[Music] hello and welcome once again to the cast Distillery podcast where we unlock the full potential of service now with expert insights and practical strategies only here on the cast distillary podcast and today I have with me Jonathan Albom and Jonathan is the federal CTO for service now where he works with federal agencies to deliver digital workflows that create great experiences and unlock productivity prior to his role at service know Jonathan served as the CIO for the US Department of Agriculture leading development of the usda's it modernization strategy Jonathan's passion for the federal space shines through in all of his experience and ongoing service and we're so thrilled to have you today Jonathan thanks for joining us and taking time out of your schedule thanks Sean I really appreciate the opportunity to be here oh no problem I'm I'm really looking forward to this and I know you have a long career serving others in federal government uh leadership roles how is your experience shaped your vision for serving the federal government at service now yeah that's a that's a great way to start because when I all the time that I spent in the federal government um it was for me always about the mission and the ability to make sure that people across the United States of America had access to the programs and the benefits that the US Department of Agriculture offered and you know USD is a great agency it touches the lives of all Americans from Farmers and ranchers U that produce the food we eat to the uh school children who benefit from school lunch programs or other people who who need special assistance for food assistance and we helped so many people across so many sectors of the economy at the Department of Agriculture not to mention the national fars food safety and all these things so it was always uh very easy for me to fall back on the mission and as as a as a sense of Pride and and a reason for doing our jobs and you know your question is well how do I I bring that into our um into our work at service now and part of my role as I work with our our different account teams and different agencies that are customers service now is to make sure that we never lose sight of why those agencies are there their purpose and what their mission is and how service now plays a uh very important role in making sure that missions delivered effectively efficiently and that the people on the receiving end of that mission that citizen um a another government agency or even uh an employee who's providing those Services out to the public is able to interact with technology and interact with information interact with data other systems in a way that makes them really Pro productive and puts them in the best place to get their work done or get the benefit that they need so they can you know go on being um you know very successful in their lives and I know you know service now and most people think of service now you know it's roots are in it most people service now oh I think in it why should agencies in your eyes use service now for their mission critical applications and supporting other workflows well you know it really comes down to the fact that service now was created originally um and is still today a platform and service now is a platform company uh we we began our uh trajectory in in the FED space and and elsewhere as um an IT service management provider because that was the first set of applications that was built on the service now platform the surf down platform is just a great piece of technology it's a I think you know seeing having seen a lot of these platforms you know it's a very unique uh capability it's a single architecture it's one data model uh it is it is unique in the industry from that perspective everything that you do and service now is there on the platform so when when we begin going to Market as an IT service management uh capab with with this it service management capability you know people begin to associate us that way because we were so successful but that's just one set of applications built on the platform and we've built many kinds of applications on the platform from employee experiences and different employee workflows uh like HR Service delivery or onboarding or uh customer workflows I think we'll talk about some of those uh in a little bit and Industry specific approaches as in you know government or Finance or or Healthcare and so on and you know we have the ability to create uh unique mission-based applications using our low code capabilities Again part of the platform and when when you think about how service now um you know goes to market today it sounds like we do all these different things but I always like to bring it back to we're doing the same core kinds of things on the service now platform you know we're able to connect different sources of data different systems different people different organizations and as we bring that data on the platform we can utilize all the Technologies built into the platform from workflow and generative AI capabilities u r PA our configuration management database all these different kinds of um kinds of technologies that are resident in core to the platform we can use on the data we can use on the on those systems to drive outcomes and you know we do that in a way with a very you know modern elegant user experience that makes it very easy for people to interact with data across lots of systems to get the work done to get a result to serve a customer and with we're doing that in it or we're doing that in HR or we're doing it elsewhere we're doing the same kind of uh Concepts the same kind of model we're just applying those ideas in different ways in these different spaces so because we could do it in it and we're doing it on the service down platform that sets us up to be able to do it in all these different areas of of an agency and when service now is already there and running and successful I think that's a great starting point to trying the other requirements agencies have so how have you seen organizations leveraging creat workflows to modernize you know things like Legacy custom applications yeah you know that that is a that is an ideal kind of use case you know so many of the applications that we have in in agencies were you know built some time ago they were built in a very you know bespoke way it's a custom system and it made sense at the time you know I was a before I was a CIO I I built these systems and be in in an agency we' be we would be building something for them to meet very business requirements and I think that was an you know many times the really the best approach to do this but as technology evolves and you know we have access to Cloud systems we don't have to worry about the infrastructure as as much anymore other the cloud providers are providing those things you know we have a a new set of capabilities available to us and we have trusted platforms and agencies like service now so when uh when I think about the low code capabilities and the opportunity to build Mission specific work workflows Mission use cases uh on a trusted platform service now always seems like a great fit because so many of these applications are really about workflow it's about Service delivery which is what we are purpose-built to do and all we really have to do in those cases is understand what this unique set of requirements are what are those workflows what are the processes how do they differ from something we might already be doing in customer workflows or uh employee workflows perhaps and you know design and build the rest using the same Technologies built on the platform the same technologies that were used to to build customer workflow say so while um you know it's it's a lot less complicated and it is um a lot faster to do this on service now because these these things are there in the platform you know already exists and is being used you know the most important things are really to understand the data and understand the work and understand what those flows should be and we have a great way to um you know Implement those Technologies or Implement those requirements very quickly so how can organizations use service now app engine to get around restrictive things like Erp challenges and improve interactions for employees and all that sure you know I think um you know there's a couple things there you know one when we look at the uh number of systems you know in in organizations and the fact that so many people have to turn to lots of different systems in order to get their their job done um we think about service now as the connective tissue across these systems and you know we can use service now then as a way for people to come in see data from lots of different um uh systems different data sets to work with that data to drive an outcome like I was describing before and you know Erp modernization is one of those core ideas because you know Erp has got has lots of these uh data sets there are a lot of activities going on in these Erp systems but sometimes the um you know the the experience isn't great and I've seen service now um sit on top of those uh Erp systems to provide that more modern experience I've seen capabilities from Erp uh applications some some of the functions move into service to some stay but the reality is you don't have to swap out uh a system in order to have service down on top of it and service down providing that um you know that workflow and that experience and you know the ability to have that single that single point and whether we apply to Erp or we apply it to um you know uh custom Mission requirements like you were describing one one of which comes to mind at the Department of Agriculture where I work for a long time um the uh the system and we call it iro the uh inter agency resource system for w fighting W lamp fires which you know was a very complicated process when I was at uh USDA and again this is you know using lots of different resources um you know whether they're people whether it's firefighting equipment or other things moving them around the country moving uh making sure we know where things are making sure that they can be deployed you know to to the right uh location in order to you know make the firefighters from USDA Department interior state agencies you know as successful as they can be and you know it's a very similar kind of concept we have lots of data it needs to be in one place so good to decisions can be made and you know in the case of Iraq or case of Erp modernization we can make that one place service now great so how do you advise organizations to incorporate service Now application modernization capabilities as a part of their digital strategy really informing them of their BR strategic plan yeah so that that is so common when you go into an agency and you start asking you know about what their uh technology footprint looks like and you know generally people know what all the systems are sometimes they know what all the all the data is and you know what it all means and you know the the advice I always start with is do we understand what you know what are we working with and you know as youve kind of flesh out with that system inventory looks like you tend to see that uh some things have been modernized over this over time some things are you know really old Technologies and we have a lot of these systems that you know they were they were built to solve an immediate problem and suddenly that you know thing becomes the way they're going to do business uh you know sort of imp perpetuity and we're very um uh locked into these older Technologies and some of these systems are hard to maintain um or you know maybe they're harder to secure when I find those things to me those are great candidates to be moved on to the service now platform as uh applications that you know we can we can create either through uh you know customer workflows doing some configuration and some addition or using Creator workflows to build a system using our low code capabilities and now with the generative AI capabilities that are in service now um we have a code assist capability to make developers a lot faster we have an application um development capability that you know we can use to describe an application and then that application can be you know a version of that application can be constructed and you know then you know humans could come in and make it better we have such um you know we can create these applications with such ease in so many cases that we we find them they become great candidates to move onto the platform especially when you know the core requirements are are around workflow around approvals around um you know managing a process that's what service now was built for and that's what um I see so often move on to the service now platform in terms of these uh uh low code applications they're they're they're not necessarily the most complicated applications they can be easy to deploy and once we move them onto the service now platform now they're in a Fed ramp High environment or impact level four environment theod space and we're managing uh the same kinds of processes but we're doing it much more efficiently we're doing it a lot faster we're building them uh faster maintaining them faster and we're doing it um in in a single place so we start to begin to establish a very common common and consistent approach to interacting with the systems look and feels the same the user experience is the same so people can just be more efficient overall and you you had mentioned geni you know in generative code but how do you see gen capabilities and service now presenting new opportunities for organizations to create better experiences for both internal customers and constituents I mean you mentioned you know generative code what are the other things that are out there that you're seeing yeah so when we think about gen which is obviously this topic that everyone is is talking about today yeah you know service now has um you know sort of two approaches to gen one we have large language models that are industry specific based on service now data that can make service now and your interactions with service now and your development and service now so much more efficient um for for example take something like case summarization a lot of people um you know government use service now um to manage cases whether it's an employee uh case or it might be a case with a you know a customer interacting with an agency and some of these cases can go on quite some time or or you know an IT ticket right there's lots of history and for someone to come in fresh and start looking at this case or even someone who's been on in a while they want to make sure they have all the information it could take a while to get up to speed on it so case summarization very quickly presents out to the user here's the information that's very relevant to what's been happening here you have enough now to go and go and help this individual without having to spend you know a lengthy amount of time reading all history that that's one thing that's really great uh creating knowledge articles you know using generative AI you know closing out a case you know these thing resolution notes these things take time right they're but they are sort of the mundane tasks if you will that you know people have to do to make sure they're doing their jobs well but they don't necessarily um enjoy these things they take people away sometimes from doing other aspects of their job right so when we can use gender AI to you know quickly summarize a case or uh provide resolution notes or create a knowledge article based on you know an outage or something that we learned you know we're making the organization better we're giving people um you know information they'll need in the future but we're we're doing it um without taking away time from someone who you know really wants to be serving the customer that's that's one side of it we're also using you know generative AI to develop code in service now as I mentioned earlier that code this piece is really powerful we can we can develop applications a lot faster we can make the development teams a lot a lot more efficient because of this and you know really the gener AI within service now these these uh large language models these domain specific models you know they're smaller uh you know than your the llms that are out there for the commercial gen capabilities you know these things have a lot greater transparency there's Providence of the data There's real understanding of the model so we can answer so many of the questions that agencies need to answer relative to the uh AI executive order from from the president we don't have to be um you know scared of generative AI in this context because it's just making us better at using service now on the other side of it you know we know that agencies and you know organizations and general are investigating generative AI models to help them run their business run their operation run you serve the mission and you know there these models certainly have a lot of value you know there's there's always risks but the the the positive benefits you know are are there and as agencies refine these models and understand what they're getting we w we we've set it up so they that information that intelligence can be brought into service now using our generative AI controller and then that Intelligence on the platform can be made actionable one thing is to have the intelligence the other is to be able to use it and get value out of it and we can we can help make that case here we're talking about that with lots of agencies and the opportunity to you know to marry generative AI capabilities and you know third party models and service now I think is going to be is going to be really powerful so this is a conversation we're having across government know we're having having these conversations everywhere and so many people are of course but you know the the the reality you know Sean I think is that when you take uh workflow and you take the data and you supercharge it with generative AI you know you are going to have really tremendous results and you know we're already we're already seeing that on the platform and it's just going to become uh more of a part of a regular convers ation and regular usage of of service now in the federal space iict yeah so I want to I want to switch gears just a little bit and talk a little bit about all the buzz that's been around customer and Industry workflows specifically psds and I was hoping you could talk to us a little bit about psds and how this product will help government agencies really achieve their goals yeah that that's a that's a really important topic you know um the customer workflows that we have in in service now um you know they they evolved over time right and they they evolved with uh you know an industry mindset and as we started to apply these in a government setting I think we were realizing from agency to agency there were very consistent changes that you know a government customer would need to make to the data model and you know related workflows to serve in a in a government sense and what we did as a company was we took these uh common changes we applied them into the service now data model we applied them into the sort of core capabilities of customer workflows and we established a set of public sector Digital Services that many agencies are are using now and because we've done these things you know ourselves and we we we share them out through this public sector digital service application with agencies we're moving um you know the starting point for an agency that's going to use customer workflows when they use public sector digital service a lot more capabilities are already resident in that application and they can go further faster those data model changes that many were making are already there um you know one of the use uses that we're seeing a lot of is U you know the government customer sometimes and actually many times is another government agency so the customer isn't always a person know one agency might serve another agency and adding those uh organization organization relationships was I think a very important you know change that was introduced recently but we've had a lot of great success uh in the FED space with this you know one one example I talk about a lot is uh at the US fish and wildlife service they they use public sector digital service as the basis for uh an electronic permitting program which was referenced in uh the the president's executive order and customer experience this was a manual process for a long time you'd fill out a paper form and you send in a check you know this this process now runs on public sector digital service and I can apply and pay for permit electronically I know it sounds you know simple but you know until it was created that wasn't the way this process worked and Fish and Wildlife service is bringing on more and more permits onto this platform all the time and they're going faster because public sector digital service has a permitting capability built into it and you know that allows them to just move move faster so we have lots of examples like that lots of great use cases where agencies are going faster using service now because they've decided to use the set of um tailored services for government agencies so we you know we've been talking a lot about you know app modernization and doing things in service now but you know how what is your advice for organizations that want to get started in this and actually what's your method of getting started on their journey to app modernization within service now what would you suggest yeah so I think you know and I alluded to this earlier one of the first and I think most important challenges to make sure that there's a good understanding of what's that application inventory how do these applications work together who uses them you know what what's the data inside them uh that that becomes the you know the basis for application modernization strategy and then some of them some of these applications are surely going to be a good fit on service now because it's about delivering a service it's about a process flow it's about an approval things that we are we are built to do on the platform and you know identifying the right technology for the modernization of an application is so important and it's been a long time as aief information officer you as he said in the beginning and you know too often uh an organization would come to me and say hey we want to modernize this application and we want to use this technology said well why well we went to the conference and you know sounds like a good fit or we know we know the team and they're nice people and those things are always very important but that doesn't mean this is the right technology for this sort of application and I and I found too often that we'd get ourselves you know down a bad pathway because you know you want to be uh when you're in federal it you're a service provider yourself and you want to help the organization that's coming to you get be successful you start moving down that path with them and suddenly you know you realize it's Canna be a lot harder than we need to you have to take a step back and ask yourself the question or what what exactly are we trying to accomplish here and of all these you know Technologies we have in our environment the platforms we've standardized on uh platforms like service now say well does it is it about delivering a service if it's about delivering a service let's start with theide a that service now is a place to modernize that application other kinds of requirements in an organization might fit elsewhere and I want you know inside a government agency I want everything that should be in service now to be in service now things that fit better somewhere else we should do them somewhere else right because that agency will get further faster they'll be more successful when they deploy their requirements in the right place when we don't do that we start to add technical debt into our environments and we might buy the most modern uh SAS platform out there but if it's not a good fit for what we're doing we're going to spend a lot of time we're going to spend a lot of money and we may be able to get something that functions in the end but the process of getting there will will um you know make it feel like it was uh too hard make it feel like it was the wrong choice and then you got to maintain it and that becomes complicated too when you pick the product uh you pick the platform uh that is purpose-built for the kinds of requirements that you're that you're trying to implement where there's a where there is a close alignment you just go a lot faster and you have better results and there's less risk for you know the project going south and you know that's that's sort of the core of that you know the answer here what are you trying to you know what are the applications what do they do how do they align to the Technologies available in an organization and anything that Service delivery those are those things you know in my in my mind and uh you know my experience as a CIO fit in a service delivery platform fit in service now so within all that it was a great answer thank you uh what gets in the way and how do you think a partner can best help clients take advantage of the new capabilities the first thing um you know as we start to uh think about these processes you know say it is a service delivery thing we're going to put it in service now the uh the the first question I always ask is uh what's the data you know how does the data flow through the organization that data is a representation of the work you know that's happening and what are those workflows and do we understand them and you know again uh very often these things aren't super well documented in an organization so the first step is we have to understand the workflows we have to understand how the data flows and if we can do that now we're setting ourselves up for Success because we know what we're we're we're trying to tackle um and the next piece you know is and where you know Partners I think help quite a lot is well what does the future look like it doesn't have to you know be exactly uh from a a workflow a process perspective what you have today a lot of these processes grew up over time when you know we didn't have these kinds of Technologies when we didn't have mobile devices where you know people were more um focused on working in offices we have a a much more hybrid Workforce Now and people are doing work on mobile devices well that probably and your customers are interacting that way too so you know that very might very well might change that process flow that would be ideal for the for the work that you're doing for serving the mission so we got to be able to you know rethink and redesign these processes as appropriate and partners help there all the time so one's that Discovery piece of what's that process the second part is well that's what it is today but what could it be and what should it be and how can we use service now to uh make that process uh even better even easier to to interact with and you know the th those are sort of the foundational things and at that point well now we're ready to build something you know you know do these things iteratively of course but you know you can't just say hey we're gonna uh you know start a project and we're going to buy service now or any technology for that matter and expect that to you know be be a Panacea there's a lot of important work to do with uh the service down partner in order to get you know real value out of uh you know the the the important investment you're making service now and then I think the last piece Sean that you know I always advise on is you know you really need to understand how you're going to you know measure the impact of the work how do you measure success what is success and then how do you use that to show value to your stakeholders and to you know might be it might be to the program officials that you're working with on a project it might be to members of Congress it might be to you know uh different stakeholders uh other constituencies whoever but you have to be able to to measure you know that what what you've accomplished that the that there's value there uh you've improved something which you know that always goes back to um you need to have a baseline you know if I'm serving a customer this way today well what are those key metrics and what are they so I can prove that you know this was a really good investment because those metrics have improved and I'm serving customers better and I think when you do that and you get out there you can tell a real uh transformation story about how this investment service now created a real difference in the way we we serve the people that you know rely on our agency and that's a very powerful conversation that you can have with all those different groups that you can have with your internal customers you can have with your uh agency customers and that that's becomes a very virtuous cycle I think because successful Transformations yield more opportunities for transformation you follow these ideas I think you have more and more success and slowly but surely we we build a very modernized and uh you know digital government that people begin to trust because when they interact with it we have great experiences and that trust piece is I think so crucial to how we you know manage our agencies and you know we manage our Technologies and keep the data secure we use trustworthy AI uh in this in this process and that that trust factor is is really um important as we continue to have these kinds of modernization conversations great well that's all of our time for today and thank you so much Jonathan for taking time out of your schedule like I know you're busy I mean we're all busy but you're really busy and thank thank you for your time today it was worth it was worth it Sean I really appreciate this chance to have the conversation and look forward to be being able to continue it with you in the future Great And for those watching please again like and share this out um and if you have ideas for us and things that you want to see let us know in the comments below and for now take care bye-bye