quiet as it's kept manufacturing sector is exploding it is exploding generating 13.5 trillion that's trillion with a t annual Global revenue and untracked to reach 19.52% considering that outdated that outdated systems are common place the playing field for Innovation around digital transformation is wide open for an industry innovator to burst in as a industry Forerunner so I couldn't think of a person better to talk about this than my colleague that I have as a special guest today well wait a minute who am I I'm klie Alexander your host and creator of 100 days of service now and I wanted to talk about the manufacturing sector there was some talk about this at knowledge and I wanted to double click on that on this episode the week following knowledge so without further Ado I want to welcome my colleague solution sales consultant Mark Harper to 100 days of service now Mark welcome to the stream oh what an intro yeah that's um quite impressive and I think you laid out the the opportunity that's in front of us excellently well but um yeah thank you for inviting me on to to the show happy to discuss everything service now manufacturer wonderful you know in our conversations you have a really clear view of some of the main challenges that are facing the sector and you even have some really good thoughts about some solutions so um hey why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself and then we can start to get into those challenges and solutions that we've talked about yeah no absolutely so my name is Mark Harper I'm a solution sales consultant on the glidefast side so I work closely with our customers and active customers try to get a sense of what it is that they're trying to achieve with the service now platform and then trying to get them to a a solution that's providing that level of value and so I've been on the platform for about nine years now H working originally on the delivery side working with cdbs with all kinds of different Industries and sectors and then just progressed and grown with service now as service now is grown itself and throughout that Journey I've being exposed to all kinds of customers from healthare Finance and then of late been doing a lot of work with a lot in the manufacturing section and utilities as well as the the industries that's producing products as well sure yeah and you know your customers you know have a lot of really great positive things to say about you and the outcomes that they've experienced so I'm really happy that you were able to make some time so that we can kind of you know give a highlevel view of like what you've experienced out there in the wild sort to speak so let's let's get into it if you don't mind let's kick it off all right so you talk about the top three challenges facing the manufacturing sector and um the first one you talk about is poor visibility what does that mean yeah so essentially like a lot of times when I'm working with people in the manufacturing sector it feels a bit like I'm going back in time and it's like talking to people within it 10 15 years ago where we have all of these Silo disperate systems um and no true understanding of everything working together and that's understandable because in the like the manufacturing Arena when you're working with operational technology in those assets it can be a little bit more difficult to to query them remotely using things like the standard automation tools to to get that visibility into the OT estate um so it's understandable why we're still relying predominantly on spreadsheets and different groups working very much independently but that's where service now can come to the table with the capability like the the OT otm offering to try and build that Consolidated view into what my OT estate looks like what the processes are made up with from an OT asset and allows in that to a system of action that we can help address some of those issues that's been experienced within the manufacturing sector right and I know that we're going to talk a little bit more about uh your view of those top Solutions in a bit I appreciate you kind of giving an overview of what poor visibility looks like like I I really connected with what you said when you said talking and working with you know some of our manufact some of the manufacturing customers out there that is sort of like going back in time right and you compared it to working with it organizations maybe you know a decade or more ago and how you know and that's why I think that there's such a runway for a manufacturing leader leader to emerge so it's actually quite exciting to be in the manufacturing field right now in my view completely agree like we we've got past this bury our head in the sand and just hope everything is going to continue to work effectively and there's too many exposure points in the industry for that to be applied that's why we need to try and get ahead of this PO visibility Challenge and move forward Solutions definitely definitely let's talk about the second of the top three challenges facing the manufacturing sector and you say that it's loss of knowledge tell me a little bit more about that yeah so I mean in it we've G through like this digital transformation and with like industry 4.0 there similar effects that's like moving Downstream into to manufacturing and but what we're often finding is is when people sort of move on from an organization or maybe hit the retirement date they may been working on that plant in that substation for for 30 plus years they know it inside and out but it's not always documented we don't really know what kind of incidence and issues work orders are done against a a certain OT asset some guy some individual may know that um because that's what they've been doing for their entire career but once that individual may move on we lose all of that tribal knowledge that's why we're trying to reduce that risk of relying on those Superstars that have been keeping together for for many many years to try and put it into a tool like a service now where we can have that documented history of all those OT assets and how they all working together so it's really about risk mitigation from that loss of knowledge as people love to potentially want to retire sure I imagine that in working with customers that part of the work that you do is to get those internal organizational folks to really get on board those Superstars within those manufacturing organizations to get on board with the digital transformation that you propose how do you kind of navigate what may be some resistance maybe their super stardom is based on having this Mass this knowledge yeah no I mean sometimes it can be that political challenge um you really have to frame it what's going to be a benefit to to themselves and all of that is going to be trying to reduce some of that bureaucratic overhead that they may now be expected to perform um bit like that bu the head in the sand we we don't really have that ability anymore because Regulatory Compliance is really pushing us forward or pulling this for we should say and so they they no longer can just pretend we're not going to document anything there is that requirement of that being put in place and so it's really us trying to make their lives a little bit easier uh with some of the the documentation and the processes that need to adhere to sure let's talk about the third challenge before we get into some of the solutions so the CH third challenge is complex systems tell me about that yeah so it's really bringing together one and two um into one challenge that we're experiencing some of these processes that's involved whether it's on a production plan whether it's providing uh power energy to to our consumers and end users it's all different a assets that may be working together to deliver that service and those may be slightly different from site to site so understanding exactly how those complex systems work between one another allows us to triage and respond to to issues in a much quicker fashion than if we were trying to just read through say A Vis diagram a spreadsheet or even just trying to get it out of some individuals tribal knowledge so trying to give that visual representation allows us to pinpoint issues and respond to them faster absolutely makes a lot of sense so we've kind of laid out the challenges you we have poor visibility loss of knowledge and complex systems right and so everybody wants to know but how this is me you know you have manufacturing leader X over at ABC Corporation they're probably looking at this say oh my god I've been exposed this is exactly what I'm facing right now so if that is you don't go nowhere because we got solutions for you so let's get into some of those Solutions so solutions for the manufacturing sector around these common trends of of challenges you know you first talk about uh OT visibility talk to me about operational technology visibility what does that mean yeah so I mean historically it has always been a challenge um so in the OT environment we have what we call like pdue levels it's the the different levels of Technologies that's working in the OT environments the higher levels like your level fours and fives they may be running on like standard operating systems that we typically experience in in it so it's quite easy to get a representation of what those are using Discovery using different third party connectors um so we have a good history of being able to to catalog and understand the relationships involved um in that level it's when you get down to pdue levels like three and Below where things start to fall into those those spreadsheets and and tribal knowledge areas and we want to try and get away from that and build out a foundational representation of those OT assets grouping them by sites in our cdb and using the capabilities of a visibility that really allows us to to build out that that foundational data set we'll be looking to build out like a Federated data model using Discovery for certain levels but then relying on industry standard tools like a dros Clarity an amus some of these may be more of a passive scanner on those low levels to build out a representation of those Z assets sure so understanding what I have allows me to then be able to perform actions against what I have I really like what you just said there understanding what you have helped you to create action against that OT visibility so this is not just a concept but this is actually a feature within the technology do I have that right and if you can kind of expound on that little bit it'd be great yeah no absolutely so service now goes to Market with their otm products and one of those is the OT visibility skew and so it operates very much like iton visibility but it gives you additional service graph connectors to some of those common third party applications that may be running within your OT environment and so by using those service graph connectors it's much more of like a turnkey solution to be able to get those OT assets into our CB on a routine and dependable schedule job yeah I love the relationship you talked about just now with itam and Discovery that's that's really kind of crystallizes it let's talk about the second solution for the manufacturing sector and and and that being visualize production processes share with us a bit more about that yeah so this is like still related to those a assets um realistically what we're looking to do here is build out like that that data model and but we still want to be building out with like industry standards in mind so there's a Isa 95 that represents like the equipment data model within like the OT space we want to adhere to that and want to build out all the different levels of the different a assets that may be working together depending on consuming each other so that we understand that if one asset is impacted what kind of impact does that have to my production process or to that site and we can then start prioritizing the kind of work that we want to do to triage against that uh that process itself so something that may not be quite as Revenue generating as another has been impacted we know how we want to dispatch our our work orders effectively you know I love this because we know that service now is indeed a an investment and what CFOs sweet seite Executives want to understand is where's the return of my investment if I'm making this investment in this technology how is this saving me money and making me more efficient down the line when you talk about having this level of a visibility and understanding these inter relationships that makes things seem a lot closer to getting that return on investment and helping for seite executives to understand why this digital transformation is an imperative and not just a nice to have yeah I mean absolutely we we don't really just want to become like a glorified spreadsheet which often be done with like a cdb a cdb is is very very useful but it has to have a use and if we're not just building out pretty diagrams in a database here want to make sure that is something that's going to become part of that system of action so being able to sort of group that into the the process the site allows us then to use like the OT service management capabilities and then some of the vulnerability response capabilities as well and affect our prioritization of how we want to respond to them yeah yeah love it love it let's talk about the third solution for the manufacturing sector that third one being vulnerability sector talk to me about this so this is probably the biggest PLL that we have with a lot of the customers that we're working with today um understanding what their vulnerabilities are when these different OT assets um a lot of the equipment that may be residing on plant 4 on the factory substations some of it kind be quite dated a little bit Legacy equipment but it works so we don't need to necessarily replace it but it may be dependent on certain running software installations on there that may have vulnerabilities and without having an effective vulnerability management and response program it's difficult for us to understand what's out there what I need to respond to and how to issue a an engine Eng ER to somebody to go and hatch and resolve that um that issue that's been experienced yeah this is where we start using the OTV capabilities using a visibility understanding everything that's installed and everything that's out there cross referencing that with like a a runability scanner again like your your clarities your tables your Defender for OT all of those vi get ingested into to service now and then we're going to respond to them effectively then from there it's following your patch management processes how you going to dispatch that person to go and triage that effectively or in a lot of regulations as well we need to be able to document what our deferment plan actually is so the reason why we may not be patching that on that exact date The Regulators want to know what decisions were made and why those decisions were made that way yeah you know listening to you speak about this it makes me think about you know several manufacturing sector organizations that kind of come to mind and I think about how they have may have been running in a certain way for a very long time and so given that there is definitely an embedded and assumed kind of pain of change environment right how are you able to navigate those kind of challenging Waters of of having the pain the fear of change while at the same time making sure that you're leading them down a path that's you know the path to the promised land you know what are those conversations like what is that not just the conversation but what is that engagement like and and how can manufacturing sector organizations feel confident in the work and the outcome that you're going to provide yeah I think it's um it comes down that partnership it is is meeting them where they're at and what we often find as well is they don't want to change because it's working but they're being forced to change whether that's by pressure internally or whether it's by Regulatory Compliance that's pulling them pulling them forward but we need to understand about their processes and how they actually operate themselves because not every organization not every industry is is the same and so we typically see that a lot when it comes to say like the patch management workflows that we look to develop that's working very closely with them to understand what tasks what steps what approvals go into that but we're still using the foundational data that comes from the visibility front the vi is coming from the vulnerability scanner it's how we then perform that work um collectively to be able to respond to that open VI so there's always going to be a little bit of resistance but it's it's that good partnership that comes into it to make sure that we're building out a workflow that is going to be dependable repeatable and trustworthy over the long term yeah so I know that you mentioned at the top of our conversation that you're sales solution consultant with glide fast and that you've helped many customers from various Industries and kind of specializing in manufacturing I'm curious from your view how is Gast uniquely positioned to help manufacturer Industries kind of you know come up to speed in their digital transformation yeah no great question and I think we have a bit of a luxury of being involved in many different sectors in the manufacturing space so whether that is working with product development whether it's working with factories in the production line or whether it's working with like the energies and utility sector we've directly with those customers and those different different verticals to be able to Leverage The the service now otm products and make them fit for what their problem statements and what they're they're looking to solve and what I often say is that leveraging the the CB that foundational data set allows us to identify additional use cases that can be recognized as pain points for them and so we talked a little bit about like being able to visualize those um those processes and those models we've been able to do certain work with different groups where we've applied compliance rules and regulat compliance to those models as well so prior to them going onto the plant onto the production line they maybe want to test vet do their scans All In Like A in a sense like a Sandbox and getting that approval in place service now is a perfect tool for that kind of workflow and task development and then you have that audit trail of everything that's been accomplished our goal is to try and make it repeatable make it easier Maybe fear those Auditors a little bit less because you feel more confident in your data set and what you've actually performed from your testing ahead of time definitely well that that's certainly a a compelling value statement I appreciate you sharing that and I also appreciate your time I know that you are going to you and I and Alan Hackman from service now we're going to be in conversation at the end of the month I'm going to tell the the good folks that are watching this stream about that but Mark Harper sales solution consultant at glidefast consultant I want to thank you so much for your time anytime now I enjoyed it thank you very much for having me on thank you bye don't you go nowhere don't you go nowhere now Mark may be gone but I'm still here don't go anywhere so listen did you hear me just mention that Mark and Alan Hackman and I are going to be in conversation yes I did say that and I would love for you to join us we're offering a free webinar the now of manufacturing Trends Automation and Strategic investment so this is going to be Thursday May 30th it's going to be a live webinar um you'll find the link in the comment section of this video so that is something that you definitely don't want to miss would love to see you there and tell a friend right who do you know in your network that can benefit from this information we love for you to share this information with them and next week Thursday the 23rd I'm going to be in conversation with Dale Stubblefield starlord the workflow Cowboy that was a bit of a tongue twister he's going to be in conversation here right here on 100 days of service now did you happen to go to knowledge by the way there was a lot of new features that was discussed and unveiled at knowledge about Creator workflow so I could not think of anyone better to talk to about this than Dale Stubblefield so you'll also find the link to this one this one is posted in the description to this video listen I'm Kylie Alexander I want to thank you so much for joining me in this episode of days of service now did you know by the way that service now this year turns 20 20 20 years in the game man service now has really really exploded in these 20 years I want to thank you so much for joining me and I will see you next time be kind stay curious bye [Music]