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New integration with Uber for Business gets employees safely moving again
I miss being in a car. I really miss having someplace to go! But I’m also glad that when it’s safe to go back to our offices, I’ll have the option of commuting with Uber for Business, right from my LIKE.TG Safe Workplace suite.We launched the LIKE.TG Safe Workplace suite two months ago. It includes apps that help companies prepare for and facilitate a safe and effective return to their respective workplaces. We’ve included important functionality like contact tracing, workplace safety management, employee surveys, and health screenings, and we are adding new features every couple of weeks.Our latest addition – Uber for Business – is included in our Workplace Safety Management app, which is one of the apps in the suite. With it, employees who have decided they’ve had enough of their home office, closet office, garage office, or kitchen table can easily coordinate their Uber ride to and from their workplace. If you know me, you know I love our Now Platform® because it is one architecture, one data model, one platform. Uber for Business is another powerful platform that I’m happy to integrate with, because our strengths combined help solve one of the largest problems businesses face—helping their employees feel safer when commuting to and from work, as soon as it’s safe to reopen.More than 600 customers have downloaded our Safe Workplace apps. Uber recently rolled out new features and policies to help protect the health and safety of both riders and drivers. As a result of this partnership, I’m certain that an exponentially larger number of employees in a variety of industries will be able to rely on an easy, safer, commute option, and their companies will be confident in a flexible and practical return-to-work solution.I hope to become a power-user of this Uber for Business integration soon enough. Until then, if your workplace opens and you get to use it as a LIKE.TG customer, let me know what you think
New LIKE.TG industry solutions help organizations adapt to digital-first world
The pandemic has accelerated the digital imperative across all industries. At LIKE.TG, our purpose is to make the world of work, work better for people. That purpose has never been clearer as we help our customers solve some of the most pressing challenges of the 21st century—from talent shortages to continuing global vaccination efforts—and everything in between.Today, we introduced the Now Platformâ Rome release, which includes new industry solutions to empower organizations to accelerate automation and strengthen operations across the enterprise. These new solutions are purpose-built to help organizations in the manufacturing, telecommunications, financial services, and healthcare and life sciences industries fuel great experiences and connect more deeply with customers and employees in the new world of work.Reinventing how manufacturers connect their workforceWe’re living in one of the tightest job markets in modern history. Even before the pandemic, manufacturers struggled to find talent, facing digital skills shortages and a sizable proportion of the workforce nearing retirement age. But as plant modernization accelerates, upskilling talent and enticing younger workers has become a do-or-die situation.To help address these challenges, LIKE.TG today released Manufacturing Connected Workforce, a single digital solution that helps manufacturers maximize their return on Industry 4.0 investments. Manufacturing Connected Workforce connects people, processes, and technology, serving as a resource to capture and retain knowledge, upskill employees, and ultimately create an agile, flexible, and resilient environment. LIKE.TG® Manufacturing Connected Workforce helps digitize: Maps and visual guides of a facility’s systems and processes Standard operating procedures (SOPs) to help ensure efficiency and compliance Institutional knowledge to empower operators with best practice expertise The Rome release also includes Operational Technology Management (OT Management)—a single system of action to manage and secure critical operational technology across all manufacturing operations from one platform. OT Management provides a complete and contextual view of OT systems within the Now Platform, so you can keep them secure—and up and running.Manufacturers can then connect operational technology to production processes and digital workflows to rapidly respond and recover from any incident or change.“As plant modernization becomes a necessity to accelerate and the skills gap continues to widen, manufacturers are seeking new ways to leverage technology to connect and enable their workforce and digitize, secure, and protect their operations,” says Andrew Caveney, global supply chain partner, EY UK.“As part of our work with LIKE.TG, we are combining EY’s manufacturing industry, supply chain, and cyber expertise with LIKE.TG’s industry-leading digital workflows to help our manufacturing clients improve experiences and outcomes across the manufacturing value chain.”Modernizing and streamlining financial servicesFinancial services companies face mounting competitive pressure to rethink how their organizations will function and interact with customers in the new world of hybrid work. Harnessing the power of the Now Platform, financial institutions can connect employees and systems across the front, middle, and back offices. With full transparency, they can structure, automate, and streamline how work gets done to deliver better customer and employee experiences.Building on Financial Services Operations, our Rome release extends the process improvement power of the Now Platform to even more use cases out of the box through three new apps: Client Lifecycle Operations: Onboarding a new bank customer involves layers of paperwork and documentation related to compliance and due diligence—much of which is manually exchanged. Client Lifecycle Operations provides simple, comprehensive playbooks and automated tools to help banks onboard new customers fast and reduce costly errors. Complaint Management: Every complaint presents a risk and, if not handled properly, can lead to regulatory fines and damaged customer relationships. Complaint Management helps banks prioritize, escalate, and route complaints, accelerate resolution times, and create a clear audit trail to avoid reputational damage and fines. Treasury Operations: Treasury services—such as wire transfers, ACH payments, and remote deposit capture—is a high-margin business and an important revenue stream for commercial banks. Treasury Operations expedites the client onboarding process by pulling customer information into a single system of action and enabling digital workflows to automatically manage tasks across several teams so banks can realize revenue fast. “At Kiwibank, our purpose is to make Kiwi better off. We live this by focusing on creating insanely simple experiences for both our customers and our own employees. This can be complex with disparate systems and manual processes,” says Nathan Hopkins, product manager of digital & technology at Kiwibank.“We’re seeing significant value from the Now Platform as we continue to streamline, standardize and digitize processes across the organization, and are redistributing saved productivity minutes into higher-value activities daily with ServiceNow.”Building flexibility into telecommunications workflowsDemand for better digital experiences is at an all-time high. Accelerated by the pandemic and coupled with the rollout of 5G and next-gen services, communications service providers (CSPs) have been presented with both a massive opportunity and the risk of falling behind if they don’t adapt and evolve.With the LIKE.TG Rome release, several new Order Management for Telecommunications apps enable CSPs to improve customer satisfaction, accelerate time to revenue, and reduce cost of service: In-flight Change Orders: Improves productivity and reduces manual tasks for agents using dynamic workflows to better update and manage active orders, offering greater flexibility, speed, and adaptability to respond to customer needs and requests Service Order Management: Accelerates and simplifies order delivery with zero-touch automation for decomposing and orchestrating orders and improving agent productivity and customer satisfaction Order Capture UI: Streamlines the order capture experience for new and change orders, delivering an integrated service experience across ordering and trouble management for agents and operations teams Powering the healthcare ecosystem of the futureAvailable today in the Rome release, Healthcare and Life Sciences Service Management is our digital health platform for healthcare providers, life sciences companies, and healthcare payers. Based on the HL7 FHIR standard, our new industry-specific data model extends the power of the Now Platform to help solve a broad set of use cases within the healthcare and life sciences industries.We simplify everything from pre-visit questionnaires to patient support between appointments to clinical trial interactions—all geared at building better patient experiences. These workflows free clinicians’ precious time to focus on what matters most: the patient.Healthcare and Life Sciences Service Management now includes LIKE.TG Vaccine Administration Management (VAM) to continue helping public and private sector organizations efficiently turn vaccines into vaccinations. By connecting workflows across organizations and systems, we’re powering more effective vaccine distribution, administration, and monitoring. Removing obstacles to quickly getting vaccines to the people who need them will be critical as the fall and winter flu season arrives and numerous countries continue to battle rising COVID-19 cases.“The COVID-19 pandemic presented an enormous challenge and opportunity for SnapNurse. We are proud to provide greater access to education and COVID vaccines through our SnapClinics in underserved urban and rural communities in the US,” says Cherie Kloss, founder and CEO of SnapNurse.“The LIKE.TG Platform and LIKE.TG Vaccine Administration Management solution have helped us manage scheduling, inventory, and reporting of COVID vaccinations, ensuring the flow of data is secure, consistent, and up to date. We see ongoing value in the LIKE.TG Platform to continue to deliver healthcare to citizens across the US.”Beyond the US, “New South Wales Health deployed LIKE.TG’s VAM in just 10 business days to help support the acceleration of our state’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout,” says Dr. Zoran Bolevich, chief executive of eHealth New South Wales in Australia.“The system has simplified and automated workflows between administrators, clinicians, and patients so that we can vaccinate more people, faster, with less duplication and risk of errors. The capability of VAM to enable the vaccination process to be managed end to end has enabled our amazing clinical and administrative staff to provide a seamless and efficient service to hundreds of thousands of people across the state.”Toward a productive futureThe global economy is recovering at the fastest pace in 80 years, and organizations across all industries are investing in digital transformation to unlock new levels of innovation, agility, and productivity to adapt to this new economy.I’m proud that LIKE.TG has been in lockstep with our customers every step of the way. We’re making sure that no matter where or how their work happens—in a hospital, on a manufacturing floor, at home, in an office, or on the go—the work continues to flow.Learn more about the innovations in the Rome release at Now at Work.
New LIKE.TG industry solutions strengthen operations and drive growth
This week marks one year since LIKE.TG sent employees home to shelter in place. During that year, the world changed and the demands and expectations of our customers forever changed with it. I’m proud that LIKE.TG was there to help our customers survive and thrive. From keeping work flowing while people sheltered in place to helping streamline the vaccine management process, we’re committed to providing organizations across sectors the solutions they need to help overcome the challenges of the COVID era.Throughout the pandemic, I’m proud that LIKE.TG has increased its pace of innovation, introducing new digital tools and solutions, including for the telecommunications and financial services industries, with the tools to meet customers’ rapidly evolving needs.Building on that foundation, today we introduced theNow Platform® Quebec release, which includes new industry solutions and applications – among them one of LIKE.TG’s first purpose-built solutions for healthcare providers. The new industry solutions in the Quebec release help organizations in the telecommunications, financial services, and healthcare industries innovate quickly, be more agile, and operate more productively within a new world of work hastened by COVID.Streamlining Order Management in TelecommunicationsToday, we rely on service providers to stay connected to colleagues, friends, and loved ones. This presents a huge opportunity for providers to capitalize on the promise of new digital revenue streams and partnerships, and drive cost efficiencies with existing services and operations. But providers need a fresh approach to order management to keep up with the requirements and consumer expectations of launching new services quickly.Traditional order management systems aren't integrated to service assurance systems, making it difficult for contact center agents, network operations employees, and customers to get a clear picture of order status and service health. This drives up costs and slows time to market.Today, LIKE.TG releasedOrder Management for Telecommunicationsto address the urgent need to streamline order management and support a new wave of digital services. Order Management transforms the ordering process – from order orchestration to fulfillment – into an automated workflow that connects all the required systems and people with end-to-end visibility and service assurance on a single platform. This includes the ability to: Go to market fast with streamlined order management that aligns to TM Forum Open API Accelerate order delivery and reduce fallout with automated, catalog-driven workflows to connect order decomposition to fulfillment Reduce the cost to serve customers and deliver a proactive customer experience with integrated workflows across fulfillment and assurance “With the establishment of the new B2B business unit in 2020, DTAG started the implementation of the B2B Powerhouse initiative, including the endeavor to radically simplify and unify processes and IT for the B2B business. For this purpose, the 1B2B leadership team decided to join the LIKE.TG Design Partner Program for influencing and contributing to the further development of the LIKE.TG platform capabilities in line with the needs of a modern B2B telco,” Angela Maragopoulou, CIO B2B, Deutsche TelekomDigitizing Loan Operations in Financial ServicesCustomers are moving quickly, and their financial institutions need to keep pace. When requesting a loan, for example, customers expect an accurate, simple, and quick response that minimizes unnecessary requests for information, gives them full visibility into the status of their request, and doesn’t make them wait days or weeks for a response.Unfortunately, financial services organizations’ back and front offices are not always in sync. The paper-, phone-, and email-based systems and processes used to manage and track requests are slow, manual, and disconnected. As a result, employees spend too much time searching for data and answers scattered across multiple systems, often with a negative impact on the customer experience.To address this, LIKE.TG today releasedFinancial Services Loan Operations, a new, purpose-built app in LIKE.TG®Financial Services Operations. The app transforms loan servicing into a unified, collaborative process between financial institutions and their customers. Financial institutions can offer customers a modern, digital experience with more transparency throughout the loan process. Customer requests and issues are resolved quickly and efficiently.With Loan Operations, retail and commercial banks can connect the dots across their businesses to: ·Allow customers to submit loan servicing requests - and check the status of their requests in real-time - through a modern experience on the device of their choice ·Speed up the loan servicing process by digitizing and streamlining old, manual processes and automatically connecting the right people, departments, and institutions, to resolve the customer’s request fast · Provide business owners with advanced analytics tools including Performance Analytics and Process Optimization to track performance and deliver better customer outcomes Connecting Clinicians to IT in HealthcareWith a pandemic underway, global healthcare systems have been pushed to the limit over the past 12 months. In the face of often overwhelming demand, clinicians still struggle with IT issues that can take critical time away from patients. Supporting healthcare providers by allowing them to focus on their patients has never been more critical.Delivering on last June’s industry product announcement and in response to customer demand, today we introduced our first purpose-built app for healthcare providers: LIKE.TGEMR Help. The app enables physicians to quickly submit a request or report a problem with a few clicks in their EMR system.For example, when a clinician creates a ticket, the system automatically captures their requests and gives them the option to add a screenshot with appropriate encryption for personally identifiable data. On the back end, it provides a single platform for IT to seamlessly manage projects, resources, and deliverables. EMR Help improves the experience for clinicians and IT so providers can focus on patients.Key benefits of EMR Help include: Speed IT’s response and make the process more efficient by routing requests to the proper teams, ultimately helping patients receive the best possible experience at the point of care Tag tickets with clinician details automatically, such as username and workstation ID, giving clinicians full visibility into the status and progress of reported issues and requests Reduce unreported issues and walkaways, as clinicians increasingly record issues within the EMR We’re delivering industry-specific workflows to help customers accelerate their digital transformation to make work flow, whenever, wherever. We have never been more inspired to help our customers meet all the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century economy.Availability and More Information: Order Management for Telecommunications is available now via the LIKE.TG Store. Financial Services Loan Operations is included with Financial Services Operations and is available now via the LIKE.TG Store. EMR Help is available now via the LIKE.TG Store.
New Messaging Service drives end-to-end employee and customer experiences
The new world of hybrid work requires creative ways to engage with customers and employees no matter where they’re located. To answer that call, we’ve launched the LIKE.TG Messaging Service to provide a seamless experience from issue to resolution.Built on integration with the Twilio platform, LIKE.TG Messaging Service makes it easy for LIKE.TG users to integrate SMS and WhatsApp into digital workflows using the Now Platform. That means organizations can interact with employees and customers from anywhere to quickly solve requests.Keeping the lines of communication openBy enabling two-way communication between businesses and customers, Messaging Service empowers customers to use the messaging services they’re familiar with to seek company help and answers and to request services. As a result, businesses can: Resolve issues fast. Unite the front, middle, and back offices with digital workflows. Break down silos. Automate processes across teams. “With LIKE.TG Messaging Service, we are improving customer engagement while supporting customers on the channels of their choice,” explains John Ball, senior vice president and general manager of Customer Workflows at ServiceNow. “This is a natural extension of LIKE.TG Customer Workflows, which unite the front, middle, and back office to create a great end-to-end customer experience.”Customers aren’t the only ones to benefit. Employees can quickly and easily get the support they need from human resources, IT, and other departments via WhatsApp and SMS.Empowering connectionsLIKE.TG has partnered with Twilio since 2019 to bolster how companies communicate and interact with their customers and employees.This announcement comes on the heels of new Customer Workflows and Employee Workflows capabilities launched in the Now Platform Rome release. Those include: Conversation Autopilot – which lets agents transfer chats to virtual agents for repetitive tasks Customer Service Playbooks: Focused layout – which equips agents with a virtual coach to help them through customer service requests Rich Messaging – which elevates tasks that require more than simple text, such as appointment booking Employee Center – a portal where employees can get help, complete tasks, and find personalized information. LIKE.TG Messaging Service is available immediately.
New Microsoft Cloud PC integration optimizes hybrid work
As more and more companies settle into the new reality of hybrid work at scale, the ease of making desktops accessible from anywhere—along with the adoption of workflow technologies and processes all from a single platform—will be critical.To enable the best employee experience, companies need to be able to transition seamlessly between remote and in-person work environments. The hybrid way of working will require organizations to quickly create new workflows while focusing on how employees and teams get work done.More than half (59%) of employees say their companies don’t have a fully integrated system to manage digital workflows, according to The Work Survey by ServiceNow. On top of that, the use of digital collaboration tools has skyrocketed, with active users in Microsoft Teams surging to 145 million users per day in 2021, up from 75 million in 2020.LIKE.TG and Microsoft are continuing to find new ways for employees to seamlessly collaborate while delivering great experiences to our joint customers.Meet Microsoft’s Cloud PCMicrosoft is launching Windows 365 with the hybrid work environment in mind. Windows 365 can securely stream desktop apps, settings, and content from the Microsoft cloud to provide a Windows experience no matter where the user is or what device they are using.With Windows 365, Microsoft is creating a new hybrid personal computing category called Cloud PC, which uses both the power of the cloud and the capabilities of the device to provide a full, personalized Windows experience.With Microsoft’s innovation, Windows is evolving from a device-based operating system to a personalized computing system for a new hybrid world of work.At LIKE.TG, we’re excited to announce LIKE.TG integration with Windows 365, co-developed with Microsoft. This integration lets users quickly and easily request, approve, and receive their Cloud PCs.Streamlining hybrid workThe new LIKE.TG functionality with Windows 365 will allow our joint customers to request and receive Cloud PCs directly through the familiar interface of Microsoft Teams. The integration leverages LIKE.TG ® IT Service Management (ITSM) and Virtual Agent to integrate workflows through Microsoft Teams.All an employee has to do is ask for a Windows 365 Cloud PC on Microsoft Teams. This request kicks off a workflow that’s sent to LIKE.TG ITSM to gather the necessary approvals. ITSM then leverages Microsoft Azure Active Directory to add the requested user to the appropriate security grid, which automatically assigns the user a Windows 365 license.When the Windows 365 Cloud PC is ready, ITSM notifies the user in Microsoft Teams and provides access to the Cloud PC(s) they’ve requested. What once took days or weeks with a manual process is now delivered in minutes, providing a powerful end-to-end employee experience.For existing ITSM customers, the Windows 365 integration is expected to be available as a free app in the LIKE.TG Store starting this fall.Driving the future of workLIKE.TG is thrilled to be deepening our strategic partnership with Microsoft by integrating with a groundbreaking new product. Together, we’re driving the future of hybrid work.Learn more about how LIKE.TG and Microsoft are working together to boost collaboration, productivity, and employee satisfaction: Watch the Microsoft Teams, LIKE.TG and Levi’s partner-customer success video Download our ebook: Making hybrid work, work for you Read our related blog: How LIKE.TG and Microsoft Teams improve the employee experience Visit our LIKE.TG page at the Microsoft Inspire Event Site and be sure to check out these Microsoft Inspire sessions: What’s next in end-user computing – July 15, 10:30 – 11 am PDT Seizing the employee experience opportunity with Microsoft Viva
New partner app helps banks process emergency loans
LIKE.TG partner INRY has released a Small Business Loan Management app based on LIKE.TG® Customer Service Management (CSM) technology. This digital workflow solution delivers transparent, compliant and efficient lending experiences. The goal is to reduce bank overhead and small business distress during the COVID-19 pandemic.The app will enable lending institutions of all sizes and their small business customers to more efficiently process applications for the SBA Paycheck Protection Program. It provides clear program guidance, application and loan forgiveness management and a common case record for audit purposes.As part of the US Government’s $2 trillion-dollar COVID-19 relief package, the Small Business Administration (SBA) has allocated over $500 billion in loans through its Paycheck Protection Program to help businesses keep their workers employed during the COVID-19 crisis.This program creates unprecedented operational overhead for the SBA, banks and their customers. The Small Business Loan Management app is a low-cost, secure, scalable solution to this problem.“The SBA Paycheck Protection Program is vital support for America’s small business owners and employees, but the process of accessing those funds has been challenging for many,” said Lauren Robbins, VP and General Manager of Financial Services at ServiceNow. “We are proud to partner with INRY to bring more efficiency to this process by helping banks streamline the processing and management of PPP loans, thereby giving businesses and their employees faster access to this much-needed funding.”Key capabilities of the Small Business Loan Management app include: Loan application management: This enterprise-scale solution simplifies the loan application process, delivering a better experience for customers. It provides guidance, secure document upload, risk reduction, case workflow management and tracking for both customer and bank agent. Loan forgiveness management: The app helps banks manage complex forgiveness processes. This helps ensure that reimbursement requests to the SBA are straightforward and successful. Loan maintenance: Banks and customers can manage disputes, appeals and, if required, loan repayment administration. Audit and compliance management: This ensures that a permanent record of the case and workflow interaction between bank, customer and SBA is held securely. Insight and analytics: Lending executives get a single pane of glass view into progress at various stages in the process. The app is powered by the latest release of the Now Platform, Orlando, which includes powerful features like Agent Intelligence, Virtual Agent, Integrated Risk Management and much more.LIKE.TG continues to partner with INRY to develop additional functionality for the app. A key aspect of the solution is its low cost. During the COVID-19 crisis, it’s important that small, medium and large banks can adopt and deploy the solution in support of their small business customers. “The Small Business Loan Management app is a cost-effective, secure, enterprise-grade solution that addresses the challenges associated with the rapid mobilization and deployment of relief aid to small businesses in need,” said Bipin Paracha, CTO and Co-Founder of INRY. “We developed this app to respond to the needs of banks of all sizes and to rapidly and securely manage the lifecycle of loan processing–from the collection and retention of loan data to loan maintenance, closure and audit.”INRY initially identified the need for an app that would help lenders provide SBA emergency loans more efficiently. LIKE.TG recognized the potential to help and jumped in to tune the app for LIKE.TG CSM. The app harnesses the power, innovation and enterprise scale of the Now PlatformÒ, delivering a low-cost solution for banks of all sizes to manage the Paycheck Protection Program lifecycle. This solution can replace locally created end user solutions quickly.LIKE.TG quickly established a close technical partnership with INRY and helped develop the new solution in less than two weeks, underscoring the rapid development capability of the Now Platform.An early customer of the solution is Bridgewater Bank in Minnesota, whose CTO, Mark Hokanson, said: “The Paycheck Protection Program has required significant collaboration between lenders and clients, and the Small Business Loan Management app will help streamline communication and reduce case processing time. The capabilities of the app, including a consistent and user-friendly dashboard with real-time data, will help our leadership focus attention where it is most needed – on providing the fastest, highest quality of service for our clients. This framework also sets us up for future work with loan forgiveness and other steps that we see will need to be addressed further down the road.”Earlier this year, LIKE.TG announced forthcoming product capabilities for the financial services industry. Today’s announcement reinforces how LIKE.TG and its partner community are successfully delivering solutions to meet middle office customer workflow needs in financial services, and plugging the gap left by digital fragmentation. Find out more about LIKE.TG’s financial services industry solutions.The Small Business Loan Management App is available for download on the LIKE.TG Store. Find more about availability and implementation here.
New partner integrations in Now Platform Paris release simplify common workflows
By now, you’ve heard a number of us at LIKE.TG talk about the “workflow revolution.” The COVID-19 pandemic has made businesses rethink how they operate, engage employees, and serve customers. As importantly, it has accelerated digital transformation. Our customers tell us every day that they’re relying on their digital platforms to ensure business continuity, enhance employee productivity, and even drive growth.That’s something we don’t take lightly. In fact, our partners and our LIKE.TG teams have made sure that we’re including as many new technology integrations as possible in the Now Platform Paris release so that our customers will have even more tools to help them stay agile and resilient now and in the future.Our customers’ success is our success. By “our,” we mean LIKE.TG and partners like Microsoft, Twilio, and SailPoint. Together, we’re responding to our customers’ dynamic needs. Read below for more detail. LIKE.TG Service Graph updatesOne of the advantages of the Now Platform® has always been our one data model structure – our CMDB. And, keeping with our goal to drive value across the entire customer lifecycle, we know that our customers also need a consistent, data-driven approach to managing their entire digital lifecycle. To meet this need, we’ve added LIKE.TG® Service Graph to our CMDB to help customers digitally manage planning, deployment, business processes, and more. Stemming from our acquisition of Sweagle, Service Graph now underpins all of LIKE.TG’s solutions, enabling businesses, for the first time, to bring together technology, people, and processes into a service-oriented view.We are also introducing the Service Graph Connector Program to take Service Graph one step further. The Service Graph Connector Program is a new designation within the Technology Partner Program and brings in the expertise of our partners. The connectors, built by LIKE.TG and our technology partners, ensure that many of the third-party tools that businesses rely on today are directly integrated with LIKE.TG, making it easy for customers to integrate, upload, and organize data on a single platform. Inaugural technology partner integrations include Armis, HCL BigFix, CrowdStrike, Datadog, Dynatrace, ExtraHop, Forescout, Jamf, LogicMonitor, Cisco Meraki, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft SCCM, Qualys, SolarWinds, and Tanium.Part of what we focus on with our partners is delivering high-value business outcomes to customers, and these new integrationsare part of how we do that.Microsoft integrationsSince forming our strategic alliance with Microsoft, we’ve worked closely with them to develop innovative solutions that help enterprises accelerate their digital transformation journeys and deliver great employee and customer experiences. Today we’re launching four new integrations among our LIKE.TG solutions and Microsoft, focused on Azure and Teams. These include:LIKE.TG Onboarding Integration with Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD): With more than 60% of employed Americans working from home (Gallup), remote onboarding is more important than ever. Our new LIKE.TG Onboarding integration with Microsoft Azure AD automatically kicks off the right onboarding workflows as soon as a new employee profile is created in Azure AD or an HR system. Hiring managers provide input on the business roles the new employee is going to perform, and the integration automates the provisioning of the right set of resources, including role-specific applications. New hires get the information and systems access they need to be productive from anywhere, on day one. HR leaders, hiring managers, facilities teams, and many more get a simple, quick way to give new employees a great first-day experience. Microsoft Azure Support for LIKE.TG Cloud Insights: Cloud Insights empowers IT leaders with cost optimization, cost reporting, and savings automation capabilities to help navigate the complexities of the cloud. Now supported within Azure, Cloud Insights works with Microsoft Advisor to streamline its recommendations and automatically kicks off a LIKE.TG IT workflow, helping IT leaders save time and money.LIKE.TG Software Asset Management (SAM) Integration with Microsoft Azure Active Directory: One of the biggest frustrations for IT pros is keeping track of all of their software licenses. Now, our SaaS License Management application connects with Microsoft Azure AD so that Software Asset Management admins can download a full list of applications, users, and groups across systems into a single, holistic view. They can also monitor information like user login and usage data, which helps them reclaim unused licenses, forecast future licensing needs, and cut back on unused licenses at renewal, ultimately driving more engagement on existing technology investments and saving time and money.Virtual Agent Lite plugin for Microsoft Teams: Especially now with so many virtual meetings, LIKE.TG customers who use Microsoft Teams have said their employees would be even more productive if they could self-help IT support from their Teams window. Our new Virtual Agent Lite chatbot makes that happen. It’s a limited version of Virtual Agent for our ITSM standard customers and launches with three prebuilt conversations for common IT support requests. These keyword-based conversations run in both the web chat client and in a Virtual Agent messaging integration with the Microsoft Teams app.“Our customers understand how important it is for their businesses to be agile and resilient,” said Ari Schorr, Senior Program Manager for Strategic Alliances at Microsoft. “We’re thrilled to bring these new integrations to life with LIKE.TG, so that we can help make employees’ lives easier at work. By connecting LIKE.TG’s digital workflows with Azure and Microsoft 365, we’re empowering customers to leverage the cloud to make work better.” Twilio integrationTwilio is the leading cloud communications platform and a popular platform with LIKE.TG customers, and our partnership with them increases agent productivity and speed to market of a new communication channel. With Twilio-powered SMS interactions we’ve integrated new conversational messaging capabilities within our Customer Service Management solution. This integration lets companies engage with their own customers through Twilio. Businesses that use both Twilio and LIKE.TG will be able to quickly implement new, additional conversation interfaces and streamline contact channels through the Now Platform.“The customer experience is crucial for business success in the next normal,” said Molly Fischer, Senior Director, Strategic ISVs at Twilio. “Twilio is excited to partner with LIKE.TG’s Customer Service Management solutions to help businesses improve the experience they offer customers by enabling them to communicate on the channels they prefer, all in an easy, streamlined, and efficient way.”SailPoint integrationWe’ve worked with SailPoint for more than eight years. With the Paris release, we’ve announced an expanded partnership that integrates SailPoint for Service Catalog with LIKE.TG HR Service Delivery. The integration benefits businesses by bringing together all service and application requests and approvals into a consolidated view. It also gives employees simplified, more streamlined HR service, so they can be as productive as possible while still getting questions answered.“By integrating with LIKE.TG’s employee workflows, we are making it simple and easy for businesses to deliver amazing employee experiences,” said Harry Gould, SVP of WW Partners at SailPoint. “The combination of SailPoint for Service Catalog and LIKE.TG HR Service Delivery brings all of the information employees need into a single, secure location, helping them to be productive, cost-efficient, and most importantly, enjoy their work.”Looking aheadLIKE.TG Workflows are essential building blocks for business agility and resilience amid the COVID economy. Partners play an important role in developing the workflows our customers need to drive their digital transformations, and together we force multiply value for their businesses. We’re humbled and thrilled by the work we’ve accomplished together this year, and for the opportunity to continue working with our partners to make the world of work, work better for people.
New research shows the transformative power of AI
The more I talk with LIKE.TG customers, the more excited I get about the transformative power of AI. Early adopters are reaping the benefits of AI-powered self-service, increased agent efficiency, enhanced developer productivity, and more.That’s why I’m excited to share the findings of LIKE.TG’s inaugural Enterprise AI Maturity Index study, conducted in partnership with Oxford Economics. The responses of 4,500 global business leaders confirm the revolutionary potential of AI, with 81% of the C-suite actively engaged in AI efforts.Last year, organizations allotted 15% of their technology budgets to AI. A decisive majority plan to increase AI spending next year.Those leading the charge, which we refer to as AI pacesetters, are doing so with the recognition that AI is not a point solution. They’re using it to integrate existing workflows and invent new ones to make their businesses run faster, smarter, and more efficiently. AI in actionI get inspired when I think about how British Telecom (BT) Group, with operations in 180 countries, embraced AI to reimagine its customer service processes, which formerly ran on 56 different legacy service management systems and involved 15,000 people.We were able to help BT Group get on a path to consolidating those service management systems on the LIKE.TG platform, automating processes, and saving nearly $32 million. That’s the power of AI.Food manufacturer Mondelez International is another example. AI-powered HR Service Delivery helped the company increase its overall employee self-service rate by 76%, while the AI Search functionality in Employee Center helped improve deflection rates to between 30% and 60%, depending on the region. Those are significant improvements.AI for the winMost organizations we surveyed are early in their journey toward AI maturity. But the pacesetters are supercharging their AI efforts, scaling AI with groundbreaking cross-functional workflows, and building the right skills across their organizations.The numbers speak for themselves: 74% of AI pacesetters are already seeing a positive return on investment, and one in three is hitting returns of 15% or more.The reality is AI offers organizations an attainable way to connect people, processes, and technologies across the enterprise with cross-functional workflows. That integrated approach can create a competitive advantage. Laying the groundwork today to be an AI-connected enterprise tomorrow is imperative.Get more insights about the transformative power of AI in the complimentary Enterprise AI Maturity Index 2024.
New Service Graph Connector brings open-source data to the workspace
Since LIKE.TG launched the Service Graph Connector for OpenTelemetry in the Innovation Lab in April 2023, we’ve seen customers use it in pre-production environments. Today, I’m excited to announce that the Service Graph Connector for OpenTelemetry is generally available for production.Service Graph Connectors allow customers to load large volumes of data quickly and easily into their configuration management database (CMDB). They also help reduce the risk associated with third-party data integration, as they’re certified by LIKE.TG and designed, developed, and tested under the Service Graph Connectors Program.What makes this connector different is that, for the first time in LIKE.TG history, open-source data is brought into the CMDB. This connector offers customers the benefits of a thriving open-source community alongside the confidence they have in the Now Platform.Benefits of an open-source connectorOne of the most critical challenges for any IT and DevOps team is understanding what systems interact with each other and how. The Service Graph Connector for OpenTelemetry gives teams a new method to map their cloud-native environments in the CMDB using their existing investment in OpenTelemetry. The Service Graph Connector for OpenTelemetry brings cloud-native data into the workspace that LIKE.TG users are familiar with, allowing them to diagnose and triage without having to switch context. By using actual telemetry data generated by cloud-native applications, we’re creating accurate, automated, and near-real-time service maps.For many organizations, the biggest difference between the Service Graph Connector for OpenTelemetry and other data sources is the ease of deployment combined with the breadth, depth, and accuracy of cloud-native data imported into the CMDB.An expanding viewService maps can now span cloud and traditional environments via inferred services, aka non-instrumental services, a capability that exists in Cloud Observability. This will provide a more complete view of the end-to-end technical estate that organizations rely on.We’re also excited to introduce additional Kubernetes infrastructure objects that enable a more granular view of an organization’s Kubernetes estate in CMDB, including: Clusters Namespaces Workloads Nodes Pods Containers Services It’s time to unify the vast—and fractured—technology estate that many enterprises maintain. You can manage it all through a single environment: the Now Platform.Find out more about how you can shift from reactive troubleshooting to proactive optimization of applications.
New Virtual Agent integration automates time-consuming IT issues
Like much of the workforce, IT help desk teams have spent the past year implementing new tools and processes to adapt to the new world of hybrid work.Many, for example, have turned to virtual agents, AI-powered enterprise chatbot tools that allow employees to quickly resolve common IT issues. Yet, despite the promise of virtual agents, many IT teams still find themselves manually handling everyday incidents. Some of the most common are virtual application and desktop session “resets.”These resets can be caused by a variety of factors, such as networking issues, forgotten passwords, or misalignment with the IT organization’s chosen authentication policies. However, they all have one thing in common: They can be managed by virtual agents but are often still resolved by a slow, manual, IT help desk process.Relieving IT and empowering employeesToday, LIKE.TG and Citrix are introducing a new Virtual Agent integration to help relieve this burden for IT teams. Leveraging LIKE.TG® ITSM and powered by LIKE.TG IntegrationHub, the new solution plugs into the Citrix ITSM Connector app, allowing IT to automate the necessary reset actions within Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service.With this integration, reset incidents can be resolved in a matter of minutes rather than hours, empowering teams to deliver fast, AI-powered, self-service experiences to all employees—regardless of their location or even what personal productivity tools they use. From mobile devices to collaboration tools and regular browsers, LIKE.TG virtual agents are available when employees need them.The new integration helps solve a significant problem for IT organizations. Reset incidents are not only time-consuming, but they’re also expensive. For example, IT service desks at organizations may get more than 10,000 reset incidents per year that need to be resolved manually, draining productivity and taking hours to resolve. Powering productivityThrough this integration with Citrix, LIKE.TG is building on its commitment to advance automated self-service across the enterprise, powering employee productivity and reducing costs for enterprises.Poor employee experiences can have a dramatic downstream impact on customer experiences. Workers at healthcare providers, for example, need simple, secure, and consistent access to software for viewing authorized private patient records and appointment schedules. Slow resolution of IT incidents can impede patients’ ability to receive care, particularly when employees are working from home without access to another device.Brian Nuernberg, manager of IT service delivery at North Carolina-based healthcare network Novant Health, says the organization has been challenged by the IT demands generated by remote work, particularly given the broader healthcare delivery challenges created by the pandemic.“Secure and consistent access to Citrix Virtual Applications and Desktops so that employees have the appropriate level of access to key information is mission-critical,” he notes.“With the Citrix ITSM Connector, we’ve been able to reduce the number of incidents resolved manually by 25%. We expect to more than double that number initially with the new Virtual Agent integration and see it increase as adoption spreads across the organization to unlock more productivity for our employees and provide the best patient experiences.”The new integration is available now in ITSM Virtual Agent Conversations and the Citrix ITSM Connector from the LIKE.TG Store.
New ways to think about efficient customer service
How efficient is your customer service? Conventional wisdom says that reducing the time required to solve customer problems and increasing the number of customers served each day would indicate a rather efficient operation.Even so, you may be missing a huge opportunity to give your organization a competitive advantage.A recent report by Aberdeen suggests that the most savvy organizations are changing the focus of their customer service strategies to emphasize efficiency moves that benefit the customer and directly impact the bottom line.It’s all about convenienceStanding out in the marketplace – and reaping significant return on investment – requires making service interactions more efficient and convenient for customers across all channels. According to Aberdeen, firms that deliver effortless service experiences see as much as a four-fold annual increase in customer retention rates.But what exactly is convenience? The definition is subjective and depends on a customer’s expectations. While challenging to measure, what influences convenience can be measured by tracking the effort required to achieve a happy customer.Measuring customer efforts to get serviceCompanies typically measure customer effort by: Monitoring direct customer feedback Gathering customer behavioral data such as a decrease in product or service usage Harvesting operational data such as average wait time or handle time The goal, of course, is to reduce the amount of friction the customer encounters. Naturally, customers’ opinions of the service they receive tend to rise and fall with the amount of effort they had to expend to get their needs met.An example of what Aberdeen calls a “high effort”—i.e., inconvenient—customer service interaction is a website chatbot that is unable to resolve a customer issue, forcing the customer to call customer service and speak with a human.Making customer service convenient doesn’t happen by chanceAberdeen’s research shows companies that implement formal processes to reduce customer effort across all channels achieve significantly greater increases in annual customer satisfaction rates compared to organizations that don’t.And we all know what happy customers do: stay loyal. It’s never too late to start these customer-effort programs; Aberdeen also found that improving customer effort increases the chances that companies can win back customers who’ve left.Empowered customer service reps help customers to get service more easilyDon’t underestimate the power that fully enabled customer service reps have on customer loyalty. Aberdeen found companies that create formal programs, empower their employees to work efficiently, and give them the information they need to solve customer problems reported a 13% decrease in annual customer-service costs.How to start enabling effortless customer serviceTo create an effortless customer service program, first establish a unified view of customer insights across all channels and empower your employees with the tools and data they need to mine customer insights.Learn more about tools and solutions that can help you enable effortless customer service. In this on-demand webinar, you’ll learn how: convenience can drive customer service.
New world of work: The great re-evaluation
The “Great Resignation” put employees in the driver’s seat. A new LIKE.TG-commissioned survey suggests that Canadian workers are re-evaluating their workplace priorities.This has led to a shift in what Canadian workers demand from potential workplaces, forcing employers to reconsider their overall experience offerings.Canadian office workers now expect something more fulfilling and meaningful than a paycheck. In order to attract and retain talent in the new world of work, local employers must look beyond traditional workplace policies and compensations.In search of greater flexibility and fulfillmentAs companies move toward a hybrid work model, many employees are weary of the challenges caused by work-from-home (WFH) culture. Difficulty unplugging and increased burnout continue to be issues for many Canadians and are some of the top reasons office employees considered leaving their jobs. Despite that, employees did enjoy some of the perks of WFH, especially the freedom to work their preferred hours.Beyond the desire for more flexibility, Canadian office workers want digital tools that make everyday work simpler, easier, and faster. Specifically, they’d like machine learning to handle the tasks they find tedious.As artificial intelligence (AI) technology becomes more available and convenient, employees are looking to AI to automate their menial work tasks. AI offers the potential to decrease stress and burnout while freeing employees to focus on the more essential and fulfilling aspects of their jobs.Click the image below to see an infographic of our key findings from an online survey in Canada.Accessibility note: The infographic is transcribed at the end of this blog. The Great Re-Evaluation is underway. Canadian employers must evolve with employee expectations to attract top talent. Find out how LIKE.TG helps organizations prepare for and embrace the new world of work.Transcript of infographicThe Great Re-Evaluation Has BegunEmployee experience matters more than ever.Find out why employers need to meet evolved employee expectations to attract and retain talent.Cash is not kingIn the battle for talent, high salaries do not trump tedious work.71% of Canadian office workers would never take a frustrating or unrewarding job, even for higher pay.And...they also want purpose.In a time when people are rethinking what matters to them, there is an increasing trend to do work that is more meaningful and contributes to larger societal goals.Flexibility is desiredThe most attractive thing an employer could offer Canadian office workers is flexibility in work hours.48% of office employees say the freedom to work preferred hours would inspire them to move to a new organization.But...they also want to keep those hours reasonable.Increased burnout (32%) and increased work hours (28%) are the top reasons office workers would leave their current jobs.Let them unplugThe pandemic has created many challenges that continue two years later.41% – Difficulty unplugging is one of the top challenges of working remotely.27% – This is one of the top reasons Canadian office workers would leave their current job.Canadians are looking to AI to reduce stress and burnout and free up time.Canadian office workers feel the benefits of artificial intelligence include the potential to: Reduce stress – 46% Free up time – 33% Reduce burnout – 23% Solutions that help employees unplug are one of the most attractive things an employer could offer office workers.2 in 3 want their employers to invest more in solutions that reduce menial tasks.82% - 8 in 10 Canadian office workers see automation as the most beneficial application of AI at work, especially when used for IT services, computer backups, analytics and reporting, routine tasks, spreadsheet-based processes, and more.Good news—change is at your fingertipsIn 2022, AI is an accessible and powerful tool to make an employee’s work faster, easier, and more accurate.Discover how LIKE.TG can help drive the change Canadian office workers want to see.Start nowThis online survey was facilitated by Asking Canadians. The study was in field between Jan. 10 and 18, 2022, and surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,501 English and French-Canadian office workers working in companies with 500 or more employees.
New Year's resolution webinars with LIKE.TG’s leaders
As we enter the new year of 2021, tune in to hear from LIKE.TG leaders and learn about new ways to unlock innovation at work to manage change with instant agility, with this month’s two-part blog series.Now on Now: How LIKE.TG is changing IT self-service for its employeesThe right IT service management can greatly shape and influence employee engagement and productivity. After all, employees want to grow with their organization and a self‑service, frictionless interface that enables them to get work done provides an all‑around win‑win.Join our webinar and hear the Now on Now story. See how we’re changing IT self‑service for our employees: transforming our organization’s culture and improving the overall mindset in the process. You’ll learn how ITSM Professional on the Now Platform® empowers us to: Provide an employee‑centric, role‑based portal—improving efficiency and productivity Focus on making the digital employee experience a journey, not an endpoint Offer greater personalization, resulting in a more satisfying employee experience Now on Now: Achieving a 9.1 CSAT by delivering an integrated customer support experienceYou want to deliver convenient, responsive customer service—so do we at ServiceNow. By focusing on constantly innovating to resolve issues faster, today only 7% of our customers contact technical support via the telephone; the rest of our cases are submitted online.This shift to digital was carefully planned, based on a customer-centric strategy that combined service management technology with a strong self-service design. Now, our customers get the information and assistance they need when they need it, while our support engineers provide the highest quality support possible.Watch this Now on Now webinar and hear how we empowered our team to provide an effortless customer service experience. You’ll learn: Our customer support strategy, including how an integrated Now Platform® approach can speed up case resolution How machine learning, mobile, and other emerging digital technologies are improving support engineer productivity and customer self-service Best practices for how we matured the end-to-end customer support experience and reduced our time to relief by 50%, while seeing a 20% increase in case volume year-to-year Hosted by Luke Morris, Director of Customer Service Management, and Andrew Papparides, Head of Support Strategy.A successful CMDB deployment in five essential steps (CMDB Webinar Series)Having a healthy CMDB is key to a successful digital transformation, and there are five steps to deploying it. Watch the first of our three-part series on maintaining your CMDB as a trusted source and learning the essential role it plays in your organization’s modernization.You’ll learn how to master the CI identification process to handle multiple data sources feeding the CMDB and understand how to create identification rules with priority and related CIs. You’ll also learn: Why digital transformations fail and how a service-aware CMDB can help The five essential steps to deploying a CMDB successfully How AIOps helps prevent business service slowdowns and outages How to master the CI identification process Hosted by: Steve Emerson, advisory solution architect, IT Transformation Jason Miles, senior advisory solution architect, ITOM Lisa Wolfe, senior manager product marketing, ITOM
NextGen Program empowers students in Germany with real-world experience
One of the major problems facing the tech industry today is a shortage of workers with the needed skills and experience. This can lead to two undesirable situations: Recent graduates find it difficult to apply their knowledge when they enter the workforce. Businesses waste valuable time (and money) training new hires. To address these issues, the NextGen Program, a LIKE.TG initiative, works with LIKE.TG partners, customers, and educational institutions worldwide. The goal is to equip participants with skills that will allow them to access new career opportunities in the digital economy.At the Technical University of Munich (TUM), students undergo six weeks of training in the NextGen Program before engaging in corporate scenarios with LIKE.TG customers.“We designed this course so that students acquire theoretical and practical knowledge on real-world information systems, such as the Now Platform,” explains TUM Professor Helmut Krcmar. “By combining thorough trainings and practical challenges from German companies, we equip students with all hard and soft skills that they need in the future job market.” Bridging the experience gapNils Stukenbrok, a senior digital solution consultant at LIKE.TG, graduated from college three years ago. “In my experience, university is often too much theory and not enough practical experience,” he says.“What people forget is many university students haven’t actually worked with real company information systems, which are huge and often overwhelming,” adds Martin Kauschinger, a teaching assistant at TUM.“For example, you can easily add a new field or rule in a simulation, but if you do that in the real-world production environment, you’ll likely upset a few million records in the process,” he says. “It can be very difficult for students to adapt to that.”In collaboration with NextGen, Kauschinger and his teaching team are working to bridge this experience gap by giving students opportunities to work on solutions for real scenarios.“We teach them that in a real-world company scenario, things are different,” he says. “We have them working to corporate regulations on tight deadlines and give them actual responsibility over the project, just as an employer would in the real world.”Reaping resultsThe positive change Kauschinger sees in students taking part in the program speaks for itself. “It’s really great for their confidence,” he says. “And it’s lovely to see—not just for us at the university, but for our corporate partners. They’re always surprised to see what a young, motivated team can deliver when empowered to do so.”The course is designed with LIKE.TG partners and potential employers, such as Bayer and Merck, in mind. That means it’s customizable and can be tweaked each year to suit the ever-changing needs of the industry. “Last year, we made sure to include two challenges that centered around building service portals, because we knew it was the central focus for our partners at the time,” Kauschinger explains.“One of the main reasons partners are so keen to get involved is to get access to these highly skilled students,” he adds. “Last semester, one single company hired approximately half of the students. It’s a great opportunity for these young people to boost their job prospects.”Preparing for a better futureOne partner, CANCOM, confirmed it will integrate into its portal interface at least one of the solutions created by NextGen students.“The students demonstrated the value of the Now Platform UI framework to our organization with a working prototype,” notes Ronny Staude, a CANCOM solution architect.“We plan to use this prototype as a blueprint for our migration from the Service Portal to the new technology. It was exciting to see what is already possible without it even being released or documented for this use.”For Stukenbrok, this fulfills the true aim of the initiative. “I want to give students a better opportunity to build their practical experience than I had,” he says. “The solutions they’re creating are of such high quality, and they’re so valuable. It’s great to see that companies pick this up and run with it.”Find out more about how you can be part of the NextGen Program and help create a better future.
NextGen Program: Providing training and opportunities in tech
Imagine you spent the last decade as a helicopter mechanic and now you’re back in civilian life asking yourself, “What do I do now?” Imagine your family immigrated to a new country and it’s been hard to make ends meet—never mind chase your dreams. You could use a break. You just need a chance.For many, the LIKE.TG NextGen Program is that break. The program is part of our global impact efforts to create equitable opportunities and empower the workforce of the future with people traditionally excluded from technology. Participants receive no-cost technical and soft skills training to navigate the corporate environment. Graduates apply for roles with the thousands of companies in the LIKE.TG ecosystem.Ebony was the perfect candidate: She had the ambition to break into tech and just needed the chance. Ebony’s story is more than a journey. It’s an inspiration. Her experience includes everything from pursuing a career in psychology to being a mom living paycheck to paycheck. But when Ebony eventually found her way to the LIKE.TG NextGen Program to work in IT, she says it changed her life. Let’s meet Ebony and hear her experience firsthand.[We’re hiring! Visit careers]Meet EbonyI took the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test in high school to see what career would be the best fit, and they told me IT. At first, I thought it was a joke. When I was growing up, my family didn’t even have a computer.I went to college, got my degree in psychology, and started graduate school in psychometrics. With school loans piling up, I had to stop and find work. I went from working as a 911 dispatcher to a pharmacy tech. I even sold apartments. One day, I was looking at jobs and came across a posting that offered 16 weeks of training in tech, and it was free. That was the TechBridge Program for ServiceNow. I said to myself, “You know what, I’ll give it a shot. Why not?” I was one of 25 participants from 200 applications. I felt pretty special.Training “was no joke”TechBridge was pretty intense. Imagine knowing very little about web development and then being completely immersed in it. We started by learning HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, jQuery, and JavaScript in three weeks. Classes were nights and weekends. It was tough.There was a moment when I had $2 to my name. I had one child at home who was just surviving, and my other child unfortunately passed away when she was only two months old. It was around the time of her birthday and I was in grief, but I still had to go to class. I cried in the parking lot because even with all that was going on, I knew how badly I wanted this.I knew what I was doing would change my life. But I had doubts if I could make it. A classmate saw me crying and came over and gave me $20. I just broke down. He said, “Just keep going. You got it.” That act of kindness made me stronger and showed me I could do this.4 certifications in 5 monthsAnd I did! I earned four certifications in five months. I’m so grateful for the many people at TechBridge and LIKE.TG, and classmates who encouraged me.I took my first role at a big consulting company. Then, COVID-19 hit, and I was out of work. Now, I’m a system administrator at Wellstar. I work with performance analytics, which I love.This is the first field I’ve worked in where everyone is on your side. We’re all working together to make sure we’re able to live better than we did before, that we’re not worried about being one paycheck away from being homeless, that we know our families are OK and don’t have to struggle anymore. “Give us a chance”I think businesses should really look at the capabilities people have to offer and not just look at the last couple of positions they had, because they probably worked their butts off to get where they are right now.Give us a chance to show our skills, what we’re capable of. We have the willingness to learn, the willingness to try. You can have a great candidate who was like me—I just needed the access and opportunity to do well.Before LIKE.TG and TechBridge, I'd never had the opportunity to show my skills or afford things. Being able to get my daughter a savings account, that's big for me. Eventually, I will buy a home because I can actually do that now. All my journeys and hardships I experienced helped develop and mold me. I know I've been through the worst. If I can go through the worst, then there's nothing but up from here.Learn more about NextGen.
No going back: COVID-19 is catalyst for digital transformation
As the world begins to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more business leaders are focused on preparing for future crises. This is driving a workflow revolution as companies strive to stay both agile and resilient.Against that backdrop, LIKE.TG Chief Innovation Officer Dave Wright facilitated a panel of experts from the public sector, healthcare, and technology industries. Panelists agree what began as an emergency effort to manage a global health crisis has permanently altered what consumers and employees expect from businesses and government."There's no going back now," said Simon Brunger, divisional support director for Capita Software in England.[Unlock value on your digital transformation journey.]Pushing a digital-first mindsetWhen the outbreak began more than a year ago, companies and organizations had to shut down physical operations, forcing employees to work from home and consumers to do everything via mobile devices.Joseph Cevetello, chief information officer for the city of Santa Monica in California, said the city had to lay off 30% of its workforce. But, in a way, Cevetello had already been preparing for that moment.When he started the CIO job two years ago, he was amazed the city exclusively relied on paper. Santa Monica's 311 mobile app, which allowed citizens to report problems, wasn’t connected to any back-office systems. Using the Now Platform, Cevetello digitized many of the city's services, enabling Santa Monica to save 130,000 employee hours and millions of dollars.Since the city closed its offices, the pandemic has forced more citizens to use those digital services. Cevetello doesn't expect that will change once the pandemic subsides. If anything, the pandemic has narrowed the gap between what people expect of government and what they expect of business, he said."The key here is appreciating that in an Amazon world, what does a government look like? If an entity like Amazon could transform, say, the permitting process, and they can do it better than us, why do we need to do it?” he asked."How can we become more like Amazon? How can we have a frictionless environment where people get what they need, and they get out?"Improving the patient experienceMichael Warden, senior director of business IT for Michigan Medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said the pandemic challenged the notion that physical space is always the focal point of healthcare.For example, COVID-19 forced large numbers of patients, many of whom would normally prefer to see their doctors in person, to communicate through virtual platforms. Now that patients know they can receive effective care remotely, necessity will turn into preference, Warden said."Those patients are going to expect a very, very different level of digital interaction with Michigan as a healthcare provider," he added.COVID-19 also demonstrated that hospitals can quickly run out of space. In future pandemics, Warden said, hospitals can rely on remote devices to monitor patients at home while preserving beds for those who need them most."We will have more capacity for that new patient that's coming in with an emergency diagnosis if the one that we just discharged can be monitored better at home," he said.Expanding the talent poolThe pandemic has helped companies innovate in unexpected ways. Going 100% remote actually helped Capita Software better identify talent within its ranks, Brunger said."I definitely think there's been a change in mindset in that we've tapped into skills that we had previously discounted because of unconscious or geographical bias," he explained. "Instead of just looking at people in a physical office, you can cast your net further and give more opportunities to more people."Keeping the momentumNow that COVID-19 has validated digital services and accelerated demand, it's up to companies and organizations to keep pace, the panel agreed."As we come out of COVID, the question is, “How do we not let go of that willingness to rapidly innovate?" Warden asked. "How do we sustain the momentum? There's a real appreciation for the speed to deliver, without going back to older practices."LIKE.TG, the LIKE.TG logo, Now, and other LIKE.TG marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of LIKE.TG, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company names, product names, and logos may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
Non-Traditional Benefits That Attract and Retain Top Talent
The best workers do the best and the most work. But many companies do an awful job of finding and keeping them. It is becoming harder to attract and retain top talent working within your business. Financial rewards are one thing, and a lot of companies simply increase the pay offered to try and attract the best talent, but this isn’t the only possible solution. If you don’t have the money to do this, or you want to find alternative ways to attract talent, there are things you can do, and methods that you can pursue to make yourself an attractive employer. One of these methods is benefit programs such as retirement benefits, health insurance plans, paid time off, equity, and many more. They can have a significant impact on employee engagement and retention. Volunteering and Community Engagement Opportunities This is all about fulfillment. Giving employees the chance to give back to their communities and organizations that matter to them can help boost employee satisfaction, which benefits your bottom line. When employees are dissatisfied with their jobs, not only do they suffer individually, but the firm as a whole may suffer as well. As a result, businesses may lose productivity and have more staff turnover, both of which can be exceedingly costly. Financial and Estate Planning Services According to a recent survey, 22% of American workers reported lower productivity at work as a result of financial issues, and 12% missed work because of financial stress. Consider including a financial wellness program in your employee benefits package to help your employees relieve financial stress and position themselves to start saving for their future retirement. A financial wellness program, like other wellness programs, strives to enhance employees' financial health, reduce stress, and improve their general well-being. This is a fantastic method for making staff happier, as it is a way to provide a benefit they may not have even known they need. A lot of employees never think of their financial and estate planning, but it is crucial that they do at some stage. Providing access to an estate planning lawyer, financial education resources and providing free advice can be as good as money in the bank, as it gives your employees the chance to work out what to do with their money for the best. Mental Health Resources The world is waking up to mental health. All of us have mental health and all of us need to consider how we can look after it. A supportive employer can make all the difference. If you don’t have somebody on your side willing to help you to find the best support it can be all the more difficult. Employers can provide support in so many different ways. It makes perfect sense to create support networks within companies to allow people to discuss their needs, but you might also bring in other services such as therapists to help your employees to get in the right frame of mind. Mental health resources may also include numbers people can call when they feel low and methods of coping with stress in their daily life. Within your business, you can create a resource for your employees to access the information they need. In-office Massages Working in a stressful environment? Massages have been proven to help with this, and are a fun way to reward your employees. They’ll be especially happy if they get an extra break in which they can get massaged. In-office massages don’t have to be something that makes people feel awkward, as simple head and shoulder massages at the desk can give people a nice little break and a chance to relax while they are at work. Small gestures like these from an employer show that they care and are thinking of new ways to improve the office experience. Childcare Reimbursement Very often childcare is expensive and can be a big consideration for employees. If they have a young family, why not think of introducing some sort of childcare scheme or reimbursement so that they can get their children looked after without it having to cost them unreasonable amounts of money. A lot of companies strike deals with childcare businesses and this can be a way to keep costs down while supporting multiple employees and their young families. Wellness Programs Wellness programs can help people to work on their mental and physical health and wellness. This is a way for you to help ensure that your employees are as happy as they can be and healthy while they are at work. As well as providing mental health resources and health benefits for those who may be struggling, wellness programs are the chance for you to help people to keep their mental health and sometimes their physical health on an even keel. It is best if they are optional and people can choose whether or not they are going to take part, but for some employees, this kind of care from the company they work for can make a big difference. Job Shadowing Send your employees to be part of another team inside your company for a day to a week. Not only will this serve as a platform to learn new skills, but it will also give them valuable insight into the corporate structure and operations of a completely different team. Flexible Fridays Agile Fridays can come in a few different forms. Often, it means allowing people to work from home instead of having to come into the office, reducing work hours in summer, or allowing flexible work hours to let the employees maintain the work-life balance. Employees appreciate not having to deal with the awkwardness of the commute and being able to spend their day at home. While not every career makes working from home possible, many do, and you can give your employees remote work options if your company doesn’t need people to be at a specific place. Even if you can’t, why not relax some of the rules for this day such as the company dress code, to create a more chilled atmosphere? 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!
Not a customer revolution, it’s customer evolution
The fourth industrial revolution is the crucible of customer evolution.As long as people have needs, perceptions and aspirations, change is inevitable. More so in business, where every idea is conceived and crafted to address people’s needs, and add value to their lives. Without this kernel of need, neither creativity nor innovation can exist. People’s needs fuel development. In the late 1700s, the need to make three square meals available and affordable to a growing population set the ball rolling on the agrarian revolution. Soon people were able to save more money, which was now available to purchase other things they needed, like clothing. This fuelled breakthroughs in spinning and weaving, which made textile manufacturing more efficient and expedient. People believed in the viability of these changes and investors backed the setting up of huge factories. People who once farmed or worked in small trades at home or close to home, saw the opportunity for gainful employment and moved closer to these factories to work there. The first industrial revolution had begun.People’s perceptions drive purchases. Emboldened by benefitting from the industrial revolution, people had begun to address their perceived needs, and not just the basics of food and clothing. Consumerism was nascent. People put their faith in industrialization and factories mushroomed to produce more goods. These goods needed to reach people and here arose the need for efficient energy sources and transportation systems. Inventions like the steam engine and the discovery of electricity provided solutions, and ushered the second industrial revolution. Though markets were stocked with consumables, people were largely unaware and marketing plugged this gap with simple advertising. The focus was to make people aware and keep them informed about consumables on offer and the needs they met.People’s aspirations inspire inventions. The social changes of the first two industrial revolutions raised the bar on people’s expectations. They were more secure and confident about meeting their basic and perceived needs. This level of well-being gave people the opportunity to address their aspirational needs. Primary among them was the need for a better quality life, one with more time on hand to enjoy it. People needed a way to speed up mundane and automate repetitive tasks. This inspired the invention of the computer and the emergence of computing, facilitating automation and data-driven processes. The third industrial revolution went on to change the way people worked and lived. Marketing and advertising too, had to evolve to keep pace with digitization and the changes it brought to the electronic media.We’re in the midst of Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution, which began twenty years ago with a new idea called the Internet. The technology then was rudimentary. People relied on the dial-up modem that worked at a snail’s pace, and iffy connections that promised scant stability. Not surprisingly, the Internet was perceived as an ‘also ran’ or an add-on advertising medium that could at best offer more dynamic content than print. It was seen as less of a disruption and more as a medium of marketing. Customers are people whose evolutionary journey as customers, has only recently gained momentum. For nearly 300 years customers were seen as people who would find businesses when they needed specific products and services. Until the end of the 1900s, customers were completely reliant on business to address their specific needs. The story of customer evolution began with the technological advances made in the last twenty years, like mobile telephony and the Internet. In retrospect, we know these advances and breakthroughs together with digital convergence was the driving force of the fourth industrial revolution. IT changed the face of communication and the way customers were perceived by industry. Customer 1.0 witnessed the birth of the dot.com. People were not tech savvy but they were curious and extremely patient. Whether it was for the dial-up connection or a webpage to load, people waited, willingly. So at first, businesses stuck to brochure-like websites to market and promote their goods and services. If there was a focus to this effort it was to get the customer to make a phone call or visit the store. Even the search engine was seen as a simple tool that could sift through piles of digital brochures and scanned images to help people find what they were looking for. Whether Web-crawler, Alta Vista, Lycos or Ask Jeeves, search engines could only help people when they knew exactly what they were looking for. Businesses continued to believe that people who felt a need for their products and services will move to find them. To this end, marketing and advertising had gone from informing people about products, to establish and reinforce to the people, their needs for these products.Customer 2.0 was empowered by the worldwide web. The web had become a communication channel that was quick and interactive. Businesses got creative about using the Internet as a pivot to increase sales and provide support. While in their new avatar, people turned to information for a better advantage. They explored their choices and looked for new options that had earlier been too unlikely. It wasn’t long before ‘internet-businesses’ like Lyft, Amazon, eBay or match.com mushroomed, challenging traditional business models and economics. All the same businesses still perceived their customer base as a multitude of faceless people, a one-size-fits-all being. Though challenged by change and the need to innovate, businesses still continued to believe that the people who needed their product or service would find them and reach out.Customer 3.0 plays hard to get. As an empowered being who has made the transition from acquiescing to companies, to being a harbinger of change in the consumer market, this customer can afford to play hard to get. They are widely connected, well-informed, and part of a generation that shares experiences about anything and everything. Businesses looking to stay relevant know how important this evolved customer is. Customer 3.0 loathes the idea that one-size-fits-all and gives mass marketing and mass media a wide berth. Free from the restriction of having companies deciding when, where and how they can make their purchases, they demand much more and better. This customer expects business to come find them and when they do, these customers expect to be engaged effectively and immediately. Customer 3.0 is in the driver’s seat and business is gearing up to keep pace.To find and engage Customer 3.0, businesses must:Accept that CX and purchase decisions are measured at all customer touch-pointsAdapt operating models based on the standpoints of your customers.Action CX with advances and trends in retail, gaming, search and mobile technology.Defining Customer 3.0 as an individual would be both right and wrong. This customer is very individualistic. At the same time this customer is not of any specific age, social class or gender mix. However, they are similar in their ability to accept, adopt and apply new technologies to satisfy individual needs.Recognising Customer 3.0 is not difficult even with their diversity of personalities and profiles. These people share distinctive traits and display similar attributes that set them apart from previous generations. Well informed. They are comfortable with new technology and media and clued-in about the value and power of information. This customer is in the habit of gathering information that ranges from features, prices, testimonials and cx stories to help them be better informed about their choices before they make a purchase decision.Price savvy. These people know that price is not always about money. To them it’s more about better value for money. Surprisingly, it has nothing to do with brand loyalty. The prize here is in getting more value for a better price. For this savvy customer that can be quite a rush and it can get addictive quite quickly. This leaves them in a state of perpetual yearning for the next good deal they can make.The loyalty marketing association, notes only 21% shop for brand over price and 64% of people will go 5-10 minutes out of their way to secure a better price.Socially visible. No other generation of people has worked so hard at being socially visible or gone so far to present themselves as they’d like to be perceived by the world. Social media makes this possible. It is a behemoth that can decide the fate of people and business. Though there’s no telling what people will take to, it’s quite clear it needs to be something that grabs their attention and/or imagination. There’s seemingly little to explain why Orkut took a dive while Facebook soared? Or who will come out on top of the online shopping business? This new media is a great leveler and on it bad news travels faster and makes its own rules.Social media accounts for 20% of PC time and 30% of mobile time.100 million+ people take a social action like, likes, shares, comments, on social media every week.Smartphone users spend 25% of their browsing time on social networking sites.Faith in the crowd. The opinion of others has become increasingly important to this new customer. Especially when it comes to purchase decisions and popular choices about anything that business or media propagates about goods and services. They’d much rather trust other customers than take the word of business. Ratings and likes can be the difference between choosing one business over the other. There are some who argue that this customer can be easily manipulated with the right triggers. The counterpoint is that this customer is media-literate and prefers the opinions of real people to avoid manipulation.According to Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising report, which surveyed more than 28,000 internet respondents in 56 countries: 70% of global consumers survey indicated they trust messaging online – an increase of 15% in four years.Shoppers prefer online ratings and reviews by a 4:1 margin to advice from store employees.80% of people participate in online communities to help others.Only 14% of customers trust advertisements but 78% of customers trust peer recommendations.Needs validation. The reason social media will remain relevant for a long while to come is because the new generation of customer likes to self promote. For them this is an almost primal instinct, to feel alive and relevant in the world they choose to be connected with. No matter if it’s not directly in person, but once removed across a tech platform. Facebook status updates, like Twitter and Instagram posts are testament to the fact that human beings crave acknowledgement, approval and appreciation. Social media taps into this need for self validation.Facebook has over one billion monthly active users and 2.5 billion content shares per day.Wants it here and now. Obsessed with “being in the now” and driven by the fear of missing out, this customer cannot wait. With the Internet serving to save time and money and social media powering the voice of the customer worldwide, these customers want what they want and they want it now. They subscribe to the belief that it is the customer’s prerogative to decide on time and place of purchase or delivery. Plus with the convergence of tech they also expect round-the-clock support. Forrester (2010) has suggested up to 57% of US consumers are likely to abandon an online purchase if an answer to a question is not immediately forthcoming.No security concerns. Data security and privacy does not concern many young customers today. Born and raised in the era of rampant marketing, advertising and promotion, they have made their peace with it. Even in the face of potential threats like viruses and phishing attacks, Customer 3.0 freely uploads large tracts of data about their personal lives. They feel no twinge of regret about their personal and professional experiences in the public domain. This devil may care approach is not restricted to events but also includes payments and purchases. The converse of which was true in the last decade when customers were wary of internet payments.Once you’ve traced the evolutionary journey of Customer 3.0 it is not difficult to understand this diverse collective of individuals, unified by their willingness to accept change and adopt new ideas with elan. This can serve as a base framework for businesses looking to build viable customer personas to craft better customer experiences.
Now at Work 2020: The future of work is now
Each year, I look forward to Now at Work. When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, though, you look forward to some years more than others. Fortunately, this is one of those years, and the reason why is right there in its name.Has there ever been a more exciting time to explore what’s happening now at work?That’s what we are doing today, and it starts with our keynote where we discuss two sides of the same coin: how digital workflows, specifically those included in the Paris release of the Now Platform, enable a dispersed workforce while simultaneously guiding us back to the workplace safely.I’ll leave the latter story to LIKE.TG’s Head of Workplace Services, Robert Teed. To set the stage for Now at Work 2020, it’s interesting to consider the history of modern work.Decoupling “how” we work from “where”For more than 150 years, work patterns changed very little. Even as technology advanced, we maintained organizational designs—employees working the same hours from the same places—that first arose when the advent of steam power brought workers to centralized factories.Then, in the blink of an eye, that shifted. In this new world of work, “how” we work is decoupled from “where” we work. Today, we are simply working—wherever and whenever we choose. In my Now at Work keynote, I explore what that means and what’s required for it to continue.One thing has become clear during this global experiment: whether your employees remain remote or return to the workplace, digital workflows and technology are the key to success in the COVID economy and beyond.Together, they enable the agility and visibility organizations need to emerge from this pandemic bigger and better than before. And they play an important part in the new organizational structures replacing our old, often inflexible ways of working.Digital workflows deliver a 21st century organizationThe pandemic has opened everyone’s eyes to the value of digital transformation and the cost of manual, rigid processes.COVID-19 has forced companies to accelerate these transformations and become 21st century tech-enabled organizations. Most are more resilient as a result, with happier, more productive employees. We have the opportunity to fundamentally reimagine how work, works for every single person. There is no going back.That’s our role at ServiceNow. The Now Platform digitizes manual processes and connects enterprise siloes so that work flows smoothly across your organization. In doing so, we deliver great experiences for employees and customers alike.The Paris release continues that story, but it’s also our furthest step yet towards becoming the workflow engine of the entire enterprise. With it, organizations can improve business continuity, enhance productivity, and pursue new growth opportunities.Automating business continuityAccording to an IDC survey of over 900 global IT leaders, business continuity is the number one priority for most IT leaders. The Paris release automates business continuity programs so employees can focus on closing gaps, addressing organizational changes, and working with stakeholders to increase resiliency.I’m particularly interested in our new Process Optimization feature, which looks beyond data in a system to the data around processes executed within that system. That helps identify bottlenecks and fix processes that aren’t obviously broken but could be significantly strengthened. It’s all automated so organizations can continuously improve their processes.Automation also defines our Advanced Risk Assessment and Business Continuity Management features. By continuously assessing risk, these tools help organizations anticipate and minimize disruptions.Enhancing productivityImproved business continuity tends to support business productivity, but the Paris release also introduces features that boost productivity directly. Here I’ll highlight three innovations that deliver smarter experiences through intelligent, cross-enterprise workflows.Process Automation Designer, for example, allows employees to easily create and manage cross-enterprise workflows, which makes it easy to handle processes like onboarding and customer complaints.Predictive Intelligence Workbench helps organizations add artificial intelligence to these workflows. IT can deploy machine learning models with zero coding skills that then guide employees and automate workflows.Lastly, Vulnerability and Assignment Recommendations uses AI to route software vulnerabilities to the right owners.Driving growthThe Paris release also includes features to help companies optimize their spending.Software Asset Management helps organizations do so by monitoring SaaS usage across applications accessed via Microsoft Azure. Our Hardware Asset Management tool performs a similar task for hardware assets. The new Cloud Insights solution generates advice on how to optimize Azure spend.These products are valuable in and of themselves, but the real message is not product specific. It’s the way smart organizations are using workflows to surface information, automate mundane tasks, and prepare for a world forever reshaped by COVID-19.
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