ServiceNow CEO hits his 49th day in the job and speaks about digital’s dirty secret
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CEO John Donahoe took to the stage at the company’s annual Knowledge event in Orlando this week to discuss plans for the future of ServiceNow.
The main news coming out of the conference today is the launch of ServiceNow’s Intelligent Automation Engine, which will be embedded into the platform and claims to use machine learning capabilities to help companies: detect and prevent outages, intelligently categorise and route work, benchmark performance against peers, and use performance predictions to drive improvements.
Donahoe, however, also wanted to share his plans for the future of ServiceNow under his leadership. He explained that today marks his 49th day in the job, having replaced Frank Slootman earlier this year.
Donahoe said that when he joined, he wanted to learn about the ServiceNow business and the needs and wants of customers. To do this he set a task to speak with 100 customers in his first 100 days. He completed this aim early, speaking with his 100th customer yesterday. He said:
“I’m the new kid on the block. This is my 49th day. I’m a deep believer in serving leadership. The focus isn’t on the leader, but is on serving customers, employees, the purpose and the communities that we operate.
It’s like an upside down triangle, where you our customers are at the top of the organisation chart. Everyone inside the company helps to serve you. Me, the CEO, is at the bottom of that chart. The good news is that I have broad shoulders and I like that role.
Donahoe’s previous role was as eBay’s chief executive, where he more than doubled revenues to $18 billion and increased the company’s market value by 250% to $80 billion. A success he’s no doubt going to be looking to replicate at ServiceNow.
On stage today he said his decision to join ServiceNow was an “easy one”, having been a customer of ServiceNow’s at eBay and seeing the opportunity of the platform to transform how enterprises operate in the future.
The customer perspective
Recognising, however, that he isn’t a enterprise software veteran, Donahoe has been on a tour of ServiceNow customers to find out the answers to three questions that he sees as critical to delivering a successful future for ServiceNow:
- How is ServiceNow doing? What do you like?
- Where can ServiceNow do better?
- What are your most important priorities for the future?
On the first question, Donahoe said that customers love the ServiceNow product, the platform and the speed it brings to enterprise services. Customers also said that they value the people of ServiceNow and wanted it to keep its current ‘committed and responsive’ culture as it continues to grow.
On the second question, however, Donahoe heard that customers want to get the full benefits out of the box, and in particular they want ServiceNow to be more proactive with what the best practice configurations and integrations are. Customers want to have examples shared of best in class use cases from other customers. Investment and development of the ServiceNow partner ecosystem was also highlighted as a priority, with a need for more trained and certified partners, particularly for some of the newer products. Customers want to get to value as quickly as possible, said Donahoe, and the feedback he received was for ServiceNow to make that happen.
User experience was also flagged as something that could be improved, as customers are no longer holding the bar up against other enterprise software vendors, but are looking at the consumer experience as the gold standard. Lastly, customers spoke about how they want to share roadmaps with ServiceNow, according to Donahoe. They want to provide input into ServiceNow roadmaps so that they don’t then build capabilities in-house ahead of ServiceNow doing new releases - and they want this feedback to become systematic.
And on the final question, the main priority facing customers is using the IT function to drive transformation across the whole enterprise - becoming proactive change agents, rather than just reactive problem solvers. Customers are looking for a platform to do this across the enterprise, said Donahoe.
What you described to me is that the CIO is the most technology literate in the C-suite and you're being helped to lead that transformation across the enterprise. It’s hard work, but it’s very exciting. And you said that you need help. Help to simplify and automate workflows, not just in IT but across the enterprise. Help to deliver great experiences. Help to stay ahead of the curve and deliver leading edge innovation.
Simplify and automate
As mentioned above, the key announcement this morning was the launch of ServiceNow’s Intelligent Automation Engine. I’ve got an interview later today with Dave Wright, ServiceNow’s Chief Strategy Officer, to find out more about the company’s ‘machine learning investments and how they will impact the platform.
However, Donahoe made it clear that this is going to form a central part of ServiceNow’s strategy going forward. And the difference during this year’s keynote was clear - this is about taking learnings from ServiceNow’s ITSM roots and applying them to workflows across the organisation to improve service and the end user experience.
He said that transformation starts by simplifying, streamlining and then automating a workflow. Within ITSM, ServiceNow has been able to resolve incidents twice as fast for customers, with 20% of inbound contacts being handled in either a self service or fully automated way. This, according to Donahoe, allows companies to stop focusing on manual tasks and instead prioritise time on “value tasks and process improvement”.
However, the key, said Donahoe, is that organisations need to stop thinking and operating within their silos - and instead use a cross company platform approach to delivering experiences. Instead of just improving processes that already exist, think about the experience that your end-user (whether it be customer or employee) needs and then redesign the process to deliver that experience. Donahoe explained:
Most organisational models don’t align to delivering great customer experiences. It’s human nature to focus on what we can control, so departments create great departmental workflows. Most of the technology developed over past 25 years is very department orientated.
Great customer experiences can’t be delivered by any one departmental unit. It requires cross-organisation. Here’s the dirty little secret, customers don’t care about what function they’re in when we are helping them.
Great customer experiences are seamlessly delivered to them and it’s up to us to figure that out. What do companies do? We reorganise. We reorganise like once a year. The simple fact of the matter is organisation structure can’t do it. The only way to do it is to take a mindset - begin with the customer’s perspective and design a workflow all the way through the enterprise.
I got the chance to speak to senior research analyst at Ovum, Adam Holtby, at the event today, who said that whilst ServiceNow has an opportunity to extend its reach outside of IT, it needs to effectively communicate the appeal of the platform to buyers that may not have ever heard of it. Holtby said:
In my experience, the broad, cross-functional value of the ServiceNow platform is yet to be well understood outside of the IT department. Business functions outside of IT are commonly unaware of the platforms existence, let alone as to how it could help them realize new productivity efficiencies.
Digital transformation means different things to different organizations, but some common key themes exist that ServiceNow are well positioned to help support, most notably the need to help orgs improve cross-functional workflows, make work more transparent, improve in-context collaboration, and enabling companies with automation capabilities that can help them realize new process efficiencies. It is narratives such as these that ServiceNow would be wise to map their capabilities against in further broadening the appeal of the platform.
In terms of ITSM, they continue to be a leader in this space, but the companies capabilities and ambitions obviously now extend beyond just ITSM. Effectively marketing the benefits that can be realized through the adoption and utilization of a platform that extends across different business units represents a key challenge.
My take
It’s clear that Donahoe’s impact is already starting to be felt within ServiceNow and across the customer base. Compared to his predecessor, Donahoe has a far more softer and collaborative style.
I’m particularly impressed with Donahoe’s willingness to talk openly on stage at the company’s key event about where ServiceNow needs to improve. That’s valuable because it allows the company to be held to account.
The idea of ServiceNow taking its lessons learned within ITSM and using those to rethink service and experience across the enterprise - via the use of the platform - is an intriguing one. It’s a challenge that many customers face and ServiceNow does appear to be in a strong position to solve many of those problems (the customers being willing).
However, the key to all this rests in the ServiceNow platform. ServiceNow has made good strides in taking the product out of IT and into areas such as HR, security and customer service. But it needs to further encourage others to create solutions that solves these problems for customers - and make ServiceNow the platform of choice to do that. Whilst convincing buyers that ServiceNow is not just an IT tool.
I’ll be finding out more throughout the week, so check diginomica over the coming days for updates.