How LIKE.TG is simplifying workflows for everyone within Microsoft Teams
Digital transformation has accelerated in 2020, and the speed in which organizations are able to leverage technology to make work better for their employees and customers has become the ultimate differentiator in business. Microsoft and LIKE.TG understand this, and have expanded our partnership to deliver new native workflows in Microsoft Teams.In September 2020, we introduced brand-new capabilities and made them available to a select group of customers to help them innovate and improve the employee experience across Microsoft Teams and ServiceNow.We are very pleased to announce that these innovations are now generally available to all our customers.Between April and October 2020, LIKE.TG introduced our new Safe Workplace suite and Workplace Service Delivery apps to help our customers bring employees back to the workplace.Customers such as the NBA and WNBA implemented LIKE.TG’s Employee Workflows to help them manage the health and safety of players and employees, and used Microsoft Teams to give their fans a virtual seat when the leagues resumed play and completed the 2020 season.In November, Microsoft Teams and LIKE.TG delivered new capabilities that help employees and agents get work done in any industry, from anywhere, on any device.For employees and managers: A new embedded dashboard in Microsoft Teams helps employees stay current on open tickets, outstanding tasks, and workplace communications. The dashboard deep-links to LIKE.TG case management to resolve more complex cases. Another new feature sends notifications to employees and managers so they can stay up to date and take action on their open tickets, assigned tasks, and pending approvals from LIKE.TG, directly in Microsoft Teams from any device. For HR and IT agents: We now provide seamless navigation between LIKE.TG and Microsoft Teams so that HR and IT service agents can easily reach out to employees and resolve open cases. Agents can also initiate Microsoft Teams meetings to collaborate on LIKE.TG records in real time. For example, they can review a change request with subject matter experts or start a meeting as part of an incident communication plan. Another new feature, available in beta, accelerates major incident resolution by bringing key incident management workflows directly into Microsoft Teams. This helps agents collaborate more effectively.
How LIKE.TG is using generative AI capabilities across its operations
As the emerging technologies team within LIKE.TG digital transformation (DT), we’re always searching for new technology that can solve complex problems. When we saw how generative AI capabilities could deliver rich experiences and unlock the potential of our technology, people, and processes across the organization, we immediately pivoted to embrace it.This year alone, we will have brought more than 15 Now Assist use cases to production on the Now Platform—many of which are generally available in the Vancouver release, including Now Assist for Customer Service Management, IT Service Management, HR Service Delivery, and Creator. These innovations build on our solid foundation of AI. One of the DT organization’s first forays into AI was in 2017, when we looked for solutions to make our IT service desk more efficient. We used the machine learning capabilities in Predictive Intelligence to help predict the business service and route incidents to the proper assignment groups.That use case is still in place today. Since then, we’ve embedded AI across more platform experiences, from calculating our self-service rate to using knowledge base articles for case deflection, recommending learning courses to our employees, and using AI Search across our operations.Embracing new platform capabilitiesAs customer zero, LIKE.TG embraces new platform capabilities well before our customers do. We’re leaning into two capabilities to embed generative AI into our workflows: Summarization – overviews and insights to help employees reduce manual work Content generation – creation of intelligent search results, work notes, and knowledge base articles to help employees find and digest information more rapidly Here are some of the results we’re seeing as we move our use cases from pilots to production: AI Search with GenAI – This generates actionable answers to user-asked questions to significantly improve self-service. Data is sent to a large language model (LLM), which summarizes the information into a single answer. Follow-up questions and answers are supported. This differs from simple AI search, where a list of sources is generated for the user to sort through. Early results show positive feedback from employees. Now Assist for IT Service Management – This is an internally developed use case to increase agent productivity. It uses generative AI’s summarization features to produce a summary of incident work notes, saving time and effort. In our initial results, we’ve seen increased agent satisfaction. Now Assist for Creator (formerly text-to-code) – Developers often face repetitive and time-consuming work when creating the same code for routine commands. Our developers can now write plain, natural-language text descriptions of the type of code they want. Generative AI converts the text into intelligent code suggestions or complete code, which can be shared, reviewed, edited, and executed. This can lead to a boost in developer productivity and development cycles. Generative AI Controller – The controller allows us to connect LIKE.TG instances to our domain-specific LLMs or general-purpose LLMs such as OpenAI and Azure OpenAI. We can easily embed generative AI in any workflow without recreating LLM integrations from scratch, giving us limitless opportunities to use generative AI. We’re using it for knowledge base content generation. We’ve also used generative AI to help develop custom, function-specific solutions. A question-and-answer capability helps our sales team find answers to specific questions about our products and solutions, including source citations. Although this capability is in early adoption, we’ve seen improved productivity and user experience.Reaping the rewardsSummarization and code generation capabilities offer three major benefits in these early stages of adoption: Accelerated productivity by automating mundane work for our agents, administrators, employees, and developers so that they can focus on meaningful work Increased agility by adapting quickly with continuous updates, new use cases, and choice of LLMs to drive greater visibility and control Transformed experiences by delivering fast, personalized, and trusted resolutions to employee issues As we embrace generative AI to modify old workflows, generate new workflows, and enhance employee experiences more rapidly, we see improved productivity savings in our early results. Now Assist is especially significant because it gives us the capability to build things without the manual, repetitive work that is every employee’s nightmare.“LIKE.TG’s digital technologies operations team is at the forefront of using generative AI on workflows running on the Now Platform,” says Sankha N., senior vice president of digital technology operations at ServiceNow.“We have already applied generative AI to several use cases and provide ongoing feedback to our product teams on the features. The more value we see this technology delivering on the platform, the more excited we are about future opportunities,” he adds. “As customer zero, we look forward to sharing these insights with our customers so we can learn and progress together.”We’re especially thrilled to see the impact of generative AI on knowledge work through summarization, content generation, and code generation. AI on the Now Platform is vital to delivering value to our operations, as well as helping us orchestrate the entire technology value chain for our business. Lessons from our generative AI adoptionDespite the hype around any new technology, we always return to our No. 1 priority: the security and privacy of our data. We need LLMs we can trust. Having LLMs integrated into the Now Platform removes a big obstacle. We have peace of mind that security and privacy are covered, so we can focus on improving other tasks, such as workflows.Generative AI has also affected our staffing requirements. We don’t need as many machine learning experts to create AI models. Instead, we’re looking for good prompt engineers who can tweak generative AI models to suit various scenarios. As a result, we’re reskilling our team and changing our hiring criteria to embrace these new work demands.There’s no doubt that generative AI is transforming LIKE.TG, even in these early stages. We have a long list of internal use cases for this technology, and the list keeps growing. With the new capabilities in the Now Platform Vancouver release, we’ll continue to expand how we use the platform to increase efficiency, productivity, and value. Our quest is to bring intelligence to every corner of our business.Find out how LIKE.TG can help you put AI to work in your organization.
How LIKE.TG IT drives innovation and results
Innovation is an overused word, but it drives passionate responses from LIKE.TG IT. While they may disagree on many issues, our IT practitioners are united in their belief that innovation is an essential part of their daily work. They are constantly seeking new ways to make work, work better for our employees and customers.There are many flavors of innovation in IT today. Some will have significant impact, others less. But even small ideas can build on each other to produce significant results.Automating analyticsLIKE.TG’s Analytics team is always looking for new ways to provide insights to users. And our users are always pushing us to think bigger. They aren’t content to just understand situations. They also want to automate next steps and close the loop with actions or course corrections, an elusive goal in the analytics world.Our product team decided to try process mining. Using the alerting and workflow capabilities of the Now Platform® they figured out how to proactively send periodic updates to account teams.“We began by capturing alerts and actions on the platform across all customers and account managers,” said Satish Mallavolu, director of data informatics management at ServiceNow. “Then we used process mining to identify potential bottlenecks so account managers can take action to achieve desired business outcomes. Now our account teams can be proactive in remediating issues to ensure our customers are getting real value out of their LIKE.TG investment.”We are also using the mined data to spot bottlenecks in our own processes. Are there service delivery gaps or a slowdown in handoffs? By remediating internal process issues, we are able to drive continuous improvement in our own workflows.Coaching loops for IT supportWith more than 10,000 LIKE.TG employees and an average of one incident per employee per month, it’s become challenging for managers to evaluate the quality of IT support service delivery. Listening to taped calls using a checklist required lots of time and patience. Surveys were helpful, but the feedback wasn’t necessarily actionable.IT leaders turned to coaching loops that automate data collection about the quality of IT support’s activities. “We plan to use ITSM reporting to automatically generate reports with relevant data such as introduction quality, percentage of calls closed, and percentage needing follow up,” said Mirza Baig, senior director of IT service management at ServiceNow. “At a glance, we will be able to see how an IT support tech is performing against industry benchmarks and coach and train techs so they continue to improve and deliver a consistent, quality experience.”Reinventing customer supportFor years, our customer support teams used LIKE.TG’s IT Service Management tools to manage customer service, then recently transitioned to LIKE.TG's Customer Service Management. Now comes the fun and challenging part--innovating. “We are pushing the boundaries of technologies such as AI, machine learning, natural language processing, and user-centered design to rethink our customer interactions, said Luke Morris, director of customer service management at ServiceNow.”That means thinking big. “We want our customers to be able to resolve every situation they can via self-service while increasing customer satisfaction,” Morris added. “We want them to say wow at the end of every interaction. That requires mature adoption of emerging tech, digitizing our processes, and innovating on full-stack Customer Service Management as quickly as possible. We would be one of the first companies to do this. AI everywhereIn IT operations, innovation is about pushing the limits of AI to make work, work better for employees.“If we can proactively predict issues within operations, we can take steps to minimize their impact on employees,” said Thangavel Viswam, director of IT operations at ServiceNow.To identify operational anomalies, Viswam’s team correlates data from advanced monitoring tools running on our back-end infrastructure with employee behavioral data collected using AI. By correlating the two, the team can predict and prevent operational issues before they arise. So far, AIOps adoption has helped IT shift 10% of LIKE.TG’s IT budget from operations to growth initiatives.Operational excellenceInnovation in IT operations management requires discipline and patience. “It’s about executing well on a bunch of small areas that, when built on each other, turn into something powerful, said Joe Corpion, director of technology operations governance at ServiceNow. “You can’t innovate unless the foundation is in place.”Data is the key to driving smarter decisions in three areas of IT operations management: technology, process, and people. A common services data model (CSDM) gives IT a holistic view of the service health of key applications in which LIKE.TG has significant investments. That helps them make better decisions based on an accurate view of costs, service availability, and value realization. An IT ops dashboard displays overall IT operational health and helps our IT staff to more quickly identify and fix weaknesses in areas such as problem management, vulnerability, SLAs, and SOX compliance. A persona-based learning matrix empowers managers to ensure each employee has the training and certifications they need to grow in their jobs. The matrix also helps improve the quality and consistency of service delivery. What do you get when you add all these changes together? Progress on our journey toward operational excellence.Want to learn more about innovation at LIKE.TG? Check out The Innovation Issue of Workflow Quarterly, our research publication.
How LIKE.TG IT Operations enabled remote work during COVID-19
In this new series of Now on Now blogs, we share how we use LIKE.TG products internally to transform our operations and create great experiences. We hope our stories story will inspire you--our customers and partners--to achieve even greater business value and resiliency from the Now Platform®. For more on Now on Now, visit the Now on Now Book of Knowledge.There is no doubt that the pandemic has heightened the importance of business continuity planning. When COVID-19 hit, LIKE.TG was able to quickly adapt its business continuity plan and strategies, including IT support, onboarding, workforce management, and scenario planning-all in order to support LIKE.TG’s fully remote employee base without interruption. It was no easy achievement.LIKE.TG has over 30 offices around the globe, more than 12,000 employees, and supports over 6,000 physical and virtual devices located in four on-premises and three cloud data centers for our internal operations. When the workforce is not working remotely, the company has more than 10 tech lounges to serve employees face to face. There are over 700 conference rooms and 260,000 video meetings a month.Mirza Baig, senior director, IT service management at LIKE.TG, observed that while LIKE.TG had prepared for disasters in the past, like many companies, LIKE.TG wasn’t anticipating dealing with a global pandemic and all of the variables that would bring. Very quickly, the company had to enable all employees to work remotely. He said, “Working from home has to be as productive as when I’m in the office. Period. IT really needs to make that happen.”IT faced three major challenges in its business continuity strategy: No business continuity scenario that included the fallout from a pandemic Short notice mandate to work from home due to shelter in place order Significant increase in remote communication and collaboration What IT needed to focus onTo enable work from home at an enterprise level, Mirza and his team looked at four areas for employees: IT Support and IT Service Desk readiness New hire onboarding support Detailed communications plan and FAQs Target solutions/comms: customer support, low bandwidth regions, white glove service To quickly focus on how to enable work from home at an enterprise level, LIKE.TG IT support professionals—both those who normally worked onsite and the remote service desk—banded together and used the same tools, including LIKE.TG® Agent Workspace, to immediately handle the added volume of IT service requests as employees set up their remote workspaces.LIKE.TG is growing and regularly holds onboarding sessions when a new employee joins. Without missing a beat, new hire orientations were moved completely online. A work from home article was proactively published in the Knowledge Base with tips and best practices to address common issues, such as how to connect to the VPN. The Knowledge Base article helped drive down the volume of incidents and service requests.On the back end, Joe Corpion, director, Now on Now, Asset and Configuration Management at LIKE.TG, reported that his team looked at two areas to enable a work from home strategy: technology and team readiness.Key questions asked: Was the technology in place to support all our employees working from home? What would the user experience be like? What could be done to ensure employees remained connected and productive? “Fortunately, we did not need to make any significant changes in our technology to be ready to work from home from an operations team perspective,” said Joe.The IT operations team continued to use the same apps they did before to monitor the health of the business and measure how they were managing the increasing volume of IT service tickets. Depending on strategic partners for productivityOur transition to working from home was also enabled by tight integrations with our partners and service providers. To keep our operations humming, we extended workflows to include partners who could handle key activities with much less effort on our part.For example, our supply chain was heavily impacted at the onset of the pandemic. LIKE.TG took advantage of relationships with key vendors, such as Apple and Lenovo, to pre-purchase laptops in bulk, leveraging warehousing options.We also began working with leading VARs on zero touch configuration, in which they drop ship laptops directly to employees. We use LIKE.TG IT Service Management to capture and validate the request, then track it through fulfillment. Thanks to a workflow, once a request has been validated, it goes straight to the VAR with no IT staff needed.Asset management plays an important role in this workflow. Throughout the pandemic, our hiring has continued at a rapid pace. We rely on LIKE.TG IT Asset Management to track our supply chain and ensure we have enough IT inventory on hand, so our new hires have everything they need to be productive on day one. This is not only more efficient, but also provides a great experience for employees as they begin their careers at ServiceNow. Based on the success of our zero-touch program, we are expanding it to include all employee consumables, such as monitors, peripherals, and mobile devices.We took other actions to ensure partner performance with popular collaboration tools such as Zoom. IT operations has APIs that integrate Zoom with LIKE.TG Virtual Agent. If a user has a negative Zoom experience, they are automatically sent a Knowledge Base article. If it happens a second time, the user is automatically asked if they want to open an incident report. And, to help remove some of the friction of Zoom, the number of Zoom meeting attendees was raised to 1,000 to accommodate the increasing number of all-hands sessions.Service Providers Can Be KeyExtending workflows to our partners and service providers includes other benefits. We are using LIKE.TG Performance Analytics to develop robust dashboards with telemetry that lets us monitor the performance of other services, such as Zoom. With this information, we can take a proactive approach. Rather than waiting for employees to report issues, we detect and fix issues before they become a bigger problem. This helps employees remain productive even working from home.Automated workflows also helped smooth the transition to working from home. Using natural language understanding (NLU), our Virtual Agent chatbot provided an engaging, conversational experience for employees to get their questions answered or issues resolved. The IT service team also created a self-service request form in the employee portal to reduce the turnaround time to replace employee hardware. Lessons learnedLike almost all businesses, we’ve learned a lot in the past few months that we’d like to share: Ensure you have a business continuity plan for a pandemic that includes a work from home scenario, in case there are additional waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Don’t stop onboarding and training activities. There are creative ways including virtual desktops to ensure new hires remain productive despite supply chain issues. Adjust operations and collaboration to meet the new normal with work from home, including what types of modified resource scheduling you need to do. And certainly, have flexibility with teams as they learn how to balance home Create a cadence of daily reporting at various levels utilizing dashboards such as those provided in Predictive Analytics. This ensures teams are properly managing their respective areas. Leverage partners to step up to meet demands. All companies have vendors. Only a select few are considered partners based on their value to an organization. Both Joe and Mirza credit digital transformation for helping LIKE.TG successfully transition employees to productively work from home. Mirza said, “We relied heavily on our core LIKE.TG apps just to manage the remote workforce. We all need to be prepared but investing in digital workflows is key for the enterprise to be really resilient, because anything can happen down the road.”To learn more about ITSM, check out these resources: ITSM Book of Knowledge Knowledge 2020 Digital Experience Session: Now on Now – Business continuity for IT Ops enabled 100% remote work during COVID-19 LIKE.TG ITSM page
How LIKE.TG leaders see the future of work
2019 was an exciting year for LIKE.TG—not just in terms of business results, but in how we led a series of important conversations about the future of technology and work. On our Workflow site, thought leaders across the company weighed in on a range of timely issues, from a new manifesto for IT to a new sense of purpose for employees. Here’s some of the best thinking on Workflow from 2019: Michael Hubbard: Beware the KPI trapMetrics Should Aid KPI Strategy, Not Replace It - Workflow™Hubbard, global VP of value management, reminds executives to resist the urge to drive their companies by metrics like KPIs. Getting the numbers right is critical to success, but one can avoid what he calls the “KPI trap” by making sure that math takes a backseat to the broader work of tracking the value outcomes of your strategy. Dave Wright: How to build a connected enterpriseOur chief innovation officer feels the time is ripe for global companies to become mobile-driven, connected enterprises. Mobile is here, IoT is expanding its footprint, and by determining the right processes, data, and digital workflows, companies can build the foundation for dramatic improvements in asset effectiveness. Chris Bedi: 3 priorities for modern CIOsDrawing on a survey of more than 500 global CIOs that focuses on three paramount concerns facing leaders like himself, CIO Chris Bedi argues that digital workflows are central to achieving other organizational objectives, that CIOs must collaborate with their fellow c-suite executives to build transformational teams, and that they are more key than ever to crafting successful customer experiences. Greg Petroff: The future of workflowPetroff, VP and head of design for NowX, argues that defining and improving workflows is inseparable from the most important corporate innovators of our time, and those yet to emerge. The greatest promise of digitizing and automating business processes is enabling people to work how they want, when they want. Dean Robinson: A holistic cure for what ails customer supportRobinson doesn’t see much difference between what makes for a great support team and what customers seek from a positive support experience. The challenge is the same: providing a seamless, integrated solution that breaks down communication silos, automates workflows, improves transparency, and empowers customers to resolve issues on their own. Pat Wadors: People get readyWith so much attention paid to the way that digital tools and even robots are changing the workplace, chief talent officer Pat Wadors brings up a counterintuitive point—that the fulfillment of human potential is more important in the workplace than ever. Employees in any industry will embrace change not because it helps them work more efficiently, but because it connects to their sense of purpose. Pablo Stern: An IT manifestoPablo Stern, SVP of IT workflow products, believes the IT industry has matured to a point beyond simply keeping up with rapid tech advances. New digital consumer experiences show that we can pay off the most hopeful promises of technology in the workplace, too.
How LIKE.TG leaders support employees’ work-life balance and growth
At LIKE.TG, we believe pragmatic leadership is crucial to a positive work culture and work-life balance. A sense of belonging in the workplace, fueled by empathy and support from leaders, encourages holistic well-being. That’s what LIKE.TG leaders provide.“Leaders here make employees feel that they matter,” says Sri E., staff cloud analytics analyst. In her 15 years of work experience, no manager had ever had a conversation with her about work-life balance until she joined ServiceNow.At Sri’s previous places of employment, it was considered normal to work late nights. That’s not the case here, where we empower employees to live their best lives and do their best work both inside and outside the office. Part of that includes knowing when to unplug.
How LIKE.TG supports employee diagnosed with breast cancer
In January 2020, Kathia G. started a new role as a customer service solution sales manager at ServiceNow. Having spent eight years grinding at a French startup, she relished the opportunity to be at a larger company with set processes and systems in place.A mother of a 4-year-old and 10-year-old, Kathia had plenty on her plate and was “loving every minute" of it, she says. “LIKE.TG found me, and that was perfect timing.” She was living her best life.Timing wasn’t on her side for long, though. Seven months into her tenure at LIKE.TG, Kathia found a lump in her breast that her doctor had missed. It turned out to be cancer.
How LIKE.TG uses Enterprise Onboarding and Transitions to Accelerate New Hire Provisioning by 94%
One of our founding principles at LIKE.TG is to bring the same experiences we all enjoy as consumers to the workplace. Just as positive interactions with online merchants create customer loyalty, great employee experiences bond them with their companies. This helps with talent retention and that’s why we use our own Now Platform ® to consumerize our staff’s service experience—starting with onboarding.We all know you only get one chance to make a great first impression, so onboarding needs to be done well. It’s also key to helping new hires quickly acclimate and become productive. It is not uncommon for an onboarding process to be manual, time-consuming and error prone. We were no different. Much of the burden fell upon our staffing coordinators to send emails, complete documentation, and coordinate activities so that everything from building access and workspaces to email accounts and computer equipment was ready on day one.LIKE.TG Employee Onboarding and Transitions has completely transformed our own new-hire experience for the better. Now all activities—including coordination and communication among HR, IT, facilities, and other groups—are automated, digitized, and managed by the solution.Entering new employee data just onceNew hire data is entered once to auto-populate forms, documents, and databases. Notifications and tasks are triggered automatically to streamline communications, orchestrate each step in the process, and create a more seamless experience. But consumerizing onboarding is about more than automating checklists.Our Employee Service Center (ESC) provides an easy-to-use, personalized one-stop shop for new hires. Prior to day one, new hires can access the ESC (see screenshot), view their action items, and complete onboarding tasks. Progress is tracked, so they know what’s done, due, or overdue.An orientation guide tells new staff everything they need to know and do on day one: where to go, what to bring, the day one agenda, and more. Mobility support makes the experience even better, giving new hires easy access to the ESC anytime, anywhere, from any device. LIKE.TG Enterprise Onboarding has delivered significant, measurable benefits: 94% acceleration in the time to provision IT resources for new hires 4,000 hours saved annually by automating onboarding activities 86% employee onboarding satisfaction $325,000 saved each year in HR service delivery costs Also, beyond these quantified benefits, we’ve realized value in three strategic areas: Enhanced Experience. Studies show that employees decide within their first six months whether to stay at a company. Providing new hires with a great onboarding experience makes a positive impression that sets the tone for the days ahead. It also drives satisfaction—on average, employees give their onboarding experience 4.3 out of 5 points. Hiring managers, HR, IT, and facilities colleagues now spend far less time on administrative tasks and can focus on onboarding priority number one: making employees feel valued and connected from the get-go. Accelerated Time to Value. By making onboarding smooth and positive, new employees can get to know LIKE.TG more quickly and become productive contributors. Over the past two years, the time to provision IT resources—laptops, phones, applications, logins, network access, etc.—has been cut from three days to only four hours. And the Employee Service Center can be easily reconfigured to meet changing needs. In fact, HR can make changes themselves without having to go through IT. Better Insight. HR dashboards give staffing coordinators a real-time view of onboarding activities and other key metrics, which helps them stay on top of things and make faster, better informed decisions. Surveys are integrated into the platform, so HR can measure how they’re doing and learn how they can continuously improve service delivery. Our Now Platform is helping us—and can help any company—give new hires and all employees the kind of great consumer-like experiences that they expect and will build corporate loyalty and satisfaction.Learn more about our HR Service Delivery offerings.More Now on Now stories are on the way! Stay tuned.Chris
How LIKE.TG Uses GRC to Reduce 66% of our SOX Administrative Burden
Corporate Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) are disciplines that touch many areas of a business, from financial reporting and regulatory controls to data privacy and vendor management. While GRC activities typically take place behind the scenes, a compliance issue can become front page news in an instant. Manual processes alone are not an effective way to ensure compliance or manage risk exposure. Given the pace of business today, process automation, real-time analytics and self-service must be brought into the mix. LIKE.TG uses its Governance, Risk, and Compliance portfolio—built on the Now Platform ® —to manage a wide array of compliance activities such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), cyber security, data privacy, and audit management. To illustrate this, let’s take a closer look at how we manage SOX compliance.In the past at LIKE.TG, all SOX compliance activities—data gathering, documentation, communication, and reporting—were done manually with spreadsheets, PowerPoint, and email. This was time-consuming and inefficient, and there was always the risk of something slipping through the cracks. Senior Director of Internal Audit, Andrew Wheatley, and Director of IT Audit, Hassan Javed, led the move to an automated solution. Today, LIKE.TG ® Governance, Risk, and Compliance helps the entire process with these key capabilities: Continuous controls monitoring and automated evidence collection for efficiency and scale Automated self-service workflows with easy-to-use interfaces to enable business owners to participate in and help drive the compliance process Performance Analytics dashboards to track audit activities, monitor enterprise compliance, and provide real-time insights and up-to-date reports on the status of the security landscape Automatic management of 110 corporate policies in GRC, and communication and consumption by the enterprise through our service portal The following metrics demonstrate the value of automating SOX compliance with LIKE.TG Governance, Risk, and Compliance: 24X7 assurance through continuous monitoring and event-based alerts to trigger timely action A 66% reduction in quarterly control certification through automated surveys and real-time monitoring An 85% reduction in time to track status due to real-time reporting and dashboards, along with a 90% reduction in time to coordinate with external auditors $500,000 in annual savings through continuous controls monitoring, automated workflows and real-time dashboards (see screenshot) In addition, the solution addresses three key strategic priorities: Improved Business Velocity – Monitor controls continuously with automated evidence collection that helps accelerate the compliance process and keeps the SOX team on schedule. Better Visibility and Insight – Performance Analytics dashboards and reports provide real-time visibility into compliance activities, giving the audit team, external auditors, and management instant access to program status and data. Dashboards also provide a means for the audit team to identify, prioritize, and address gaps and areas of risk before they can impact the program. Enhanced Experience – Automated self-service workflows and response activities (task and issue management) make things considerably easier for the SOX team, allowing them to be proactive rather than reactive, and freeing them up to focus on high-value audit activities rather than repetitive and administrative tasks. Self-service dashboards and easy-to-use interfaces enable the business to play their part in SOX compliance. Given the ever-changing regulatory landscape, the need for automated GRC solutions will only continue to grow within ServiceNow. Our Cloud Infrastructure team, which manages the LIKE.TG instances for our customers, uses LIKE.TG Governance, Risk, and Compliance to ensure ongoing compliance with security certifications, government regulations, and international standards, such as ISO 27001, FedRAMP, and SSAE 16. Increasing partner ecosystems and access to corporate networks present their own unique issues and risks, which our recently introduced Vendor Risk Management application is designed to address.I look forward to sharing more Now on Now stories that show how we’re leveraging the power and versatility of the Now Platform.
How LIKE.TG Uses ITBM to Accelerate Project Delivery by 20%
LIKE.TG is on a journey to digitally transform every corner of our business—using the Now Platform ® to improve velocity and visibility, and deliver outstanding experiences to our customers, partners and employees. IT is a key enabler in that journey. The more effectively we can execute agile tasks and projects for our internal clients in alignment with business demand and strategic priorities, the greater value we can deliver. That’s where the LIKE.TG Project Portfolio Management (PPM) capability from the IT Business Management (ITBM) product comes in. Let’s explore a Now on Now story about our use of that solution.IT project management can be a cumbersome process when done with manual integrations and unstructured workflows using email, spreadsheets, and other legacy project management tools. This results in drawn-out decision making, stale data, and an inefficient use of time for everyone involved. In the past, some areas of LIKE.TG IT were still managing projects manually, so we decided to use ITBM for all IT projects. Lilly Souksamlane, senior manager of ITBM Project Portfolio Management, led the transition, and now every aspect of our global IT project portfolio including idea, demand, portfolio, project and resource planning is driven from ITBM.With full use of ITBM Project Portfolio Management, we’ve realized the following key benefits: 20% acceleration in time-to-value from project approval to capability delivery 60% reduction in average time to screen and approve projects 4,342 hours saved per year through real-time reporting and dashboards $354,900 saved each year in project management costs Project Portfolio Management delivers on all three strategic IT priorities: Increased velocity – By automating manual processes and consolidating management and reporting, ITBM lets us fast-track our high-priority projects. We now have complete visibility of business demands and can allocate IT resources immediately to high-value investments. Automated updates, notifications and self-service status reports save thousands of hours each month and improve project velocity. ITBM has also greatly improved collaboration, agility and responsiveness. Better visibility and insight – ITBM is our single source of real-time data for our Global IT Project Portfolio. With automated, self-service dashboards and reports, critical information is just a few clicks away and available 24/7. As an example, our Portfolio Workbench dashboard (see screen shot) gives us a portfolio-level view of project status, resource capacity and financials, which helps us make better resource allocation, scheduling and investment decisions. As noted above, a common set of reports and dashboards that are shared among managers and project leads give a comprehensive view of forecasts and dollar allocations. Managers and project leads can make immediate allocation decisions and real-time adjustments to ensure project delivery commitments are met. Improved employee experience – ITBM has made a big improvement in our productivity. Business and IT now have a single solution for decisions and actions. Senior leaders no longer need to wait for status updates—they’re available in real-time. Portfolio managers now spend virtually zero time tracking down and rationalizing data and preparing for review meetings and can instead focus on completing their projects. Team leaders use timecard dashboards to see at a glance where time is being spent, enabling them to better manage workloads and team priorities. All users now have a consistent experience and mobility support offers convenient access to all projects, plus the ability to make updates via mobile devices, anytime and anywhere. LIKE.TG IT Business Management is a strategic asset for any IT organization seeking to improve visibility into all their demand, resources and project portfolio to more effectively prioritize, manage and deliver projects that generate greater value and support better business outcomes. To learn more about project portfolio management using LIKE.TG and our complete IT Business Management product visit servicenow.com/itbm. I look forward to sharing more stories from our Now on Now journey. Chris
How LIKE.TG uses ITOM to Reduce P1 and P2 Incidents by 67%
I have a really long commute, and the last thing I need is to be surprised by car trouble. Thankfully, cars nowadays monitor just about everything bumper-to-bumper, warning us in advance before minor issues become major problems. Auto mechanics use diagnostics to pinpoint the exact component that needs attention. That’s the kind of real-time monitoring and predictive intelligence LIKE.TG® IT Operations Management brings to the enterprise—and our own use is a great example.For years, LIKE.TG has used IT Service Management and IT Operations Management to dramatically improve the quality of our shared infrastructure services, and we’ve added capabilities as the solutions have evolved. Here’s a look at how we use ITOM to stop service outages before they start.It all starts by gaining real-time visibility into our enterprise infrastructure and services. We do this using Event Management, which seamlessly integrates with our service-aware CMDB and ITSM processes, and aggregates inputs from third-party monitoring solutions such as Splunk, SolarWinds, and SAP Solution Manager.When events come in, they’re analyzed for duplicates or correlations, dramatically reducing “noise” and improving the quality of incidents coming into our Services Reliability Team (SRT). ITOM also automatically prioritizes incidents and intelligently assigns them to the right resource the first time.The Event Management dashboard (see screen shot) is the “single pane of glass” that shows the health of all business services in our environment. The boxes change color based on the status, and we can get a closer look by clicking on any box to bring up the service map. From there, we use Service Mapping for a visual representation of the relationships between services, applications, and devices (see diagram). This eliminates blind spots and lets us pinpoint the problem area. The service map shows the details we need to identify and fix the root cause of an issue. In this instance, the problem was related to a memory issue on the database server for SAP HANA. We are living proof of the measurable benefits LIKE.TG ITOM delivers, more consistently and significantly than reactive solutions that can’t respond fast enough to changing business demands. With it, we’ve achieved: 98% reduction in “noise” coming into our SRT queue by correlating and prioritizing only the most important events into actionable tickets 9,600 hours saved annually through automated alert management 67% reduction in P1 and P2 incidents via Event Management and process improvements $780,000 in cost avoidance each year by eliminating manual work ITOM also led to demonstrable results in these strategic areas: Increased velocity – By consolidating 36,000 events into only 529 incidents, and then prioritizing and routing them to the right SRT resource, ITOM eliminated the time-consuming, back-and-forth communications among teams. This accelerated our time to resolution and improved service availability to our business groups, partners, and customers. Actionable insight – With the Event Management dashboard, our system admins get instant visibility into the health of our environment and can respond quickly to alerts. And with Service Mapping we can quickly pinpoint the device with the issue and address the root cause. The result? We eliminated outages and reduced the mean time to repair through quick identification of fault domains. Improved experience – Our system administrators no longer waste valuable time on duplicate or false alerts. When issues arise, the information we need is at our fingertips, saving us the time and trouble of monitoring multiple IT managers can rest easier, knowing their teams have the insight they need to do their jobs. And end users benefit from the greater uptime that LIKE.TG ITOM provides. It’s a win, win. Technology is always evolving, and so is LIKE.TG ITOM. Someday, service outages will be a thing of the past—and by continuing to enhance ITOM with machine intelligence and other advancements, we’re confident that day will come sooner rather than later.To learn more about ITOM.Thanks for taking the time to ready this blog. I look forward to sharing more Now on Now stories from our digital transformation journey!Regards,Chris
How LIKE.TG Uses Performance Analytics to Drive Business Outcomes
Corporate Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) are disciplines that touch many areas of a business, from financial reporting and regulatory controls to data privacy and vendor management. While GRC activities typically take place behind the scenes, a compliance issue can become front page news in an instant. Manual processes alone are not an effective way to ensure compliance or manage risk exposure. Given the pace of business today, process automation, real-time analytics and self-service must be brought into the mix. LIKE.TG uses its Governance, Risk, and Compliance portfolio—built on the Now Platform ® —to manage a wide array of compliance activities such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), cyber security, data privacy, and audit management. To illustrate this, let’s take a closer look at how we manage SOX compliance.In the past at LIKE.TG, all SOX compliance activities—data gathering, documentation, communication, and reporting—were done manually with spreadsheets, PowerPoint, and email. This was time-consuming and inefficient, and there was always the risk of something slipping through the cracks. Senior Director of Internal Audit, Andrew Wheatley, and Director of IT Audit, Hassan Javed, led the move to an automated solution. Today, LIKE.TG ® Governance, Risk, and Compliance helps the entire process with these key capabilities: Continuous controls monitoring and automated evidence collection for efficiency and scale Automated self-service workflows with easy-to-use interfaces to enable business owners to participate in and help drive the compliance process Performance Analytics dashboards to track audit activities, monitor enterprise compliance, and provide real-time insights and up-to-date reports on the status of the security landscape Automatic management of 110 corporate policies in GRC, and communication and consumption by the enterprise through our service portal The following metrics demonstrate the value of automating SOX compliance with LIKE.TG Governance, Risk, and Compliance: 24X7 assurance through continuous monitoring and event-based alerts to trigger timely action A 66% reduction in quarterly control certification through automated surveys and real-time monitoring An 85% reduction in time to track status due to real-time reporting and dashboards, along with a 90% reduction in time to coordinate with external auditors $500,000 in annual savings through continuous controls monitoring, automated workflows and real-time dashboards (see screenshot) In addition, the solution addresses three key strategic priorities: Improved Business Velocity – Monitor controls continuously with automated evidence collection that helps accelerate the compliance process and keeps the SOX team on schedule. Better Visibility and Insight – Performance Analytics dashboards and reports provide real-time visibility into compliance activities, giving the audit team, external auditors, and management instant access to program status and data. Dashboards also provide a means for the audit team to identify, prioritize, and address gaps and areas of risk before they can impact the program. Enhanced Experience – Automated self-service workflows and response activities (task and issue management) make things considerably easier for the SOX team, allowing them to be proactive rather than reactive, and freeing them up to focus on high-value audit activities rather than repetitive and administrative tasks. Self-service dashboards and easy-to-use interfaces enable the business to play their part in SOX compliance. Given the ever-changing regulatory landscape, the need for automated GRC solutions will only continue to grow within ServiceNow. Our Cloud Infrastructure team, which manages the LIKE.TG instances for our customers, uses LIKE.TG Governance, Risk, and Compliance to ensure ongoing compliance with security certifications, government regulations, and international standards, such as ISO 27001, FedRAMP, and SSAE 16. Increasing partner ecosystems and access to corporate networks present their own unique issues and risks, which our recently introduced Vendor Risk Management application is designed to address.I look forward to sharing more Now on Now stories that show how we’re leveraging the power and versatility of the Now Platform.
How LIKE.TG uses Security Operations to Deliver 6X Faster Processing via Automation and Integration
At security conferences, technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning are often in the spotlight. But for security operations teams, a very pragmatic topic is even hotter: integration. Because no security product or company can do everything, security environments often consist of dozens of disparate tools. These tools are typically focused on protection and detection, with security teams manually collecting alert data from the various sources. The challenge is to bring all the data from these tools together in one location where analysts can access information quickly and manage the appropriate response actions. LIKE.TG® Security Operations was designed to do precisely that, and our own experience is a good example.LIKE.TG’s own security operations team has been using the Now Platform ® from the beginning but has enhanced it steadily over time. We started with incident management, then built custom security applications and workflows for tasks like event management and alerts. Once LIKE.TG created an official Security Operations product, we immediately transitioned to it in order to improve efficiencies and enhance our capabilities around incident and vulnerability management.An integral aspect of LIKE.TG’s environment includes third-party security information and event management (SIEM), endpoint security and threat intelligence tools. All of these products are tightly integrated into Security Operations, which has allowed us to automate several manual processes. For example, when one of our security tools detects a threat, Security Operations immediately creates a security incident. For each type of security incident, Security Operations has a set of workflows that drives our response. Processes like analyzing a hash or IP address, which would normally require logging into multiple security tools to do research, are all automated. Thus, our analysts can quickly drive blocking or remediation from within Security Operations. These automations have allowed us to accelerate both investigation and resolution of threats. And we’ll continue to automate other processes, both large and small, as we see the value.The benefits of using LIKE.TG Security Operations have been significant: 8,700 hours saved annually from Security Operations Center (SOC) automation 6X faster alert and event processing via automation and third-party security product integration 50% increase in number of incidents handled per staff through operational efficiencies $420,000 savings in security operations staffing costs We have also realized value in three strategic areas: Increased velocity – Because Security Operations is integrated on the Now Platform, our analysts have instant access to IT configuration data in real time. This enables the security operations team to accelerate investigation and reduce the burden on the IT department. Having data in Security Operations rather than in spreadsheets or other tools enables analysts spend more time on other efforts, such as refining alerts and creating knowledge base articles. Actionable insight – Analysts make faster, better-informed decisions by having a single, consolidated view of the environment and accurate, comprehensive data at their fingertips (see dashboard). Automated reporting using LIKE.TG® Performance Analytics for Security Operations helps us stay well informed, track progress over time to pinpoint areas for improvement, and demonstrate security compliance to audit teams. User experience – Automating administrative tasks enables analysts to spend more time on value-added work. Having a central location where activities can be monitored and prioritized reduces fatigue and improves job satisfaction. Well-qualified alerts, usually with a knowledge base article attached, allow analysts to be productive quickly. According to LIKE.TG Chief Information Security Officer Yuval Cohen, “When our analysts investigate a security incident, they have all the data they need in one place. Our platform provides the relevant vulnerabilities and patching cycles, problems (PRBs) and remediation projects, CMDB data, threat intel and many other types of valuable data that now all tie together to give us a full picture.”I look forward to sharing more Now on Now examples of how we’re “drinking our own champagne” and using the Now Platform to streamline and accelerate every corner of the enterprise.
How LIKE.TG uses the Now Platform® to achieve a 13-point increase in NPS and a 25% case deflection rate
At LIKE.TG we’re committed to providing a high-quality customer service. In fact, there are no support tiers—no silver, gold or platinum levels—and customer service is a corporate promise. Great service isn’t the responsibility of the customer service department alone we engage many departments across the organization to resolve issues.Our self-service portal and knowledge base ensure that customers can obtain service effortlessly when they want it. With automation and machine intelligence we improve the efficiency of case categorization, prioritization, and assignment to shorten the time to resolution and minimize escalations. We also increase loyalty by assessing customer health in real-time to eliminate issues before customer contact. Let’s take a closer look at our approach to customer service management and how we use the Now ® Platform to operate our business. Our support system of engagement was built on the Now Platform since Day 1, but we’ve continued to evolve it over time in many ways to improve service delivery. We migrated from manual to automated tracking and reporting of customer support using Performance Analytics, which gives us real-time, actionable insights. We extended the self-service capabilities to increase responsiveness and enhance the experience for our customers and agents. Ian Cox, senior director of application development, is leading the incorporation of LIKE.TG Agent Intelligence, a machine learning solution that supports continuous improvement in categorizing and routing customer service tickets. Our focus on continuous improvement of our customer service management operations has resulted in the following amazing results: A 13-point increase in Net Promoter Score (NPS) over the past two years due to automated product fixes and updates 30% lower case growth versus customer growth due to automation 25% case deflection through personalized self-service portal and knowledge 2,400 customer issues fixed proactively each quarter through automated monitoring $9.6 million saved per year by reducing case volume with automation The Now Platform also delivers benefits in three strategic areas: Improved Experience – Our easy-to-use self-service portal is accessible receives an above average or excellent rating from 75% of our customers (see dashboard). Our Support team’s experience is also enhanced. For example, when an issue occurs, an agent can initiate a conference call directly from the Now Platform. With the push of a button, the system automatically connects a team of specialists from across the company with the right skills to troubleshoot the problem. Increased Velocity – By automating 80,000 product fixes and updates per month, we have machines talking to machines, which improves quality, eliminates customer’s issues, and saves 166,000 support hours annually. In addition, the system automatically routes cases to engineers based on their skills, language, time zone, and availability to expedite resolution and continuously improve customer satisfaction. Actionable Visibility and Insight – Performance Analytics allows us to monitor the environment in real-time—a dramatic improvement over the previous manual approach in both timeliness and data accuracy. Now dashboards provide our executives with up-to-the-minute data, giving them real-time insight into critical metrics and enabling them to drill down into the details and take immediate action. One of our founding principles at LIKE.TG is to bring to the workplace the same great user experiences that we all know and appreciate in the consumer world, such as easy-to-use, intuitive interfaces, online self-help resources, and fast issue resolution. The Now Platform does that for both our support customers and the LIKE.TG employees who serve them to proactively eliminate issues and improve customer satisfaction.You can learn more about LIKE.TG Customer Service Management here .Stay tuned for more Now on Now stories as we continue our journey to digitally transform IT.Regards,Chris
How LIKE.TG’s Degree Apprenticeship program is changing lives
The tech industry is facing a skills gap like never before.With over 70% of businesses in the sector short of skilled employees, tech companies need to look beyond university graduates and other traditional sources of talent to get the employees they need.Failing to do so will hold businesses back. It also risks letting a whole generation of talented, diverse workers slip through the net.One of those talented workers is Jayden Patten.In his early twenties, Patten was at a loss. Coming from a safe, secure, loving family, he loved IT as a kid. So, when the time came, he started a university course in Computer Studies with the hope of making a career of it.But after developing a life-changing condition affecting his eyesight, he had to cut those studies short and was forced to leave the campus. Seeing his plans fall apart, he found himself at a low point “A failure,” he told us, “with little direction”. To make ends meet, he got a job working as a customer assistant in a pharmacist.His parents saw he was unhappy and unchallenged, with little job security and few prospects.“They knew I wasn’t growing in the direction I was passionate about,” says Patten. “They saw it wouldn’t work out in the long term, and that I needed to make a change.”Patten credits their support with helping him out of his slump. “Retail gave me great life experiences, but I knew I had to move forward into something I really wanted to do. It was their influence that took me to a job career fair.”Getting back on track with LIKE.TGPatten’s route back to work accelerated once he met John Perks, principal architect for the NextGen team at ServiceNow. John was instrumental in helping Patten get employed and subsequently enrolled in the LIKE.TG Degree Apprenticeship Scheme. The NextGen program gave Patten the purpose he was looking for and a career path in IT.Aimed at developing the digital, business, and leadership skills needed to succeed in tomorrow’s workplace, the degree apprenticeship with Northeastern University’s London campus is designed to bring immediate value to the sector and assist organisations in upskilling talent for their growing technology needs.For Patten, it was just the right fit. “Speaking with John, I really liked the sound of the different parts of the LIKE.TG platform, and was particularly interested in the programming side,” he said. “While the original course I signed up for stalled and moved online due to Covid, I kept in touch with John, who gave me regular guidance and exercises to complete. Ultimately, it’s through John that I got access to the network of LIKE.TG partners, and secured a position with Methods.”About MethodsMethods is a LIKE.TG Premier Partner and one of the UK’s leading independent transformation partners for public services. Methods works closely with citizens and with public, private, and third sector organisations to modernise UK public services.Trudy Beharry leads the LIKE.TG practice and is head of service management capability at the business. As part of her role, she’s witnessed the brain drain in the tech space first-hand, and understands the need to hire talent differently.“The numbers of people coming into this industry – and the skills that they have – are diminishing,” she said. “To fill that gap, we’re striving to garner and develop talent through different sources, in line with Methods’ ongoing commitment and social responsibility to support and grow emerging talent.”That’s why Methods decided to take part in LIKE.TG’s Degree Apprenticeship program, which is how they met Patten.“Patten was a very, very good candidate to be our first recruit onto the degree apprenticeship scheme,” Beharry said. “He was pretty quiet and shy when he joined us, and less familiar with some of the products we use, but he was extremely talented from day one. He’s picked up so much in just a few months and has become a credit to himself and a credit to our organisation.”Within just a few months into hiring Patten, he is already productive, and about to start his first customer engagement. Methods is already looking to see if they can add another candidate to the next degree apprenticeship cohort starting in January 2021.A fresh new perspectivePatten is really positive about what he brings to his new role. “I’ve got a fresh perspective, a lot of new ideas, and a really good work ethic,” he said, “A lot of the more senior developers haven’t had as much experience with new tech like LIKE.TG, or looked at the deeper systems behind it, so thanks to the degree apprenticeship, I’m already schooling the senior developers!”Being the youngest person in the room has its benefits, too. “Having a digital native on board is a real asset,” he added. “Just like I’ve helped my parents and other relatives get to grips with tech in their day-to-day lives, I can do the same in the workplace.”But that’s not to say there isn’t plenty more for Patten to learn. With a handful of LIKE.TG exams already under his belt, Patten is working to further refine the skills needed to be a senior LIKE.TG developer.“I’m now realising all the other stuff I need to learn, considering where I should branch out, and what resources I need to move forward.”In his opinion, that’s taken on new urgency as the world of work continues to change.“The COVID crisis has shown us that the world of work is only going more digital,” Patten said. “For example, I started work at Methods without even going into the office. We all need the skills to be able to navigate this new world effectively, and tools like LIKE.TG will become critical in that.”Changing futures, transforming livesFor Patten, the Degree Apprenticeship program has been transformative.“Failing was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “I wouldn’t have had this opportunity to do what I’m doing without this scheme; I was really spinning the wheels and didn’t know how to get back on track.”Of course, he wouldn’t have been able to do it without the support of those around him.“My parents are so proud of me, and I owe them everything,” he said. “I’m now treating them to dinner once a month, and it feels amazing to be able to do that and know that my hard work is paying for it.”He attributes a lot to his mentor John: “John has helped me find my future. He was an inspiration, my support network. He really gave me the intel, skills and confidence I needed. That helped me learn, and it helped with my interview, too. He transforms lives”For other people who find themselves in a similar situation, Patten has some wise words:“Take any opportunity, whatever your goal is, and don’t give up on the first go. I was feeling really low and uncertain, but the LIKE.TG NextGen program got me out of the hamster wheel I was in, in retail. Programs like these give you a chance to move forward and build a real future.”And for employers looking for new talent, he had this to say:“Programs like this give you the chance to hire great people that are highly skilled, highly trained, and full of life experience – meaning they have both the ability and the knowledge to make better decisions. If you have any doubts in your mind, just go for it!”
How low-code app development is transforming manufacturing
In the manufacturing industry, time is a precious commodity. From assembly lines to provisioning to facility security to factory floor safety, it’s critical that machines and processes run smoothly and safely across an organization.To streamline manufacturing operations and boost efficiency, many forward-thinking manufacturers are investing in digital technologies, such as low-code and generative AI (GenAI) solutions. These offer ways to accelerate innovation and overcome supply chain challenges.Research from LIKE.TG and Dynata shows technology investments don’t always produce the desired business outcomes: Only 33% of manufacturers are working to improve their operational technology asset security. Just 37% are digitizing the factory floor to drive worker productivity. Only 29% are improving supplier communication and collaboration to reduce supply chain risk. Benefits of low-code development in manufacturingLow-code development provides manufacturers a major opportunity to create a more agile and adaptable workforce—and to drive enhancements across the value chain.By helping organizations automate previously manual processes, respond to shifts in product demand, and release new products quicker, low-code app development can boost efficiency and extend workflow automation across the enterprise. As smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0 become more prevalent, many organizations are struggling to make sense of the gargantuan data sets their factory floor internet of things (IoT) sensors generate and record. Low-code and GenAI solutions enable manufacturers to: Unify data across siloed systems Automate manual processes Seamlessly connect teams and solutions Using low-code and domain-specific large language models (LLMs), manufacturers can create a core hub that collects, analyzes, and democratizes vital data pulled from IoT sensors.What’s more, these solutions seamlessly integrate with machine learning models and automated solutions to generate actionable data and provide even more intelligent and predictive insights. Let’s look at three examples of manufacturing low-code in action.Publishing release managementOn the factory floor, complex machinery requires detailed user manuals to ensure safe and correct use—and to provide guidance for troubleshooting and repairs.As machines and products evolve, these user manuals must be constantly updated and republished so that floor staff, engineers, agents, and virtual assistants remain current on product details and maintenance protocols. Often, these updates must be applied manually—a tedious and time-consuming task.With low-code, manufacturers can quickly build apps that manage release cycles for any/all publishing changes to manuals. In this way, organizations can streamline interactions between the stakeholders responsible for the product manual lifecycle, including illustrators and taggers, writers, and quality assurance teams.Automated shift information turnoverFor many manufacturers, shift turnovers are still managed with paper and clipboards, resulting in missing or inaccurate information regarding employee absences or shortages. This disrupts staff scheduling, hinders employee productivity, and represents a missed opportunity to record shift data, identify trends, and select areas for improvement.Low-code enables manufacturers to create apps that automate shift information turnover. Providing digital forms helps employees accurately sign in and out at the beginning and end of their shifts.Consequently, employees know exactly what they need to work on when starting a shift. This results in less downtime and fewer employee accidents—invariably boosting employee satisfaction and productivity. Entry lifecycle managementSafety and security are paramount to any manufacturing business. It’s often up to IT to ensure employees are granted the appropriate level of access to various locations. However, this process is still predominately managed through emails, spreadsheets, and legacy systems.As a result, passes and permissions are rarely updated in time. This poses significant security risks and causes employee frustration and unplanned downtime.Using low-code, manufacturers can build apps to optimize entry lifecycle management. These apps can automatically organize entry requests and send notifications when a pass is nearing expiration.This leads to quicker permission granting, happier employees, a safer and more secure working environment, and reduced business disruption from access expiration.Innovation at scaleThe examples above represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the transformative potential of low-code and GenAI.Manufacturing is a fast-paced environment. Teams need solutions fast. Waiting on overburdened developers may not be an option. Low-code can empower manufacturers to create powerful software applications that address industry challenges and enable future innovation at an impressive scale.Find out more about how low-code development helps organizations improve speed, agility, and productivity at a fraction of the cost.
How Maintenance Management Can Improve Your Team's Productivity
Maintenance management is critical to the productivity of any team. By ensuring that assets and resources are functioning efficiently and effectively, maintenance management can help teams work smarter and more productively. Here are some crucial ways that maintenance management can promote a team's productivity. Proactive instead of reactive systems Staying on top of regular maintenance can help a team become more productive by creating a system that is proactive instead of reactive. When an issue arises, it is dealt with quickly and efficiently so that it does not cause further disruptions down the line. For example, if a machine in a factory breaks down, the maintenance team is alerted immediately and works to fix the problem as quickly as possible. This prevents the issue from cascading and causing even more problems and delays. Improved communication Maintenance management can help improve communication within a team by creating clear channels of communication. When everyone knows who to speak to and when, it helps to avoid confusion and delays. For example, if there is a problem with a piece of equipment, the maintenance team can be alerted immediately, allowing them to take action and avert potential bottlenecks or downtime. This way, everyone is kept up to date on the status of the issue and the team can work together to resolve it quickly. Better planning and scheduling Maintenance management can help teams to be more productive by creating better plans and schedules. By having a clear plan of what needs to be done and when it helps to avoid disruptions and ensures that everyone is aware of their responsibilities. For example, if a team is scheduled to carry out maintenance on a piece of equipment, they will know exactly what needs to be done and when. This helps to avoid any last-minute scrambling and ensures that the job is done efficiently. Reduced downtime Maintenance management can help reduce downtime by ensuring that equipment is properly maintained. When equipment is well-maintained, it is less likely to break down and cause disruptions. For example, if a team is carrying out regular maintenance on a machine, they are less likely to experience unexpected downtime due to the machine breaking down. This helps to keep the team productive and avoid any lost time. Better use of resources Maintenance management can help teams to be more productive by ensuring that resources are used effectively. When teams have a clear understanding of what resources are available and how to use them, it helps to avoid disruptions and wasted time. For example, if a team knows that there is a certain amount of spare parts available, they can plan their maintenance schedule around this so that they do not run out of parts and have to wait for new ones to be delivered. Improved safety Safety and productivity go hand in hand. Maintenance management can help improve safety by ensuring that equipment is properly maintained. When equipment is well-maintained, it is less likely to break down and cause accidents. For example, if a team is carrying out regular maintenance on a machine, they are less likely to experience an accident due to the machine breaking down. This helps to keep the team safe and avoid any accidents. Reduced stress Maintenance management can help reduce stress by creating a system that is proactive instead of reactive. When an issue arises, it is dealt with quickly and efficiently so that it does not cause further disruptions down the line. For example, if a machine in a factory breaks down, the maintenance team is alerted immediately and works to fix the problem as quickly as possible. This prevents the issue from cascading and causing even more problems and delays. Improved morale Maintenance management can help improve morale by ensuring that everyone is working towards a common goal. When everyone is aware of the team's goals and objectives, it helps to create a sense of purpose and unity. For example, if a team is working towards fixing a problem with a piece of equipment, they are more likely to feel motivated and united than if they were simply working on their own. Increased efficiency Maintenance management can help increase efficiency by ensuring that tasks are carried out in the most efficient way possible. When teams have a clear understanding of what needs to be done and how to do it, it helps to avoid disruptions and wasted time. For example, if a team knows that they need to carry out maintenance on a machine, they can plan their schedule around this so that they do not have to stop working on other tasks to do the maintenance. This helps to keep the team productive and avoid any lost time. Greater flexibility Maintenance management can help teams to be more productive by providing greater flexibility. When teams have a clear understanding of the resources available to them and how to use them, it helps to avoid disruptions and wasted time. For example, if a team knows that they have a certain amount of spare parts available, they can plan their maintenance schedule around this so that they do not run out of parts and have to wait for new ones to be delivered. This helps to keep the team productive and avoid any lost time. Conclusion Maintenance management is a key part of keeping teams productive. By ensuring that equipment is well-maintained, resources are used effectively, and everyone is working towards a common goal, maintenance management can help to improve a team's productivity. About Author: This article is written by our marketing team at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is dedicated to providing powerful solutions for your HR teams and creating an exceptional employee experience. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, onboarding, and to save you valuable time!
How Microsoft Dynamics helped us fix a leaky CRM bucket
Customer relationship management (CRM) is sometimes like a bucket. New customers represent water going into the bucket, and departing customers reflect water flowing out. The water level—or the number of customers—rises and falls depending on the amount of water flowing into the bucket and the number and size of the holes.At LIKE.TG, we recognized we had a leaky CRM bucket, thanks to rapid customer growth. More complex deals and expanding selling personas added a new layer of difficulty. We needed to scale our operations, better track activity around customer interactions, and improve collaboration within sales.After debating whether we should fix or replace our CRM system to handle the steady increase in customers, we decided to adopt a new CRM platform: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales. We selected it for several reasons: The activity management feature supports planning, tracking, and organizing all customer communications in one place. Dynamics 365 Sales easily integrates with other Microsoft products we use internally, such as SharePoint, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Teams, as well as with the Now Platform. It offers a more cost-effective integration with our existing middle and back-office systems compared to other CRM products. Integrating systemsBased on defined use cases, we built several real-time integrations with the Now Platform to create bidirectional data syncs between the two platforms, as well as one-way queries. We did this with the help of the virtual entities feature.Virtual entities enables us to integrate external system data by representing that data as entities in Dynamics 365 Sales. We avoided duplicate data and the need for custom coding, which greatly simplified administration and configuration. The existing integration allowed us to launch many LIKE.TG workflows from within Dynamics 365 Sales. These workflows ranged from simple, such as enabling sales to raise different request types for deal support, to complex, such as enabling sales to initiate quoting from within a Dynamics 365 opportunity record.Since our global launch of Dynamics 365 Sales in 2020, we’ve continued to work with Microsoft on more platform innovations. We recently launched the use of Microsoft Teams to further enable collaboration in context. This allows our sales team and leadership to collaborate on account- and opportunity-related activities and store important information directly in Dynamics 365 Sales.A single source of truthThe sales feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. “I started using MS Teams in Dynamics 365 Sales to set it as my main communication feature for opportunities/projects,” says a LIKE.TG sales rep. “It’s helping me quite a lot to be on track with all team members directly in Dynamics 365 Sales.”A regional sales director added that the integration provides “a great way to better collaborate across the business for account and opportunity management.” By integrating Now Platform features with Dynamics 365 Sales, the sales team has a single source of truth. This is the system of record for all pipeline management, forecasting, and customer engagements led by the LIKE.TG sales team. Workflows and systems of record work together to help the sales team address issues quickly.The entire Microsoft suite of products makes it possible for us to track omnichannel interactions for sales, resulting in greater sales productivity, efficiency, and user satisfaction.Looking aheadWith Dynamics 365 Sales as our CRM platform, we continue to explore ways to bring more Now Platform features into the hands of our sellers. One exciting new project is integrating LIKE.TG Virtual Agent into the sales process to enable self-service for answers to common questions.“It’s a good feature when you have a question to a sales rep about the specific opportunity to do it directly from Dynamics 365 Sales and start a Teams chat,” says one sales operations manager.We also plan to give sales the ability to update opportunities using Virtual Agent without having to find a customer record, saving valuable time.Integrating Customer Service Management case management capabilities will provide the tools to bring another customer 360-degree lens to the sales organization. Sales will be able to check cases from Dynamics 365 Sales to quickly assess customer health and spot any major issues.Three years into our adoption journey, I can safely say one of the best things we ever did was to replace a leaky CRM bucket. We’ve managed to scale our operations, improve collaboration, and implement a single engagement layer for customer interactions. As our bucket fills with more customers, we can ensure it doesn’t leak a drop.Find out more about how LIKE.TG uses Microsoft Dynamics in the Digestible Dynamics podcast.
How modern service operations drive fast resolution of IT issues
Managing technology services and operations can be like trying to jockey around road hazards in a vehicle that doesn’t have all the features you need for the drive. Just as your navigation technology helps keep your journey on track, full visibility into IT issues is vital. That’s what automated service operations offers.When different teams use different tools with different views of data, it can be a struggle to see if there’s a problem. Point and legacy products scattered across on-premises locations and the cloud create a patchwork solution that’s difficult to manage.The lack of a single system of record or cohesive IT workflows between services and operations can leave you stuck in the mud of complexity, inefficiency, growing costs, and diminishing quality of service.Heading in the right directionA modern, unified IT solution can help you stay on course. Consolidating multiple tools and databases into a single cloud platform for technology services and operations retains the value of your existing tools across the enterprise.An integrated configuration management database and common service data model can help you establish a single data model across teams. This, in turn, can ensure accurate information — even if it’s discovered by third-party tools.Connecting IT service management to IT operations processes such as discovery, business service definitions, and mapping can streamline operations. Moving into the fast laneHaving all your workflows managed on the same platform also puts you in the driver’s seat to: Share consistent data and insights that create cross-team efficiencies Gain visibility with a service context so that all IT teams can prioritize problems Reduce administrative overhead while scaling and improving services and operations Boost employee engagement and satisfaction with user-focused services Companies in multiple industries are seeing results from platform consolidation. Accenture improved configuration item accuracy by 50%. By mapping 140 services, NBN can “very quickly understand the impact of alarms and incidents on a wider range of service products.”Removing roadblocks to fast IT resolutionA pileup of service event traffic can cause major delays in the resolution of IT issues. Managing IT services and operations on a platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning can generate targeted, prioritized alerts for a smooth ride.This can also empower your teams to quickly identify root causes, triage issues, and route tickets to the right IT operator. Most of the time, that means addressing issues before they impact services and employees — or avoiding outages altogether. Enterprises across the globe have enjoyed big payoffs from AI-powered solutions. Danske Bank, for instance, decreased its median time to restore services by 79%. Deloitte increased its return on investment fivefold through improved IT workflows.Modernizing the management of service operations is the shortest route to resolving IT issues. It can also make getting to your destination of providing stellar services a more pleasant journey.Get handy references about combining IT services and operations and rapidly remediating IT issues in our infographics.
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