's not even going to give you everything and you can't trust it you have to review it um um so you still need the people um the people just got a lot more efficient because they can just go and plug it into a tool and it comes back with the output and then you can tweak it so the the people still exist they're just becoming much more efficient at their jobs and that's what the real key to this gen Revolution is yeah that's that's so well put I mean I think there's a lot of there's kind of two camps of this right there's the scare Mong or the fear-mongering individuals that are are so worried that gen is going to make somewhat human work non-existent and then there's then there's the camp that is extremely optimistic on saying well AI is going to make all our worlds entirely so easy but we'll be able to to be that much more productive so it's it's it's lovely to kind of hear the the balance between those two and and set it in some realism of yes it's going to take some aspects of our work away but it's the stuff that we don't necessarily like doing anyways nobody likes searching for a document or reading an email chain that's got 30 different threads on it that you're trying to pick out what your action item is as part of it all that stuff eventually will just be so so seamless to not for us not to not have to worry about it because the important stuff will be presented to us and that's that's exactly yeah summarize my inbox for me what do I need to work on oh gosh exact that's not there yet let's be clear but it's probably no it's not yeah but at least we have some tangible stuff in in with nysis that can make those cases and make those incidents and and make those HR cases a bit more seamless from having to sift through some of the noise hisor so it's we're getting to a bit more of a tangible result there but you're right we still have a little bit of a road map to to expand into yeah having worked in a support environment having a activity log that you keep scrolling that you get arm cramped cuz you're scrolling so much um yeah having now AIS come along and just say here's the you need to care about that's a game changer right totally yeah we're seeing some immense productivity internally already can't wait to bring it to our customer field yeah absolutely but so that I that's great to kind of pontificate about the future and and I love your Insight on it I guess maybe to to bring us to a close with some of the listeners out there they're looking to start this where where where might we start the Erp modernization great question so reach out to me happy to to fill that conversation um so if you're looking for evidence to bring an insight into the candidates for modernization and that's how we phrase them uh so you've got this application it's been around for 15 years as I said we can then look at that candidate with our sap experts let's be clear in our sap uh practice uh so it's not me coming in and doing this they will come in and look at this sop application and say you know what these bits look better in service now they perform better in service now they're quicker to build in service now so these candidate assessments uh is a key part of the journey if you've already got a candidate that you've identified as a customer and it's saying I want to do this in theb modernization that's even better because then we cut out the middleman and go straight for it and again our sap and service now experts will come into the room with you and say okay this is wholly best produced in S4 Hannah because it does most of it already or most of that should live in service now because only these core key component uh so really it's wherever you are on the journey in the RP modernization please do come talk to us we're happy to give you guidance and advice on how to proceed perfect yeah super insightful Richard it's it's been a blast I look forward to talking with you more I think you'll be a knowledge I'm excited to see you out there and and maybe we do a round two of this as we as customers continue on this Erp modernization transformation sounds good Spencer thank you very much much perfect well thank you to all of our listeners out there thank you so much for joining us if you like what you heard today please give us a share please reach out to evident and Richard over there if you're looking to kind of broadcast on your Erp modernization journey and tune in for our next episode we look forward to hearing from you thank you very much [Music]