客服系统
Announcing the 2024 LIKE.TG partners of the year
After a year of innovation and incredible momentum, I’m delighted to announce the 2024 LIKE.TG partners of the year. These awards recognize the dedication and investment our partners have made to expand the LIKE.TG ecosystem in 2023.Our partners showed up in a major way this year, putting their innovation on display and bringing LIKE.TG products to market in new and exciting ways. We see you, and we’re proud of the future we’re building together.This year we launched our first self-nominated awards: Transformation Partner of the Year and Innovation Partner of the Year. The submissions told us each partner’s unique story, painting a picture that goes far beyond pure numbers. Partners stepped up and showed us how they made the world work better with LIKE.TG, innovating and transforming at every turn.Alongside the new awards, we expanded the winner’s package to amplify and accelerate their success. These benefits will unlock new opportunities for our award winners, expanding their business with LIKE.TG and generating new demand for their services or offerings.It’s my honor to introduce this year’s winners.Momentum awardsTransformation Partner of the YearThe Transformation Partner of the Year award winners challenged the status quo by making the world work better with LIKE.TG® technology. These partners created true transformation, identifying and solving real-world issues by selling and deploying multiple LIKE.TG product lines or workflows to improve experiences for our customers.
Worldwide winner: Infosys | finalists: Samsung SDS, Accelare Inc.
Americas: Samsung SDS | finalists: Accelare Inc., Servos LLC
APAC: InputZero | finalists: Accenture, Deloitte
EMEA: Deloitte | finalists: EY, Wipro
Japan: Accenture | finalists: Deloitte, Blueship
Innovation Partner of the YearThe Innovation Partner of the Year award recognizes the Build Partner that developed and launched the most innovative application or integration on the Now Platform®.
Worldwide winner: Microsoft | finalists: Samsung SDS, RapDev
RiseUp with LIKE.TG Partner of the YearThe RiseUp with LIKE.TG Partner of the Year award winner prioritized expanding its employees’ skills beyond the standard capabilities, put yes to work, and capitalized on helping workers RiseUp with LIKE.TG.
Worldwide winner: Fujitsu | finalists: Cognizant, GlideFast Consulting
LIKE.TG Impact™ Partner of the YearThe LIKE.TG Impact Partner of the Year award winner accelerated customers’ return on investment through selling LIKE.TG Impact.
Worldwide winner: Accenture | finalists: Deloitte, Infosys
Partner program awardsGlobal Elite Partner of the YearGlobal Elite partners demonstrated the highest level of capabilities and success measures across all geographies.
Worldwide winner: EY | finalists: Accenture, Deloitte
Americas: EY | finalists: Deloitte, Accenture
APAC: Deloitte
EMEA: Deloitte | finalists: Accenture, DXC Technology
Consulting and Implementation Partner of the YearConsulting and Implementation Partner of the Year award winners delivered the best implementations for the Now Platform, including consultation, transformation, deployment, and adoption.Elite Partners Segment
Americas: Infocenter | finalists: GlideFast Consulting, Thirdera
APAC: Fujitsu | finalist: inMorphis
EMEA: Devoteam | finalists Infosys, agineo GmbH
Premier Partners Segment
Americas: CRI Advantage | finalists: Slalom Consulting, EchoStor Technologies
APAC: InfoBeans
EMEA: SOLVVision AG | finalists: Media Solutions GmbH, PlanHorizon
Specialist Partners Segment
Americas: Dell Technologies | finalists: esolutionsONE Inc., XenTegra LLC
APAC: MFEC PLC
EMEA: CloudSpirit | finalists: Lutech SpA, Bynet Data Communications
Japan: AccentureService Provider Partner of the YearService Provider Partner of the Year award winners each created differentiation in the market and discovered an individual path to success by excelling in operations and management of LIKE.TG-licensed instances for their clients.Elite Partners Segment
Americas: Cognizant | finalists: Infosys, LTIMindtree
APAC: Infosys
EMEA: Infosys | finalists: T-Systems, Fujitsu
Premier Partners Segment
Americas: Leidos | finalists: Synoptek, ManTech International Corp.
EMEA: FROX AG | finalists: Automize A/S, Empedus
Specialist Partners Segment
Americas: Gainwell Technologies | finalists: Insight Direct USA, LSY Defense
EMEA: British Telecommunications | finalists: POPX, akquinet GmbH
Reseller Partner of the YearReseller Partner of the Year award winners successfully drove sales of LIKE.TG products and packaged LIKE.TG professional services.Elite Partners Segment
Americas: CDW | finalists: Computer Design Integration, SHI International Corp.
APAC: Fujitsu | finalist: InputZero
EMEA: Plat4mation | finalists: Devoteam, agineo GmbH
Premier Partners Segment
Americas: Connection | finalists: Ipsum Technologies, Yssy
APAC: Nexus Technologies Inc. | finalist: NCS
EMEA: Mediro ICT | finalists: Empedus, e-Xim IT S.A.
Specialist Partners Segment
Americas: XenTegra | finalists: Insight Direct USA, Precision Task Group Inc.
APAC: MFEC PLC
EMEA: Softcat | finalists: Lutech SpA, Byte Software Services
Japan: FujitsuLIKE.TG Store Partner of the YearLIKE.TG Store Partner of the Year award winners are Build Partners who best distributed applications and drove revenue for the Now Platform on the LIKE.TG Store.
Americas: Bravium Consulting Inc.
APAC: CourseLoop
EMEA: AutomatePro
Build Partner of the YearThe Build Partner of the Year award winner developed the best integrations with the Now Platform and other systems to create seamless user experiences.
Worldwide winner: Microsoft
Rising Star Partner of the YearRising Star Partner of the Year award winners demonstrated exceptional year-over-year growth in emerging country markets.
Americas: Ipsum Technologies | finalists: HandCloud S.A. de C.V., Sellcom Solutions
APAC: InputZero | finalist: TMLabs
EMEA: Konversational | finalist: Devoteam, Base-IT
Japan: Blueship
U.S. Federal Partner of the YearThe U.S. Federal Partner of the Year award winner demonstrated commitment to the values of LIKE.TG by expanding its business portfolio to sell to the U.S. federal government.
Americas: Intact Technology | finalists: KPMG, Deloitte
Better together awardsBuilt With LIKE.TG Offering Partner of the YearThe Built With LIKE.TG Offering Partner of the Year award winner developed unique, repeatable service offerings that solve specific business problems, provide customer value, and drive net-new implementation service(s) revenue.
Worldwide winner: Deloitte | finalists: EY, Accenture, Infosys
Built On LIKE.TG Solution Partner of the YearThe Built On LIKE.TG Solution Partner of the Year award winner accelerated customer return on investment by combining its intellectual property and experience with the Now Platform or LIKE.TG products to bring differentiated, repeatable, subscription-based solutions to market.
Worldwide winner: Samsung SDS
Domain expertise awardsEmployee Workflow Partner of the YearThese award winners used the power of the Now Platform to improve employee experience and increase productivity with time-saving self-service and guided journeys.
Worldwide winner: Deloitte | finalists: KPMG, Thirdera
Americas: NewRocket | finalists: Deloitte
APAC: Deloitte
EMEA: KPMG | finalists – Deloitte, agineo GmbH
Japan: Rococo
Customer Workflow Partner of the YearThese partners used the Now Platform to deliver frictionless customer experience, speed and convenience that exceeded expectations, and a reduced cost to serve.
Worldwide winner: Thirdera | finalists: Deloitte, KPMG
Americas: GlideFast Consulting | finalists: Deloitte, Thirdera
APAC: Fujitsu
EMEA: Devoteam | finalists: DXC Technology, KPMG
Japan: NTT Communications
Creator Workflow Partner of the YearThese award winners applied the low-code app development and hyperautomation capabilities of the Now Platform to modernize legacy processes and extend workflow automation enterprisewide.
Worldwide winner: Deloitte | finalist: Atos
Americas: KPMG | finalists: NewRocket, GlideFast Consulting
APAC: Fujitsu | finalist: Deloitte
EMEA: DXC Technology | finalists: Deloitte, Devoteam
Japan: System Support Inc.
Technology Workflow Partner of the YearThese partners accelerated digital transformation for our joint customers, delivering always-on digital services, amazing user experiences, increased security, and reduced risk.
Worldwide winner: EY | finalists: Deloitte, KPMG
Americas: CDW | finalists: GlideFast Consulting, Deloitte
APAC: Fujitsu | finalist: EY
EMEA: Accenture | finalists: Deloitte, DXC Technology
Japan: Hitachi Solutions
Industry Partner of the YearThe Industry Partner of the Year award winners used LIKE.TG to create unique and compelling offerings that positively affected the partners’ respective industries across multiple regions.
Emerging industry: Coforge | finalists: Deloitte, Thirdera
Financial services: EY | finalists: Accenture, Deloitte
Telco: Infosys | finalists: Prodapt, Accenture
Healthcare: Deloitte | finalists: Accenture, KPMG
Manufacturing: EY | finalists: Deloitte, Accenture
Public sector: Deloitte | finalists: Servos, Accenture, KPMG
Congratulations to all the award winners! We look forward to seeing what you come up with next.Find out more about LIKE.TG partner awards.
GenAI in customer experience: Powering the future today
ChatGPT captured our collective imagination when it burst into the mainstream last year, setting off a hype cycle that hasn’t abated.The enterprise is where generative AI (GenAI) will become more than tech’s newest shiny object. GenAI is transforming the way we work, unlocking new efficiencies, driving productivity, and creating employee and customer experiences we never could have imagined.LIKE.TG is at the forefront of this transformation. As a company, we’ve been at this for a long time. AI is deeply embedded in the DNA of the Now Platform®, so it only makes sense for us to embrace GenAI in customer experience.Our three latest GenAI innovations—flow generation, Now Assist in Virtual Agent, and Now Assist for Field Service Management—represent an evolution of AI capabilities we’ve been building for years. This expansion, combined with the capabilities in the Now Platform Vancouver release, makes it clear that the promise of enterprise GenAI is not some distant future state. It's happening right now at companies across the globe.GenAI solutions to meet the momentI have the privilege of meeting with LIKE.TG customers all over the world, and one thing is universal: Customers are under pressure. In the face of continued macro turbulence, they’re being asked to do more with less. Their digital transformation mandates remain unchanged.Customers turn to us to drive efficiency, productivity, and agility. They need solutions that augment their workforce and spur experiences that delight customers and employees alike.LIKE.TG® GenAI solutions are designed to meet this moment. The GenAI capabilities in this latest release help unlock the potential of customers’ existing workforces and power experiences that were previously unimaginable.Flow generation, for example, accelerates workflow automation using GenAI to generate workflow blueprints. The new solution helps admins and developers convert plain text into low-code workflows, freeing them from building flow automation from scratch and speeding up development at scale.
We’re deploying Now Assist, LIKE.TG’s GenAI experiences, in more workflows to provide even better customer experiences. Now Assist in Virtual Agent delivers a more natural, conversational chat experience for both customers and employees. The result is increased deflection rates, better self-service, and fast, more relevant support.With Now Assist for Field Service Management, customers can simplify data entry and summarize work orders. This is a game changer for technicians in the field.Customer-driven innovationFar from a magic bullet, GenAI must be strategically designed and deployed in the enterprise to deliver meaningful outcomes. That requires understanding your customers and their customers.That’s why customers are a critical part of the way we innovate. I see it as a partnership. Our customers’ job is to tell us how we can help solve their problems and to give us honest feedback. Our job is to listen and innovate on their behalf.This spirit of partnership is a major driver of AI Lighthouse, a first-of-its-kind program created alongside NVIDIA and Accenture to accelerate GenAI adoption in the enterprise. Global digital services leader Teleperformance recently joined AI Lighthouse to develop even more GenAI use cases.We also partnered with Cognizant to propel AI adoption across industries, and we joined forces with Deloitte to integrate GenAI capabilities with next-generation managed services. We’re letting customers in under the hood to collaborate on custom large language models, applications, and capabilities that put AI to work for them.
A skills revolutionGenAI will be a force multiplier for the workforce, enhancing productivity and ushering in a new age of exponential performance. A new age requires new skills. LIKE.TG has committed to skill 1 million people on the Now Platform by the end of 2024 via RiseUp with LIKE.TG. We recently launched two Now Learning courses that help provide foundational skills for the GenAI revolution:
Introduction to Generative AI is our crash course in GenAI fundamentals. This short, impactful program introduces key concepts about what GenAI is, how it works, and how it's changing industries and communities. It’s a perfect jumping-off point for beginners.
Now Assist Essentials, for more advanced learners, teaches developers, implementers, and LIKE.TG administrators how to add GenAI into their workflows.
The GenAI revolution is accelerating an existing trend. Instead of rigid job qualifications, skills are fast becoming the new workforce currency. LIKE.TG helps future-proof the workforce by focusing on building the right skills, including skills to be successful in a GenAI world.What excites me most about GenAI is that it’s no longer simply about the promise of the technology. It’s about the impact. With our GenAI expansion and the capabilities in the Vancouver release, it’s clearer than ever that enterprise GenAI is here to stay. Our customers can put AI to work today, not tomorrow.Find out more about GenAI experiences on the Now Platform.
How LIKE.TG Uses GRC to Reduce 66% of our SOX Administrative Burden
Corporate Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) are disciplines that touch many areas of a business, from financial reporting and regulatory controls to data privacy and vendor management. While GRC activities typically take place behind the scenes, a compliance issue can become front page news in an instant. Manual processes alone are not an effective way to ensure compliance or manage risk exposure. Given the pace of business today, process automation, real-time analytics and self-service must be brought into the mix. LIKE.TG uses its Governance, Risk, and Compliance portfolio—built on the Now Platform ® —to manage a wide array of compliance activities such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), cyber security, data privacy, and audit management. To illustrate this, let’s take a closer look at how we manage SOX compliance.In the past at LIKE.TG, all SOX compliance activities—data gathering, documentation, communication, and reporting—were done manually with spreadsheets, PowerPoint, and email. This was time-consuming and inefficient, and there was always the risk of something slipping through the cracks. Senior Director of Internal Audit, Andrew Wheatley, and Director of IT Audit, Hassan Javed, led the move to an automated solution. Today, LIKE.TG ® Governance, Risk, and Compliance helps the entire process with these key capabilities:
Continuous controls monitoring and automated evidence collection for efficiency and scale
Automated self-service workflows with easy-to-use interfaces to enable business owners to participate in and help drive the compliance process
Performance Analytics dashboards to track audit activities, monitor enterprise compliance, and provide real-time insights and up-to-date reports on the status of the security landscape
Automatic management of 110 corporate policies in GRC, and communication and consumption by the enterprise through our service portal
The following metrics demonstrate the value of automating SOX compliance with LIKE.TG Governance, Risk, and Compliance:
24X7 assurance through continuous monitoring and event-based alerts to trigger timely action
A 66% reduction in quarterly control certification through automated surveys and real-time monitoring
An 85% reduction in time to track status due to real-time reporting and dashboards, along with a 90% reduction in time to coordinate with external auditors
$500,000 in annual savings through continuous controls monitoring, automated workflows and real-time dashboards (see screenshot)
In addition, the solution addresses three key strategic priorities:
Improved Business Velocity – Monitor controls continuously with automated evidence collection that helps accelerate the compliance process and keeps the SOX team on schedule.
Better Visibility and Insight – Performance Analytics dashboards and reports provide real-time visibility into compliance activities, giving the audit team, external auditors, and management instant access to program status and data. Dashboards also provide a means for the audit team to identify, prioritize, and address gaps and areas of risk before they can impact the program.
Enhanced Experience – Automated self-service workflows and response activities (task and issue management) make things considerably easier for the SOX team, allowing them to be proactive rather than reactive, and freeing them up to focus on high-value audit activities rather than repetitive and administrative tasks. Self-service dashboards and easy-to-use interfaces enable the business to play their part in SOX compliance.
Given the ever-changing regulatory landscape, the need for automated GRC solutions will only continue to grow within ServiceNow. Our Cloud Infrastructure team, which manages the LIKE.TG instances for our customers, uses LIKE.TG Governance, Risk, and Compliance to ensure ongoing compliance with security certifications, government regulations, and international standards, such as ISO 27001, FedRAMP, and SSAE 16. Increasing partner ecosystems and access to corporate networks present their own unique issues and risks, which our recently introduced Vendor Risk Management application is designed to address.I look forward to sharing more Now on Now stories that show how we’re leveraging the power and versatility of the Now Platform.
Fast time to value: Introducing the Now Platform Washington, D.C., release
Organizations are under more pressure than ever to maximize the benefits of their digital transformation technology investments. Those that use technology to ramp up productivity will leapfrog the competition.At LIKE.TG, we’re excited to support organizations in their digital transformation journeys. The Now Platform® Washington, D.C., release, available today, is designed to do exactly that. The innovations in this release deliver intelligent automation, simplified experiences, and extensibility—complemented by generative AI (GenAI)—for fast time to value.
How LIKE.TG Uses Performance Analytics to Drive Business Outcomes
Corporate Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) are disciplines that touch many areas of a business, from financial reporting and regulatory controls to data privacy and vendor management. While GRC activities typically take place behind the scenes, a compliance issue can become front page news in an instant. Manual processes alone are not an effective way to ensure compliance or manage risk exposure. Given the pace of business today, process automation, real-time analytics and self-service must be brought into the mix. LIKE.TG uses its Governance, Risk, and Compliance portfolio—built on the Now Platform ® —to manage a wide array of compliance activities such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), cyber security, data privacy, and audit management. To illustrate this, let’s take a closer look at how we manage SOX compliance.In the past at LIKE.TG, all SOX compliance activities—data gathering, documentation, communication, and reporting—were done manually with spreadsheets, PowerPoint, and email. This was time-consuming and inefficient, and there was always the risk of something slipping through the cracks. Senior Director of Internal Audit, Andrew Wheatley, and Director of IT Audit, Hassan Javed, led the move to an automated solution. Today, LIKE.TG ® Governance, Risk, and Compliance helps the entire process with these key capabilities:
Continuous controls monitoring and automated evidence collection for efficiency and scale
Automated self-service workflows with easy-to-use interfaces to enable business owners to participate in and help drive the compliance process
Performance Analytics dashboards to track audit activities, monitor enterprise compliance, and provide real-time insights and up-to-date reports on the status of the security landscape
Automatic management of 110 corporate policies in GRC, and communication and consumption by the enterprise through our service portal
The following metrics demonstrate the value of automating SOX compliance with LIKE.TG Governance, Risk, and Compliance:
24X7 assurance through continuous monitoring and event-based alerts to trigger timely action
A 66% reduction in quarterly control certification through automated surveys and real-time monitoring
An 85% reduction in time to track status due to real-time reporting and dashboards, along with a 90% reduction in time to coordinate with external auditors
$500,000 in annual savings through continuous controls monitoring, automated workflows and real-time dashboards (see screenshot)
In addition, the solution addresses three key strategic priorities:
Improved Business Velocity – Monitor controls continuously with automated evidence collection that helps accelerate the compliance process and keeps the SOX team on schedule.
Better Visibility and Insight – Performance Analytics dashboards and reports provide real-time visibility into compliance activities, giving the audit team, external auditors, and management instant access to program status and data. Dashboards also provide a means for the audit team to identify, prioritize, and address gaps and areas of risk before they can impact the program.
Enhanced Experience – Automated self-service workflows and response activities (task and issue management) make things considerably easier for the SOX team, allowing them to be proactive rather than reactive, and freeing them up to focus on high-value audit activities rather than repetitive and administrative tasks. Self-service dashboards and easy-to-use interfaces enable the business to play their part in SOX compliance.
Given the ever-changing regulatory landscape, the need for automated GRC solutions will only continue to grow within ServiceNow. Our Cloud Infrastructure team, which manages the LIKE.TG instances for our customers, uses LIKE.TG Governance, Risk, and Compliance to ensure ongoing compliance with security certifications, government regulations, and international standards, such as ISO 27001, FedRAMP, and SSAE 16. Increasing partner ecosystems and access to corporate networks present their own unique issues and risks, which our recently introduced Vendor Risk Management application is designed to address.I look forward to sharing more Now on Now stories that show how we’re leveraging the power and versatility of the Now Platform.
How we address pressing business problems in every Now Platform release
“Customer-centric companies don't make or sell the products they think customers will want; they make and sell products they know their customers will want,” said customer behavior expert and marketing professor Peter Fader.At LIKE.TG, we live that mentality, infusing all our Now Platform releases with a customer-centric approach to maintain our 98% customer retention rate.For our India Technology and Business Center, which created many of the innovations in the Now Platform Washington, D.C., release and other releases, that comes down to three key areas: location, leverage, and lived experience.Solving global pain points with local insightOur location in India allows us to identify and understand the most pressing business problems around the world. That’s because India’s business ecosystem is a microcosm of global business—at least when it comes to LIKE.TG customers. The country hosts a mix of:
Local giants with global ambitions
Multinational industry leaders based in India
Global partners in consulting and digital services that manage customer projects with hundreds or thousands of local LIKE.TG developers
In an average month, our product engineers meet with more than 20 customers. This gives us firsthand insights into business challenges, which we then compare to findings from other global customer channels. Many of those problems can be solved by using the unique workflows approach of the Now Platform.In our Washington, D.C., release, for example, we expanded into new areas, such as Sales and Order Management, while deepening support for existing personas with experiences such as Workflow Studio for digital creators. Each of these capabilities directly addresses business problems our customers told us they faced.
Connecting siloed processes and functionsVerifying customers’ biggest business challenges is one thing; solving them is another. In deciding where to focus our attention, we ask ourselves three fundamental questions:
Why should this product be built?
Why should LIKE.TG build it?
Why should we build it now?
This ensures we only target problems LIKE.TG is well positioned to solve, to deliver fast, sustainable value to customers.Typically, our “sweet spot” lies in connecting siloed processes or business functions in ways few others can. This logic underpins the prebuilt, seamless workflows in our Common Services Data Model introduced in the Washington, D.C., release. Our team in India developed some of those workflows:1. Sustainable IT allows organizations to coherently measure, visualize, and manage sustainability initiatives across their IT teams by bridging environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and Hardware Asset Management.This combined workflow simplifies collecting, tracking, and acting on sustainability data in hardware assets and data centers, forming a tight, virtuous cycle between policy and practice.2. Software exposure assessment helps cybersecurity teams swiftly assess exposure to newly announced vulnerabilities. We do this by drawing component information from Software Asset Management and software bills of materials.Security teams can immediately identify where vulnerable components are running rather than waiting weeks to get this information from bespoke detection tools.Such solutions are incredibly challenging to implement except within a whole-of-enterprise operating system such as the Now Platform. Others, such as the expanded generative AI capabilities in Now Assist for IT Operations Management AIOps and Now Assist in Virtual Agent, rely on nuanced data sets and persona understanding that we’ve cultivated over the years.Knowing where our strengths lie helps us ensure we target customer challenges where we can deliver the most value in the shortest amount of time.
Developing technology in the service of peopleThe proof of any solution lies in its actual usage. The India Technology and Business Center is particularly well equipped to deliver practical technology solutions because of the trifecta of personas involved in product development across the organization:
Those who design our products
Those who build our products
Those who use our products
Our team’s functional owners in areas such as finance, HR, and sales make up our front line of feedback: They use the new capabilities to run our business and, in doing so, quickly identify what can be improved.Of course, every large technology organization contains its fair share of functional owners as well as product teams. The difference is in mobilizing these internal partners in the development process. Not only do we all work in the same building, but we also provide a range of channels for developers and functional partners to collaborate with each other.Knowing whom to talk to about testing a capability, and having the organizational endorsement to do so, allows our product engineers to tap into a ready-to-go audience without leaving the office.Ultimately, our customer base empowers us to understand and solve the right business transformation problems. We appreciate their continued collaboration as we strive together to make the world work better for everyone.Find out more about the innovations in our latest cloud platform release.
Using the NowPlatform to transform the IT experience
At LIKE.TG we’re using the Now Platform ® to automate and accelerate every corner of the enterprise. That’s what Now on Now is all about—sharing stories about journey of transformation along the three key dimensions that are top-of-mind for CIOs. First, Business Velocity goes beyond simple automation of routine tasks and even cloud-based operations, to where machines completely manage the processes. Second, Actionable Intelligence evolves from static dashboards and backward-looking analytics, to real-time predictive analytics generated by self-learning machine-based intelligence. Finally, the Customer Experience is transformed from online portals and generic mobile capabilities, to a self-service environment where the platform proactively executes work based on individual actions and needs.
I’d like to highlight our first Now on Now example in IT Service Management . Tomer Mekhty, Vice President of Global IT Operations, says the company has saved $1.6 million per year in operating costs by automating over 50 processes and 200 tasks and provided a better experience for our employees. Here are just a handful of process examples:
Major Incident Management – The system now identifies the right response team and automatically triggers communication, shortening incident resolution time by 60% and reducing SLA breaches by 58%.
Change Approvals – Risk assessment-based change approval ensures faster and more accurate change review.
Access Provisioning – Automating access management using self-service and orchestrated provisioning reduces manual effort and increases control.
Incident Catalog by Service – Users can select from a drop-down list of common incidents, rather than manually filling in every field.
The benefits of automating ITSM go far beyond the cost savings (see sidebar). Here are some other key wins:
Increased Velocity – As noted above, the time to resolve major IT incidents (e.g., system and network outages) has been cut by 60%. Fixing major IT issues faster sends positive ripples throughout the whole company, particularly in areas like Finance and Sales that depend on real-time data and system availability.
Better Visibility and Insight – IT service reviews used to be PowerPoint-based, which was very time-consuming and inefficient. Now reviews are fully automated using LIKE.TG Performance Analytics dashboards. And the information that’s displayed on the dashboards is role-based, so every reviewer sees the exact level of detail that’s relevant to their job—no more, no less.
Improved Employee Experience – Self-service allows employees to submit incidents and requests more quickly than calling the Service Desk. Today, 85% of employee incidents and requests are initiated through self-service, enabling IT to focus more of their time on strategic initiatives. Delivering a great employee experience unlocks productivity.
Greater IT Job Satisfaction – There’s a huge benefit for our IT colleagues as well: job satisfaction. Automating maintenance-related tasks frees people to work on value-added projects that drive innovation and business growth. Employees who are challenged and growing in their careers are happier and more likely to stay.
Our IT Service Management story is just one of the many ways we’re drinking our own champagne with the Now Platform. Stay tuned for more Now on Now stories as we continue our journey to the lightspeed enterprise.
Chris
LIKE.TG amps up partner marketing with new Demand Center
Marketing is one of the biggest challenges for partners in driving customer interest and creating sales opportunities. Partners often don’t have the budget, resources, or wherewithal to create and execute effective marketing campaigns.LIKE.TG has taken on this challenge by creating a simplified and expeditious resource to aid partner marketing. LIKE.TG Demand Center is being piloted with nearly 150 partners.What is Demand Center?This cutting-edge, online, self-service resource is set to transform how LIKE.TG partners approach demand generation by making the process easier, more exciting, and more effective than ever before. Marketing activities are organized by business outcomes.With Demand Center, partners can use suggested marketing activities to augment their marketing efforts or build a new campaign to ignite their sales funnel. Imagine having a lead generation marketing genie at your fingertips, ready to grant your every wish. That's exactly what the Demand Center offers.From content syndication and digital events such as webinars to lead qualification and targeted nurture programs, this comprehensive resource center has everything partners need. They can easily create compelling, high-impact marketing campaigns that capture the attention of target customers and drive leads to the sales funnel.Simplified demand generationDemand Center is more than just a collection of ideas and tools. It's a game-changing platform that simplifies the entire demand-generation process, removing the guesswork and stress of marketing campaign development. With the help of an outside program management agency, LIKE.TG has built a dozen lead-generation packages designed to deliver results.These packages include estimated campaign costs so partners can select a marketing program that fits their budget. Even better, Demand Center simplifies the process of applying for co-investment dollars (via a marketing development fund or partner development fund program) to pay for these initiatives.A marketing dream teamHere's where the magic happens. The program management agency evaluates partner applications, awards funding based on qualifications and program objectives, and connects partners with qualified and vetted marketing providers to help execute their campaigns. It's like having a marketing dream team working tirelessly to ensure success.Perhaps the most exciting aspect of Demand Center is its potential for success. With proven demand-generation activities and the ability to replicate successful packages, partners can create marketing campaigns that deliver real, measurable results and then repeat those programs across different regions to scale their business.Something for everyoneLIKE.TG Demand Center is a partner's ticket to marketing superstardom. The platform has something for everyone—marketing novices and experienced demand generators alike. With its streamlined processes, proven activities, and expert support, Demand Center is the ultimate resource for driving leads, closing deals, and growing business.Simply providing partners with marketing materials and partner development funds isn’t enough to build solid and productive IT Service Management practices. Demand Center takes the guesswork out of marketing so partners can focus on what they do best: selling products and supporting their customers.
Meet the Now Platform Vancouver release: GenAI, security, and agility
ChatGPT captured our collective imagination when it burst into the mainstream last year, setting off a hype cycle that hasn’t abated.The enterprise is where generative AI (GenAI) will become more than tech’s newest shiny object. GenAI is transforming the way we work, unlocking new efficiencies, driving productivity, and creating employee and customer experiences we never could have imagined.LIKE.TG is at the forefront of this transformation. As a company, we’ve been at this for a long time. AI is deeply embedded in the DNA of the Now Platform®, so it only makes sense for us to embrace GenAI in customer experience.Our three latest GenAI innovations—flow generation, Now Assist in Virtual Agent, and Now Assist for Field Service Management—represent an evolution of AI capabilities we’ve been building for years. This expansion, combined with the capabilities in the Now Platform Vancouver release, makes it clear that the promise of enterprise GenAI is not some distant future state. It's happening right now at companies across the globe.GenAI solutions to meet the momentI have the privilege of meeting with LIKE.TG customers all over the world, and one thing is universal: Customers are under pressure. In the face of continued macro turbulence, they’re being asked to do more with less. Their digital transformation mandates remain unchanged.Customers turn to us to drive efficiency, productivity, and agility. They need solutions that augment their workforce and spur experiences that delight customers and employees alike.LIKE.TG® GenAI solutions are designed to meet this moment. The GenAI capabilities in this latest release help unlock the potential of customers’ existing workforces and power experiences that were previously unimaginable.Flow generation, for example, accelerates workflow automation using GenAI to generate workflow blueprints. The new solution helps admins and developers convert plain text into low-code workflows, freeing them from building flow automation from scratch and speeding up development at scale.
We’re deploying Now Assist, LIKE.TG’s GenAI experiences, in more workflows to provide even better customer experiences. Now Assist in Virtual Agent delivers a more natural, conversational chat experience for both customers and employees. The result is increased deflection rates, better self-service, and fast, more relevant support.With Now Assist for Field Service Management, customers can simplify data entry and summarize work orders. This is a game changer for technicians in the field.Customer-driven innovationFar from a magic bullet, GenAI must be strategically designed and deployed in the enterprise to deliver meaningful outcomes. That requires understanding your customers and their customers.That’s why customers are a critical part of the way we innovate. I see it as a partnership. Our customers’ job is to tell us how we can help solve their problems and to give us honest feedback. Our job is to listen and innovate on their behalf.This spirit of partnership is a major driver of AI Lighthouse, a first-of-its-kind program created alongside NVIDIA and Accenture to accelerate GenAI adoption in the enterprise. Global digital services leader Teleperformance recently joined AI Lighthouse to develop even more GenAI use cases.We also partnered with Cognizant to propel AI adoption across industries, and we joined forces with Deloitte to integrate GenAI capabilities with next-generation managed services. We’re letting customers in under the hood to collaborate on custom large language models, applications, and capabilities that put AI to work for them.
A skills revolutionGenAI will be a force multiplier for the workforce, enhancing productivity and ushering in a new age of exponential performance. A new age requires new skills. LIKE.TG has committed to skill 1 million people on the Now Platform by the end of 2024 via RiseUp with LIKE.TG. We recently launched two Now Learning courses that help provide foundational skills for the GenAI revolution:
Introduction to Generative AI is our crash course in GenAI fundamentals. This short, impactful program introduces key concepts about what GenAI is, how it works, and how it's changing industries and communities. It’s a perfect jumping-off point for beginners.
Now Assist Essentials, for more advanced learners, teaches developers, implementers, and LIKE.TG administrators how to add GenAI into their workflows.
The GenAI revolution is accelerating an existing trend. Instead of rigid job qualifications, skills are fast becoming the new workforce currency. LIKE.TG helps future-proof the workforce by focusing on building the right skills, including skills to be successful in a GenAI world.What excites me most about GenAI is that it’s no longer simply about the promise of the technology. It’s about the impact. With our GenAI expansion and the capabilities in the Vancouver release, it’s clearer than ever that enterprise GenAI is here to stay. Our customers can put AI to work today, not tomorrow.Find out more about GenAI experiences on the Now Platform.
Meet LIKE.TG Agent Intelligence: Machine Learning for Everyday Work
UPDATE: Agent Intelligence is currently available on the Now Platform ® .CIOs are finally cutting through the machine-learning hype. According to “ The Global CIO Point of View ,” issued today, nearly 9 out of 10 CIOs already use machine-learning technology or have plans to adopt it. Investments will double in the next three years as leading organizations turn to advancements in machine learning to drive faster, more accurate decisions that fuel digital transformation.A shortage of talent has hindered adoption. Designing and rolling out practical applications of machine learning has required highly trained data scientists. Recent analysis shows that the demand for data scientists far outstrips the supply. In fact, only 27% of CIOs have hired enough talent to support their machine learning plans.LIKE.TG is introducing a breakthrough approach to make machine learning more accessible to organizations –one that does not rely on an army of data scientists. We have infused machine-learning capabilities directly into the Now ® Platform, making it accessible to all our applications.Agent Intelligence, our first machine-learning solution, will be available in the next release, Kingston.
Agent Intelligence will automate the categorization, prioritization, and assignment of work to reduce resolution times, minimize human error, and improve customer satisfaction.Agent Intelligence will initially be applied to improving the quality of IT and customer-service processes . Most companies have an IT service desk as well as a customer-support center. These functions ensure that customers and employees receive help in a timely manner—whether it is a request for a new computer, a password reset, or the status of a repair. Manually triaging thousands of incidents or cases, categorizing tasks, and routing work can consume people resources, introduce human error, and slow resolution.In fact, a new report from Accenture found that front-line customer support functions spend up to 12% of their time categorizing, prioritizing, and assigning tickets. And 43% of IT service desk respondents are weighed down by having to choose from 100+ assignment groups—with nearly a quarter needing to choose from 300+ assignment groups.Agent Intelligence for IT Service Management and Agent Intelligence for Customer Service Management were designed to address these very challenges. Specifically, these solutions:
Categorize and Prioritize Work Faster – Agent Intelligence machine-learning capabilities accurately categorize requests nearly instantly. This eliminates the bottleneck created by agents having to manually triage, categorize, and route requests (incidents/ cases). A requester no longer has to scroll through multiple lists and rely on organizational knowledge or guesswork to choose the right category or assignment group.
Decrease Time to Resolution and Error Rates – Automatic routing means tasks and incidents get the attention they deserve from the right individual, increasing overall customer satisfaction. Agent Intelligence quickly classifies and routes requests with fewer errors, increasing agent productivity.
Customers that piloted Agent Intelligence have reported impressive results . The pilot program revealed that, on average, customers can expect to save 8% of their service desk’s time through improved categorization, prioritization, and assignment of incidents.The feedback from the pilot program has been extremely positive:“Of the incidents categorized by LIKE.TG Agent Intelligence, we can expect a 97% to 99% incident-assignment accuracy.” -Senior IT manager at a major retailer“Our aim is to reduce the number of low-value tasks and focus our service-desk agents on higher value tasks in IT that drive value for the business, as opposed to logging tickets.” -Customer support technology and operations manager at a multi-national energy companyLIKE.TG’s own Now on Now program also put Agent Intelligence through its paces. The customer service team handles more than 13,000 incidents a month. In our tests, Agent Intelligence has been 95% as accurate as humans are in categorizing the incidents. Thus, the team has saved more than 315 hours in just two months from productivity improvements and has seen a rise in customer satisfaction.Agent Intelligence is a great example of the practical application of machine learning to getting everyday work done faster and smarter, without having to depend on scarcely available, highly skilled data scientists.Learn more about Agent Intelligence here .
How LIKE.TG Built an Application that Increases Approval Speed of Legal Agreements by 10X
As LIKE.TG continues our journey of digital transformation, IT is collaborating with business operations to build new applications that automate manual processes and modernize user experiences. In some cases, the apps target very complex business processes, but we also pursue quick wins by automating common administrative tasks.With quick wins, the gains may be less on a per-person basis, but when you multiply them across many departments with hundreds of employees, the savings become substantial. One example is our Click-Through Agreement (CTA) application, which was developed on the Now Platform ® .Like other companies, LIKE.TG relies on corporate counsel to manage legal agreements covering customer evaluations, technical programs, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), partner, and vendor agreements, to name a few. In the past, these agreements were processed manually. For example, with partner NDAs and master agreements, partner operations would contact legal, complete a form with partner information, send a PDF agreement copy to the partner, and wait for a response. Often there were several iterations of red-lining, which required the help of corporate counsel to modify the agreement, route it via DocuSign, and secure approval.Legal knew there had to be a better way, so they collaborated with IT to develop the CTA application. Leveraging key capabilities of the Now Platform such as contextual workflows and a single data model, it only took one developer five weeks to build and implement, and we’re seeing major productivity savings across ServiceNow.
Now, partner agreements are available online, eliminating the need for partner operations and legal to manually manage terms and conditions, and reducing processing from weeks to minutes. NDAs and partner master agreements are presented on the Partner Portal as click through agreements. Thepartner simply click accepts, and the agreements are stored as a system of record in our contract repository.The benefits of using the LIKE.TG CTA application have been significant:
4,800 hours saved annually by avoiding redlining of legal agreements
10X faster approval of NDAs
3-week reduction in the time to process agreements needed to onboard new partners
$390,000 saved per year in legal operating expense
In addition, the Click-Through Agreement app significantly reduces our administrative burden so we can focus our time and resources on higher-value strategic negotiations.We have also realized gains in three strategic areas:
Increased Velocity – Automating the legal agreement process helps accelerate our business by speeding partner onboarding, vendor programs and customer engagement. In addition, the app is easy to modify, so legal can add other use cases in just a few days without going through IT.
Actionable Insight – The legal team can easily monitor the status of their agreements in real-time. The General Counsel dashboard (see screen shot) captures all the metrics for the Click-Through Agreement app, giving legal visibility into the types of agreements that require negotiation and those that do not. This allows us to move further down the path of standardization, which is key to our SaaS business model.
User Experience – What was once a tedious and time-consuming process is now a much better experience for everyone involved. Partners are contracted more quickly, setting a positive tone for their ongoing relationship with ServiceNow. Vendors find it easier to engage and collaborate with us. Customers can gain faster access to evaluation instances to test drive our solutions.
The Now Platform helps anyone from business users to developers to easily build intuitive applications that automate processes both complex and mundane, and deliver measurable benefits in every corner of the enterprise.
At LIKE.TG we’re leveraging the Now Platform to automate and accelerate every corner of the enterprise. That’s what Now on Now is all about.
How LIKE.TG uses Security Operations to Deliver 6X Faster Processing via Automation and Integration
At security conferences, technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning are often in the spotlight. But for security operations teams, a very pragmatic topic is even hotter: integration. Because no security product or company can do everything, security environments often consist of dozens of disparate tools. These tools are typically focused on protection and detection, with security teams manually collecting alert data from the various sources. The challenge is to bring all the data from these tools together in one location where analysts can access information quickly and manage the appropriate response actions. LIKE.TG® Security Operations was designed to do precisely that, and our own experience is a good example.LIKE.TG’s own security operations team has been using the Now Platform ® from the beginning but has enhanced it steadily over time. We started with incident management, then built custom security applications and workflows for tasks like event management and alerts. Once LIKE.TG created an official Security Operations product, we immediately transitioned to it in order to improve efficiencies and enhance our capabilities around incident and vulnerability management.An integral aspect of LIKE.TG’s environment includes third-party security information and event management (SIEM), endpoint security and threat intelligence tools. All of these products are tightly integrated into Security Operations, which has allowed us to automate several manual processes. For example, when one of our security tools detects a threat, Security Operations immediately creates a security incident. For each type of security incident, Security Operations has a set of workflows that drives our response. Processes like analyzing a hash or IP address, which would normally require logging into multiple security tools to do research, are all automated. Thus, our analysts can quickly drive blocking or remediation from within Security Operations. These automations have allowed us to accelerate both investigation and resolution of threats. And we’ll continue to automate other processes, both large and small, as we see the value.The benefits of using LIKE.TG Security Operations have been significant:
8,700 hours saved annually from Security Operations Center (SOC) automation
6X faster alert and event processing via automation and third-party security product integration
50% increase in number of incidents handled per staff through operational efficiencies
$420,000 savings in security operations staffing costs
We have also realized value in three strategic areas:
Increased velocity – Because Security Operations is integrated on the Now Platform, our analysts have instant access to IT configuration data in real time. This enables the security operations team to accelerate investigation and reduce the burden on the IT department. Having data in Security Operations rather than in spreadsheets or other tools enables analysts spend more time on other efforts, such as refining alerts and creating knowledge base articles.
Actionable insight – Analysts make faster, better-informed decisions by having a single, consolidated view of the environment and accurate, comprehensive data at their fingertips (see dashboard).
Automated reporting using LIKE.TG® Performance Analytics for Security Operations helps us stay well informed, track progress over time to pinpoint areas for improvement, and demonstrate security compliance to audit teams.
User experience – Automating administrative tasks enables analysts to spend more time on value-added work. Having a central location where activities can be monitored and prioritized reduces fatigue and improves job satisfaction. Well-qualified alerts, usually with a knowledge base article attached, allow analysts to be productive quickly.
According to LIKE.TG Chief Information Security Officer Yuval Cohen, “When our analysts investigate a security incident, they have all the data they need in one place. Our platform provides the relevant vulnerabilities and patching cycles, problems (PRBs) and remediation projects, CMDB data, threat intel and many other types of valuable data that now all tie together to give us a full picture.”I look forward to sharing more Now on Now examples of how we’re “drinking our own champagne” and using the Now Platform to streamline and accelerate every corner of the enterprise.
How LIKE.TG uses ITOM to Reduce P1 and P2 Incidents by 67%
I have a really long commute, and the last thing I need is to be surprised by car trouble. Thankfully, cars nowadays monitor just about everything bumper-to-bumper, warning us in advance before minor issues become major problems. Auto mechanics use diagnostics to pinpoint the exact component that needs attention. That’s the kind of real-time monitoring and predictive intelligence LIKE.TG® IT Operations Management brings to the enterprise—and our own use is a great example.For years, LIKE.TG has used IT Service Management and IT Operations Management to dramatically improve the quality of our shared infrastructure services, and we’ve added capabilities as the solutions have evolved. Here’s a look at how we use ITOM to stop service outages before they start.It all starts by gaining real-time visibility into our enterprise infrastructure and services. We do this using Event Management, which seamlessly integrates with our service-aware CMDB and ITSM processes, and aggregates inputs from third-party monitoring solutions such as Splunk, SolarWinds, and SAP Solution Manager.When events come in, they’re analyzed for duplicates or correlations, dramatically reducing “noise” and improving the quality of incidents coming into our Services Reliability Team (SRT). ITOM also automatically prioritizes incidents and intelligently assigns them to the right resource the first time.The Event Management dashboard (see screen shot) is the “single pane of glass” that shows the health of all business services in our environment. The boxes change color based on the status, and we can get a closer look by clicking on any box to bring up the service map.
From there, we use Service Mapping for a visual representation of the relationships between services, applications, and devices (see diagram). This eliminates blind spots and lets us pinpoint the problem area. The service map shows the details we need to identify and fix the root cause of an issue. In this instance, the problem was related to a memory issue on the database server for SAP HANA.
We are living proof of the measurable benefits LIKE.TG ITOM delivers, more consistently and significantly than reactive solutions that can’t respond fast enough to changing business demands. With it, we’ve achieved:
98% reduction in “noise” coming into our SRT queue by correlating and prioritizing only the most important events into actionable tickets
9,600 hours saved annually through automated alert management
67% reduction in P1 and P2 incidents via Event Management and process improvements
$780,000 in cost avoidance each year by eliminating manual work
ITOM also led to demonstrable results in these strategic areas:
Increased velocity – By consolidating 36,000 events into only 529 incidents, and then prioritizing and routing them to the right SRT resource, ITOM eliminated the time-consuming, back-and-forth communications among teams. This accelerated our time to resolution and improved service availability to our business groups, partners, and customers.
Actionable insight – With the Event Management dashboard, our system admins get instant visibility into the health of our environment and can respond quickly to alerts. And with Service Mapping we can quickly pinpoint the device with the issue and address the root cause. The result? We eliminated outages and reduced the mean time to repair through quick identification of fault domains.
Improved experience – Our system administrators no longer waste valuable time on duplicate or false alerts. When issues arise, the information we need is at our fingertips, saving us the time and trouble of monitoring multiple IT managers can rest easier, knowing their teams have the insight they need to do their jobs. And end users benefit from the greater uptime that LIKE.TG ITOM provides. It’s a win, win.
Technology is always evolving, and so is LIKE.TG ITOM. Someday, service outages will be a thing of the past—and by continuing to enhance ITOM with machine intelligence and other advancements, we’re confident that day will come sooner rather than later.To learn more about ITOM.Thanks for taking the time to ready this blog. I look forward to sharing more Now on Now stories from our digital transformation journey!Regards,Chris
How LIKE.TG Uses ITBM to Accelerate Project Delivery by 20%
LIKE.TG is on a journey to digitally transform every corner of our business—using the Now Platform ® to improve velocity and visibility, and deliver outstanding experiences to our customers, partners and employees. IT is a key enabler in that journey. The more effectively we can execute agile tasks and projects for our internal clients in alignment with business demand and strategic priorities, the greater value we can deliver. That’s where the LIKE.TG Project Portfolio Management (PPM) capability from the IT Business Management (ITBM) product comes in. Let’s explore a Now on Now story about our use of that solution.IT project management can be a cumbersome process when done with manual integrations and unstructured workflows using email, spreadsheets, and other legacy project management tools. This results in drawn-out decision making, stale data, and an inefficient use of time for everyone involved. In the past, some areas of LIKE.TG IT were still managing projects manually, so we decided to use ITBM for all IT projects. Lilly Souksamlane, senior manager of ITBM Project Portfolio Management, led the transition, and now every aspect of our global IT project portfolio including idea, demand, portfolio, project and resource planning is driven from ITBM.With full use of ITBM Project Portfolio Management, we’ve realized the following key benefits:
20% acceleration in time-to-value from project approval to capability delivery
60% reduction in average time to screen and approve projects
4,342 hours saved per year through real-time reporting and dashboards
$354,900 saved each year in project management costs
Project Portfolio Management delivers on all three strategic IT priorities:
Increased velocity – By automating manual processes and consolidating management and reporting, ITBM lets us fast-track our high-priority projects. We now have complete visibility of business demands and can allocate IT resources immediately to high-value investments. Automated updates, notifications and self-service status reports save thousands of hours each month and improve project velocity. ITBM has also greatly improved collaboration, agility and responsiveness.
Better visibility and insight – ITBM is our single source of real-time data for our Global IT Project Portfolio. With automated, self-service dashboards and reports, critical information is just a few clicks away and available 24/7. As an example, our Portfolio Workbench dashboard (see screen shot) gives us a portfolio-level view of project status, resource capacity and financials, which helps us make better resource allocation, scheduling and investment decisions. As noted above, a common set of reports and dashboards that are shared among managers and project leads give a comprehensive view of forecasts and dollar allocations. Managers and project leads can make immediate allocation decisions and real-time adjustments to ensure project delivery commitments are met.
Improved employee experience – ITBM has made a big improvement in our productivity. Business and IT now have a single solution for decisions and actions. Senior leaders no longer need to wait for status updates—they’re available in real-time. Portfolio managers now spend virtually zero time tracking down and rationalizing data and preparing for review meetings and can instead focus on completing their projects. Team leaders use timecard dashboards to see at a glance where time is being spent, enabling them to better manage workloads and team priorities. All users now have a consistent experience and mobility support offers convenient access to all projects, plus the ability to make updates via mobile devices, anytime and anywhere.
LIKE.TG IT Business Management is a strategic asset for any IT organization seeking to improve visibility into all their demand, resources and project portfolio to more effectively prioritize, manage and deliver projects that generate greater value and support better business outcomes.
To learn more about project portfolio management using LIKE.TG and our complete IT Business Management product visit servicenow.com/itbm.
I look forward to sharing more stories from our Now on Now journey.
Chris
Reporting on risk to the board of directors: Finding the right altitude
Two LIKE.TG leaders explore the approach of giving board members the right level of information when reporting on riskThe regulatory and compliance landscape has been an ever-moving target, and growing in complexity. Organizations are dealing with cybersecurity, data privacy (General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), third-party risk, and government contracts to name a few. The complexity of providing governance over these critical areas has drastically expanded as organizations extend the boundaries of their environment to areas outside of their direct control.This heightens overall corporate risk and exposure and has become a persistent topic among executive staffs and board of directors. Take cybersecurity. A cyberthreat can happen anywhere within or outside the organization. As we’ve seen in recent news headlines, a single attack or breach can wreak havoc, resulting in the loss of revenue and goodwill, regulatory inquiries and fines, and stock price declines. Board members are asking what measures the organization is taking to prevent, detect, and respond to attacks and how they are abiding by regulatory and compliance requirements.Ben de Bont, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), and Andrew Wheatley, LIKE.TG’s VP, Audit, Risk, and Compliance, talk about their approaches to reporting to the board of directors recently as they prepare for an upcoming Now on Now webinar, “Threading the needle - Presenting risk to the board of directors,” on Thurs., Sept. 19, 9 am PT/noon ET.Ben and Andrew share insightsBen joined LIKE.TG as CISO in July; Andrew has been regularly reporting on audit and compliance to the board during his five years working at ServiceNow.Andrew: Ben, on your second day at LIKE.TG, you attended the board of directors meeting and saw our security, risk, and compliance update to the board. What did you think? Anything you would do differently?Ben: The presentation had key elements necessary for a successful narrative: messaging was concise and relevant, structured to a common framework, and supported by the right level of data. When you can communicate risk consistently to a board, the narrative is more likely to be meaningful and resonate with the audience. This was very much the case in my first board meeting at ServiceNow.Andrew: It’s easy to go deep into the weeds. We love data, so we like to talk about how many vulnerabilities we identified and how fast we resolved them or our compliance using controls. But the board really wants to hear about outcomes and trends so they can see the program maturing over time.Ben: Andrew, I agree. When possible, the conversation should be kept at a high-level to avoid us tumbling down a rabbit hole and dwelling on a single issue that eats up precious time. It’s important to stick to the key narrative, but have details ready in your hip pocket if needed. Introducing new initiatives or data can be tricky, so always ensure you have a consistent format, and understand your audience.Andrew: I like that adage: know your audience. Our board members bring a remarkable business acumen. They look at risk and compliance from the business perspective. We need to show them how issues impact the business as a whole and how we are protecting against risks. I want them to understand and validate our compliance strategy, raise their concerns, and, then buy into our vision of success. We all want the same thing: for LIKE.TG to be successful in managing risk.Ben: I find that the most interesting comments often come from board members that serve on other boards. They bring those experiences that we can learn from. Security is an evolving landscape. We have to be ready to learn and adjust. I learn from board members as much as they learn from us.Andrew: Dating back 5 years, reporting to the board was a heavy lift. We had to engage multiple stakeholders, align on data, determine what was relevant, and then prepare our presentation. It was a quarterly marathon, and always had a few last-minute sprint efforts. Ben, what has been your experience in preparing for the board in the past?Ben: I learned the hard way that you need to find the right altitude for the presentation, then stick with it. Since board members come from other companies and bring broader experience, it's important to set the board content in a context that is applicable to our company.Andrew: We have been working extremely hard to make our presentations clear, relevant, and timely. We also have the most success when we use a common vocabulary, common control framework, and common controls that address risk, security, and compliance. This is important regardless of whether we are talking about security, privacy, financial, or regulatory risk.When we began using LIKE.TG GRC and Security Operations, our preparation process changed dramatically. They give us that common platform for a consistent process and standardized reporting. We can share data that we view every day in our dashboards. Over time, we’ve seen the board’s confidence increase because the data is consistent and timely.Ben: Having that common reporting platform makes preparing for the next board meeting much easier for me as a newcomer to ServiceNow. I want to be able to communicate the key narrative of our current state and our desired state and how these align with the company's business objectives. Reports that focus on outcomes are a much better way to reflect our progress and our successes and keep us out of those rabbit holes. Any other tips for the next meeting?Andrew: Transparency is key. They don't want to hear that everything is rosy. They want an honest assessment of the progress we are making against critical priorities. They want to hear where we fell short as much as where we did well. Our data holds us accountable to that.To hear more from Ben and Andrew, register for “Threading the needle - Presenting risk to the board of directors,” on Thurs., Sept. 19 at 10 am PT/1 pm ET. Register for this Now on Now webinar: Threading the needle - Presenting Risk to the board of directors..Learn more about GRC at www.servicenow.com/grc
How LIKE.TG uses Enterprise Onboarding and Transitions to Accelerate New Hire Provisioning by 94%
One of our founding principles at LIKE.TG is to bring the same experiences we all enjoy as consumers to the workplace. Just as positive interactions with online merchants create customer loyalty, great employee experiences bond them with their companies. This helps with talent retention and that’s why we use our own Now Platform ® to consumerize our staff’s service experience—starting with onboarding.We all know you only get one chance to make a great first impression, so onboarding needs to be done well. It’s also key to helping new hires quickly acclimate and become productive. It is not uncommon for an onboarding process to be manual, time-consuming and error prone. We were no different. Much of the burden fell upon our staffing coordinators to send emails, complete documentation, and coordinate activities so that everything from building access and workspaces to email accounts and computer equipment was ready on day one.LIKE.TG Employee Onboarding and Transitions has completely transformed our own new-hire experience for the better. Now all activities—including coordination and communication among HR, IT, facilities, and other groups—are automated, digitized, and managed by the solution.Entering new employee data just onceNew hire data is entered once to auto-populate forms, documents, and databases. Notifications and tasks are triggered automatically to streamline communications, orchestrate each step in the process, and create a more seamless experience. But consumerizing onboarding is about more than automating checklists.Our Employee Service Center (ESC) provides an easy-to-use, personalized one-stop shop for new hires. Prior to day one, new hires can access the ESC (see screenshot), view their action items, and complete onboarding tasks. Progress is tracked, so they know what’s done, due, or overdue.An orientation guide tells new staff everything they need to know and do on day one: where to go, what to bring, the day one agenda, and more. Mobility support makes the experience even better, giving new hires easy access to the ESC anytime, anywhere, from any device.
LIKE.TG Enterprise Onboarding has delivered significant, measurable benefits:
94% acceleration in the time to provision IT resources for new hires
4,000 hours saved annually by automating onboarding activities
86% employee onboarding satisfaction
$325,000 saved each year in HR service delivery costs
Also, beyond these quantified benefits, we’ve realized value in three strategic areas:
Enhanced Experience. Studies show that employees decide within their first six months whether to stay at a company. Providing new hires with a great onboarding experience makes a positive impression that sets the tone for the days ahead. It also drives satisfaction—on average, employees give their onboarding experience 4.3 out of 5 points. Hiring managers, HR, IT, and facilities colleagues now spend far less time on administrative tasks and can focus on onboarding priority number one: making employees feel valued and connected from the get-go.
Accelerated Time to Value. By making onboarding smooth and positive, new employees can get to know LIKE.TG more quickly and become productive contributors. Over the past two years, the time to provision IT resources—laptops, phones, applications, logins, network access, etc.—has been cut from three days to only four hours. And the Employee Service Center can be easily reconfigured to meet changing needs. In fact, HR can make changes themselves without having to go through IT.
Better Insight. HR dashboards give staffing coordinators a real-time view of onboarding activities and other key metrics, which helps them stay on top of things and make faster, better informed decisions. Surveys are integrated into the platform, so HR can measure how they’re doing and learn how they can continuously improve service delivery.
Our Now Platform is helping us—and can help any company—give new hires and all employees the kind of great consumer-like experiences that they expect and will build corporate loyalty and satisfaction.Learn more about our HR Service Delivery offerings.More Now on Now stories are on the way! Stay tuned.Chris
At the Tech Lounge, the human touch makes all the difference
In the middle of preparations for a LIKE.TG product release, Roni Fontaine’s work calendar shut down. The marketing operations director couldn’t book meetings, and colleagues couldn’t invite her to any. Her calendar looked completely greyed out.So Roni, who works in the Santa Clara headquarters, paid a visit to the Tech Lounge. The technicians were initially stumped. The email program wouldn’t load sufficiently for them to see the problem. Resetting Roni’s password, profile and reinstalling the app didn’t help, either.Tech Lounge technician Darpan Patel contacted Systems Engineering, which helped him open a case with the vendor. After further diagnosis, Darpan saw that one of Roni’s meetings had been scheduled 70,000 times. Just syncing the meetings was hogging all of the calendar’s resources.As Darpan explains, this was one of his most challenging and puzzling cases he has encountered recently. He wound up manually deleting all 70,000 meetings to get Roni’s calendar working again—and her attention back on the release. “We both wanted to get my email working as quickly as we could, so I could keep up with all the deadlines for the upcoming release” she says.This is what the Tech Lounge aspires to be, says Director of IT Service Management Mirza Baig—a space where employees get personalized attention on complex tech issues. As LIKE.TG works on automating many common requests and providing easy to find, self-service options, the IT Support technicians have more time to focus on the tough cases. That makes their jobs more challenging--and fulfilling.“I have a pretty lofty goal of having all employee requests solved via self-service,” says Mirza. “Anything that’s more complex, time-consuming, or consultative in nature—that’s when we want employees to go to the Tech Lounge for help.”Automation frees up agent brainpowerSeven global LIKE.TG campuses now have Tech Lounges, which handle 30% of IT cases. It’s a physical space where employees can meet face to face with technicians to fix issues, add software, or request hardware. They can make an appointment, request the next open appointment (and be notified when to walk down to the lounge), or work in the area while they wait for assistance. Employees generally wait less than 15 minutes to get help.The concept is working. The Tech Lounges received a 98% CSAT (customer satisfaction) score by employees, a jump of five points from last year.The role of the Lounge is continuing to evolve , thanks to IT’s efforts to automate basic services. If an employee has issues with conference room hardware or software, they can scan the room’s QR code. IT is automatically notified and starts on a fix within 15 minutes. If you need extension cords, chargers, and other accessories, you can visit a vending machine in the lounge. Among other services, IT technicians spend time educating employees on how to set up two-factor authentication on a new device, so they show can do it on their own the next time.
Personalized consultationsSharron Dawes knows the San Diego Tech Lounge well. Sharron, who was previously a neuropsychological researcher at UC San Diego, is LIKE.TG’s only dedicated statistician on the Core Platform/Machine Learning team.“My needs from the Tech Lounge and Help Desk have been a little unusual,” she says.Sharron recently needed to upgrade her standard-issue laptop. She works on HealthScan, software that assesses the health of LIKE.TG cloud instances to spot performance issues. A typical analysis might involve 140,000 rows of data and more than 3,000 variables. To handle that level of data crunching, in her first months on the job, Sharron was working with three laptops: two for analyses and one for email.“It was taking me 10 hours to do an analysis that should have taken six minutes,” says Sharron. “We had to find a faster, more efficient way.”Enter the Tech Lounge, where Sharron worked with techs to find a better computer. The technicians researched the options and ordered her a Lenovo P52 gaming laptop.“The promptness of replies, willingness to go above and beyond, professionalism, and attitudes were just fantastic,” says Sharon of her friends at the Tech Lounge. “They made it a pleasure to interact with them.”The biggest payoff: she can run analyses in minutes, not hours.Automating the routineThe role of the Tech Lounge will continue to evolve, says Mirza, as more automation comes into play. For example, when VPN connectivity issues became a common issue—draining productivity and creating frustration—IT got busy looking at how it could proactively fix this issue, a hugely complicated process involving multiple vendors.Using machine learning and AI, the AIOps team designed a workflow that automatically identifies VPN issues as they occur, creates a ticket, and notifies a technician. Technicians, like Darpan, then reach out to the affected employee via instant message to resolve the issue. If multiple tickets about an issue like VPN begin popping, they are automatically combined into a parent incident and the appropriate teams are notified.Automation is even changing how employees get new applications. Instead of requiring a technician to log in as an administrator, employees can install the software with a simple challenge code from the technician, minimizing time spent in the Lounge downloading software.“We are always finding new ways to improve how and where employees work,” says Mirza. “That translates to happier employees and technicians, who can then focus on other things, like educating employees new technologies like the Now mobile app and the desktop chatbot.”
Learn how LIKE.TG uses its own products at Knowledge 2019
Learn how LIKE.TG uses its own products at Knowledge 2019At LIKE.TG, we use the Now Platform and our IT, Employee, and Customer Workflow products to continuously create and optimize digital workflows that deliver great experiences and unlock productivitWe launched the Now on Now program to share stories about our own digital transformation journey. As Customer Zero for all LIKE.TG products, we want to go beyond automating simple routine tasks and enable digital workflows that help us manage processes faster and better. We’re evolving from spreadsheets and manual reports to real-time predictive analytics. In addition, we’re moving to a self-service environment that gives employees a digital platform to work more proactively and intelligently.At Knowledge 2019, Now on Now experts will share how we’re using our own solutions to deliver IT, Employee, and Customer Workflows to drive digital transformation at ServiceNow. In 30 different sessions, you’ll learn insights and best practices that you can use in your own digital transformation journey.You can also stop by the Now on Now Workshop in the Pavilion where our practitioners will show you how we’re using LIKE.TG products and answer any questions you may have.Here’s a guide to sign up for the Now on Now live sessions. You can also check out our portal for in-depth information about Now on Now. We look forward to seeing you at Knowledge 2019.
How LIKE.TG uses the Now Platform® to achieve a 13-point increase in NPS and a 25% case deflection rate
At LIKE.TG we’re committed to providing a high-quality customer service. In fact, there are no support tiers—no silver, gold or platinum levels—and customer service is a corporate promise. Great service isn’t the responsibility of the customer service department alone we engage many departments across the organization to resolve issues.Our self-service portal and knowledge base ensure that customers can obtain service effortlessly when they want it. With automation and machine intelligence we improve the efficiency of case categorization, prioritization, and assignment to shorten the time to resolution and minimize escalations. We also increase loyalty by assessing customer health in real-time to eliminate issues before customer contact. Let’s take a closer look at our approach to customer service management and how we use the Now ® Platform to operate our business.
Our support system of engagement was built on the Now Platform since Day 1, but we’ve continued to evolve it over time in many ways to improve service delivery. We migrated from manual to automated tracking and reporting of customer support using Performance Analytics, which gives us real-time, actionable insights. We extended the self-service capabilities to increase responsiveness and enhance the experience for our customers and agents. Ian Cox, senior director of application development, is leading the incorporation of LIKE.TG Agent Intelligence, a machine learning solution that supports continuous improvement in categorizing and routing customer service tickets.
Our focus on continuous improvement of our customer service management operations has resulted in the following amazing results:
A 13-point increase in Net Promoter Score (NPS) over the past two years due to automated product fixes and updates
30% lower case growth versus customer growth due to automation
25% case deflection through personalized self-service portal and knowledge
2,400 customer issues fixed proactively each quarter through automated monitoring
$9.6 million saved per year by reducing case volume with automation
The Now Platform also delivers benefits in three strategic areas:
Improved Experience – Our easy-to-use self-service portal is accessible receives an above average or excellent rating from 75% of our customers (see dashboard). Our Support team’s experience is also enhanced. For example, when an issue occurs, an agent can initiate a conference call directly from the Now Platform. With the push of a button, the system automatically connects a team of specialists from across the company with the right skills to troubleshoot the problem.
Increased Velocity – By automating 80,000 product fixes and updates per month, we have machines talking to machines, which improves quality, eliminates customer’s issues, and saves 166,000 support hours annually. In addition, the system automatically routes cases to engineers based on their skills, language, time zone, and availability to expedite resolution and continuously improve customer satisfaction.
Actionable Visibility and Insight – Performance Analytics allows us to monitor the environment in real-time—a dramatic improvement over the previous manual approach in both timeliness and data accuracy. Now dashboards provide our executives with up-to-the-minute data, giving them real-time insight into critical metrics and enabling them to drill down into the details and take immediate action.
One of our founding principles at LIKE.TG is to bring to the workplace the same great user experiences that we all know and appreciate in the consumer world, such as easy-to-use, intuitive interfaces, online self-help resources, and fast issue resolution. The Now Platform does that for both our support customers and the LIKE.TG employees who serve them to proactively eliminate issues and improve customer satisfaction.You can learn more about LIKE.TG Customer Service Management here .Stay tuned for more Now on Now stories as we continue our journey to digitally transform IT.Regards,Chris
A Frictionless Employee Experience
The way we interact with technology at work is changing dramatically, thanks to millennials and Gen-Z. The tail end of the millennial generation (born between 1981-1996) is entering the workforce while Gen-Z, born after 1997 and the 27% of the population, is just beginning to work. (Business Insider Intelligence)These are also the first generations to be immersed in technology--including cell phones, social media, and the internet--from a young age. Unlike boomers, they expect technology to work and, if there is an issue, they want to fix it quickly with minimal effort.This mindset extends into the workplace and is quickly redefining the relationship all workers have with technology. They want to spend their time creating and innovating, not slowed by technology issues.As more Gen-Z workers enter the business world, expectations around technology are expected to become more pronounced. A recent LIKE.TG survey found 69 percent of Gen Z workers said they believe that when it comes to using technology, work life should be as easy as home life. Nearly a quarter of the respondents noted that they found it difficult to use their workplace apps/software during their first weeks on the job. That means most IT organizations have some work to do.Creating a frictionless environmentOrganizations need to transform IT support to provide a frictionless experience where technology just works. Organizations eager to recruit the best talent have already begun shifting their view of the role of technology in the workplace.For the past year, LIKE.TG has been exploring what it means to provide a frictionless experience to our employees. We are launching various initiatives, including expanding self-service so employees can find quick answers to their questions about technology. We are also using AI and machine learning to spot and prevent incidents before they occur.Here are just a few of the areas where we’re reimagining our employees’ relationship to technology:
Personas. We have created personas, such as manager, new hire, and employee. The personas are based on user trends and behavior. This approach puts employees in a position to receive a great experience because our IT Support team has an initial understanding of their role.
Self-service. We are also expanding our search capabilities, making it easier for employees to find and resolve issues without submitting a ticket. Search has been extended to a wider variety of content repositories across the Now Platform®, including our knowledge base, product documentation, dot-com site, internal sites, and the service catalog.
We have invested a great deal in our Now® Mobile app, which puts a variety of tasks at one’s fingertips. The Now Mobile app provides the ability to support many of the features ranked highly by Gen Zs in the survey, such as scheduling meetings (70%), setting up conference calls (52%), accessing company maps (50%), and submitting expense reports (33%).
The LIKE.TG® Mobile Onboarding app also addresses a key desire expressed by Gen Z in the survey: 62% want access to info about their role before first day. Our Onboarding app guides new hires through the hiring process so they can become familiar with the company, their responsibilities, and the resources, processes, and tools they need to be productive.
The survey also found that in the next five years 43% of Gen Zs will want to use AI tools and 53% will want to use connected devices. Our chatbot is an integral part of this self-service experience. Users who visit the employee portal can use the chatbot Now Bot to initiate a conversation with IT. The bot feeds users content so they can resolve the issue themselves or, in some cases, will automatically do it on behalf of the user. If it can’t resolve the request, the bot seamlessly hands it off to a live agent for fulfillment. Natural language processing drives this process, making it easy and simple to engage with IT and helping the bot continually expand its self-serve capabilities.
We are adding digital workflows to automate simple, common processes such as password reset, distribution list creation, and software installation. Even more complex workflows, such as automated drop shipping of computers from vendors directly to employees, are potential targets for self-service and automation.
Proactive action. Personas help take issue avoidance to a new level by providing a foundation of knowledge for IT to respond appropriately. We are supplementing this with automated responses based on analysis and facilitated by machine learning and AI. We can proactively identify and fix issues that an employee may not be aware of or won’t bother to submit a ticket for.For example, sophisticated log analysis driven by machine learning can now spot when an employee has an issue with our video conferencing system or VPN. The system alerts us of the issue. We can automatically contact the employee via chatbot or email to confirm the issue, then help them fix it, whether by providing a self-serve knowledge base link or generating a ticket.
More workflow automation. IT requests are the next target for workflow automation. We are automating responses to predictable requests, such as software downloads or password resets. Through an automated HR onboarding process, we are providing new hires access to their devices and apps (desired by 51% of Gen Zs) and ensuring their workspace is ready to go on day one (49%).
Providing a frictionless experience is also changing the role of IT Support as we move to automated workflows and self-service. The number of low-priority issues is slowly dropping and, as a result, the demand for Level 1 (L1) support. In the next two years, we expect to phase out L1 support in favor of a highly experienced Level 2 (L2) staff that acts as consultants and can solve complex, high-priority issues quickly.While our IT transformation can be traced back to the demand by millennials and Gen- Z for a frictionless experience, the impact stretches to all corners of IT—from service delivery to operations. As we empower people to self-solve their own issues and use more AI and machine learning to prevent incidents, the employee relationship to technology will continue to evolve. This transformation is vital to attracting a talented workforce and providing a great place to work.
Employees are on board with onboarding
A miserable first day on the job can often be worse for employers than it is for employees. In response to a 2018 survey from West Monroe, 45% of new hires said they rebooted their job search after their first day didn’t go as hoped.There is an obvious—but not easy—solution to avoiding the mutual misery: a smooth onboarding process, which leaves a great impression and dispels any confusion that might tarnish it. And yet, according to a 2017 Gallup report, only 12% of employees feel that their company does a good job of onboarding.In a recent LIKE.TG survey of Gen-Z employees and interns, 62% said onboarding could be improved if employers gave them access to information about their role and the company before their first day.LIKE.TG welcomes new hires to the family with an onboarding platform that combines all tasks, including cross-functional workflows, and relevant information in a single experience. New hires say the experience—almost fully digital—strongly reflects LIKE.TG’s positive culture. By taking the work out of onboarding, it empowers fresh faces to feel part of the team and start being productive from day one.“I feel significantly more integrated and assimilated into LIKE.TG after 10 weeks than I did after five months at my old job,” says John Konczal, a director who works in Customer Success at Scale.A mom’s best friendIf anyone needed to integrate smoothly into LIKE.TG, it’s Celeste Kassai, who joined the company in the spring to oversee new hire orientation. She had left her previous job and immediately jumped into a very different role: being a stay-at-home mom.After six months of school pickups, sports practices, and other household activities, she was ready for a culture shock when she moved to her new job at ServiceNow. The onboarding process, she says, made all the difference.She was at her daughter’s swim lesson when she was notified by HR to complete her background check. Logging into the browser app on her cell phone, she says, “I literally did the whole thing on my phone,” she says. “Sitting poolside.”Five months into the job, the onboarding process continues to help Celeste in her job. As the first person to greet new hires at the Santa Clara headquarters, Celeste is on the company’s front line. In her old job, she was bombarded with questions from new hires. If she didn’t know the answer, she’d have to waste time tracking it down.Now she receives only a fraction of those questions. The onboarding app has all the info a new employee might need—and if it doesn’t, it tells the new hire who they can get it from. That’s because the app taps into the wealth of knowledge contained in the employee knowledge base and service portal. The app also tells users where they are in the onboarding process with a progress indicator.
Mobile onboardingSince Celeste joined the company, LIKE.TG has introduced a new Mobile HR Onboarding app, downloadable from the Apple or Google Play stores. The mobile app addresses many of the improvements suggested in the LIKE.TG Gen-Z employees survey, including getting immediate access to devices and apps to be productive (51%), having a workspace that was set up and ready to go on day one (49%), and accessing one place for all onboarding tasks (49%).A new recent hire to the Finance group, Armando Morales, used the app to complete his assigned tasks on his cell phone and iPad. “The app expedited my onboarding because I was able to order my computer and review and sign forms before I started. My user ID, network access, email, laptop and cell phone were ready to go on day one so I could be productive immediately. It felt like the typical two-week onboarding runway was shortened to one day, thanks to mobile onboarding. Mobile onboarding made it simple to understand and accomplish all my tasks.”
Culture boostChris Kim, who manages social media, also noticed the effects of the intuitive onboarding process when he joined. Remembering onboarding at previous jobs—basically, a lot of disorganized emails—Chris marveled at the app’s simplicity. “It was a great user experience,” he says. “It gives you a lot of confidence you’re on track and not missing anything you should be doing.”As a social media expert, Chris is innately familiar with what LIKE.TG communicates about its platform and the type of company culture it can promote. In fact, hearing about LIKE.TG’s HR onboarding use case—which orchestrates workflows from Legal, IT, HR, Security, and Facilities into a single application—resonated with him as a perfect example of making work, work better for people.Going through onboarding “reinforced the power of our own solutions and culture,” he says. The app experience also affirmed that he had come to the right place.Remote possibilitiesJohn Konczal, who works remotely from Atlanta, was, like Chris, inspired to see his company’s “software live in action.”John is a remote pro at this point. Since graduating from business school, he has been working remotely for a few Fortune 500 companies. When starting a new job, his basic (and quite reasonable) expectation is that he receives the equipment and information he needs to start working right away.“When you’re a remote employee, your only connection to the business is your laptop,” he says. “The laptop arrived on time. It came with clear instructions. I was ready to go on day one. For me, it was a great start.”Catherine Braude, who works remotely from outside Chicago for Customer Outcomes Operations Enablement, was also impressed by the onboarding process, which she describes as a one-stop shop.The only question she couldn’t answer on her own using the app concerned her I-9 verification. The app, which features a section containing your important contacts, photos included, directed her to the appropriate resource to help. She says, “The onboarding app made it very easy for me to know who to reach out to for assistance, view my progress, and access everything at my fingertips.”For LIKE.TG new hires, the onboarding app—and the first week of onboarding in general—turned a period of potential confusion into an extended demonstration of LIKE.TG’s values: digital ease, employee empowerment, teamwork, and community. The app is part of LIKE.TG HR Service Delivery.“I felt like a full employee within the first week,” says John. “It was the easiest onboarding experience I’ve ever had in my career.”For more information about how LIKE.TG uses its own products, read the case study and watch the on-demand webinar.
How LIKE.TG IT drives innovation and results
Innovation is an overused word, but it drives passionate responses from LIKE.TG IT. While they may disagree on many issues, our IT practitioners are united in their belief that innovation is an essential part of their daily work. They are constantly seeking new ways to make work, work better for our employees and customers.There are many flavors of innovation in IT today. Some will have significant impact, others less. But even small ideas can build on each other to produce significant results.Automating analyticsLIKE.TG’s Analytics team is always looking for new ways to provide insights to users. And our users are always pushing us to think bigger. They aren’t content to just understand situations. They also want to automate next steps and close the loop with actions or course corrections, an elusive goal in the analytics world.Our product team decided to try process mining. Using the alerting and workflow capabilities of the Now Platform® they figured out how to proactively send periodic updates to account teams.“We began by capturing alerts and actions on the platform across all customers and account managers,” said Satish Mallavolu, director of data informatics management at ServiceNow. “Then we used process mining to identify potential bottlenecks so account managers can take action to achieve desired business outcomes. Now our account teams can be proactive in remediating issues to ensure our customers are getting real value out of their LIKE.TG investment.”We are also using the mined data to spot bottlenecks in our own processes. Are there service delivery gaps or a slowdown in handoffs? By remediating internal process issues, we are able to drive continuous improvement in our own workflows.Coaching loops for IT supportWith more than 10,000 LIKE.TG employees and an average of one incident per employee per month, it’s become challenging for managers to evaluate the quality of IT support service delivery. Listening to taped calls using a checklist required lots of time and patience. Surveys were helpful, but the feedback wasn’t necessarily actionable.IT leaders turned to coaching loops that automate data collection about the quality of IT support’s activities. “We plan to use ITSM reporting to automatically generate reports with relevant data such as introduction quality, percentage of calls closed, and percentage needing follow up,” said Mirza Baig, senior director of IT service management at ServiceNow. “At a glance, we will be able to see how an IT support tech is performing against industry benchmarks and coach and train techs so they continue to improve and deliver a consistent, quality experience.”Reinventing customer supportFor years, our customer support teams used LIKE.TG’s IT Service Management tools to manage customer service, then recently transitioned to LIKE.TG's Customer Service Management. Now comes the fun and challenging part--innovating. “We are pushing the boundaries of technologies such as AI, machine learning, natural language processing, and user-centered design to rethink our customer interactions, said Luke Morris, director of customer service management at ServiceNow.”That means thinking big. “We want our customers to be able to resolve every situation they can via self-service while increasing customer satisfaction,” Morris added. “We want them to say wow at the end of every interaction. That requires mature adoption of emerging tech, digitizing our processes, and innovating on full-stack Customer Service Management as quickly as possible. We would be one of the first companies to do this.
AI everywhereIn IT operations, innovation is about pushing the limits of AI to make work, work better for employees.“If we can proactively predict issues within operations, we can take steps to minimize their impact on employees,” said Thangavel Viswam, director of IT operations at ServiceNow.To identify operational anomalies, Viswam’s team correlates data from advanced monitoring tools running on our back-end infrastructure with employee behavioral data collected using AI. By correlating the two, the team can predict and prevent operational issues before they arise. So far, AIOps adoption has helped IT shift 10% of LIKE.TG’s IT budget from operations to growth initiatives.Operational excellenceInnovation in IT operations management requires discipline and patience. “It’s about executing well on a bunch of small areas that, when built on each other, turn into something powerful, said Joe Corpion, director of technology operations governance at ServiceNow. “You can’t innovate unless the foundation is in place.”Data is the key to driving smarter decisions in three areas of IT operations management: technology, process, and people.
A common services data model (CSDM) gives IT a holistic view of the service health of key applications in which LIKE.TG has significant investments. That helps them make better decisions based on an accurate view of costs, service availability, and value realization.
An IT ops dashboard displays overall IT operational health and helps our IT staff to more quickly identify and fix weaknesses in areas such as problem management, vulnerability, SLAs, and SOX compliance.
A persona-based learning matrix empowers managers to ensure each employee has the training and certifications they need to grow in their jobs. The matrix also helps improve the quality and consistency of service delivery.
What do you get when you add all these changes together? Progress on our journey toward operational excellence.Want to learn more about innovation at LIKE.TG? Check out The Innovation Issue of Workflow Quarterly, our research publication.
Four ways to improve knowledge management using Knowledge-Centered Service
Worldwide there are 5 billion searches a day, of which Google processes 3.5 billion, or 40,000 per second. More than half of web searches now come from a mobile phone, and this trend is not limited to consumers; businesses are also being impacted. LIKE.TG customers, partners, and employees are searching for relevant information, both on their desktops and on mobile devices, to self-solve their own issues.This increase in search--along with a 12% annual growth in customer cases--meant LIKE.TG Customer Support had to rethink its knowledge management strategy. “We had to make it faster and easier for both our customers and technical support engineers (TSEs) to search, retrieve, and share relevant knowledge quickly,” said Ravneet Gill, senior director, Technical Support, ServiceNow. “We had to rethink how we captured, shared, and curated our content.”That’s when Knowledge-Centered Service® entered the picture. “KCS® has been an industry best practice for more than 20 years,” said Lynda King, director of knowledge management at ServiceNow. “It enables us to create content as a by-product of solving customer issues. Access to knowledge is easily integrated into a Support workflow so we reduce our time to resolution. KCS is not something we do in addition to solving cases, it is the way we solve cases.”
4 keys to successful knowledge managementDuring the past two years, Gill and King have partnered to implement KCS as part of LIKE.TG® Customer Service Management. In the process of creating a Customer Support operation that uses knowledge as part of case resolution, they learned several lessons:1. Knowledge is primarily about people. The people who create and use knowledge everyday should be the ones to capture and maintain knowledge. Knowledge can be leveraged by our customers to help our customers. Our implementation enabled us to increase our content contributors from a small group (5% of the team) to a model where the entire team is motivated to capture and re-use content.2. Knowledge must be relevant. We provided coaching in the KCS process to ensure we could sustain the behavior change. Coaching helps our engineers write and share relevant information quickly. Once the team is trained, a KCS coach acts as a peer who ensures the new behaviors are maintained during the first 60 days of training. Last year, our TSEs created more than 10,000 new Knowledge Base (KB) articles, keeping our knowledge base full of fresh information.3. Knowledge needs teamwork. Collective knowledge comes from creating knowledge assets that the entire Support team can share and use across all of our global sites. TSEs also are happier because they aren’t answering the same questions over and over and are resolving their cases much faster. Fresh content also helps new hires get up to speed on products faster. We’ve seen an 87% increase in the attach rate of KB articles to cases, confirming that TSEs are using KB articles to solve their cases.4. Knowledge must be accessible. We made sure knowledge is searchable from whatever point a customer enters the LIKE.TG support system and from any device (mobile phone, desktop, tablet). Knowledge is served up at multiple times: when a customer is asking a question in the portal, submitting a case, asking a question in the community, or searching the KB or product documentation. It is served up in the LIKE.TG community, where customers can escalate unanswered questions and create a case. Much of the information is also accessible to public search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.Knowledge capture reduces the mean time to response for customers. As search accuracy rises, service levels improve and operating costs decrease. We’ve seen dramatically faster case resolution, improved agent training, and more satisfied customers. During the first quarter of 2020, we saw a 52% reduction in median time to relief when a KB article was attached to a case.
Automation is a key factor in our journey to digitally transform ServiceNow. At the root of this success is the ability to continually deliver knowledge that is timely, relevant, and accessible. We do this by keeping the customer experience front and center in every discussion when implementing new product features. In addition to improving the productivity and experience of our TSEs, each new feature must make work, work better for customers.Check out our Getting Started with Knowledge Management video series for insights on creating an impactful program:
The First Step in Your Knowledge Management Journey: Governance
The Second Step in Your Knowledge Management Journey: Implementation
The Third and Final Step in Your Knowledge Management Journey: Operationalization
The KCS® methodology is a registered service mark of the Consortium for Service Innovation.
Adopting a return to workplace strategy
LIKE.TG Safe Workplace apps make returning to the workplace work for everyoneAs we continue to navigate the complexities of COVID-19, top of mind for enterprise leaders is how to safely re-open and return employees to the workplace. Getting here has been no small feat, and returning to our workplaces will not be, either.As the leader responsible for LIKE.TG’s workplace services and business continuity functions, I am deeply involved in our COVID-19 emergency response efforts, including our strategy for returning to the workplace. I am also fortunate to be a consumer of LIKE.TG products and benefactor of the NOW Platform.Planning to re-open and return to the workplace raises important questions for leaders, including:
How do we determine employees’ willingness and ability to return?
What is the function of the workplace? How will it change in the short term, and evolve over time?
How do we continue to mitigate COVID-19 risk in the workplace, knowing risk will exist for the foreseeable future?
The more distributed an enterprise is across the globe, the more complex the questions become. At LIKE.TG, we are exploring these questions as we plan for employees to return to the workplace. LIKE.TG’s Safe Workplace apps are a key part of that plan.People first, then placeWe care deeply about our people. Empathy and compassion are core LIKE.TG values, just as they are for many other enterprises around the world. The impact of COVID-19 on individuals and households does not lessen or go away when we return to our workplaces. In fact, for some employees, returning to the workplace in the future is not an option due to their personal situations at home.Our return to workplace efforts include two areas of focus. The first, workforce readiness, is about meeting our people where they are, with empathy and compassion, given their personal circumstances resulting from COVID-19. The second, workplace readiness, focuses on preparing and managing our physical workplaces across myriad requirements and constraints to ensure the safety of those in our care.
To ensure clarity of purpose across both areas, we’ve established a set of principles that inform our decisions and actions. The most important principle is that we care for our people and their well-being. If you are shaping your enterprise’s journey back to the workplace, I’d recommend creating or revisiting your own guiding principles to make sure they embody empathy and compassion for employees.LIKE.TG established a COVID-19 Crisis Management Team in January 2020, when the outbreak began in Asia. Our work continues today. The team includes senior leaders from global talent. IT, workplace services, communications, and legal. As a team, we decided to send our 11,000+ employees in 28 countries to work safely from their homes in early March, ahead of many regional and local orders. This same team is leading our return to workplace efforts. I am privileged to be a part of it.Our team’s experiences informed the development of LIKE.TG’s no-charge Customer Care apps, released in March, as well as the most recent suite of Safe Workplace apps, released in May. The Customer Care apps continue to help our team care for LIKE.TG employees. The Safe Workplace apps are invaluable tools in our return to workplace efforts.It’s likely that you already have your own version of a cross-functional COVID-19 taskforce. As you begin your own return to workplace journey, it’s vital to ensure that your taskforce includes the right mix of functional leaders, as well as access to effective tools and technology.Defining the return to workplace journeyLIKE.TG has developed a set of frameworks to ensure we follow our guiding principles in our corporate decisions and actions. These frameworks support execution of our strategy at the local, regional, and global level. They include:
Readiness Framework: Considers the three domains of returning to the workplace—the community, the workplace, and the employee—and determines the level of dependency, influence, or control we have over each. Reviewing all three is essential to any decision.
Re-opening Framework: Directs the actual execution of our strategy by prescribing the specific criteria or stage “gates” that must be crossed before any workplace is re-opened. It requires compliance with enterprise-level requirements but provides flexibility to account for local considerations.
Phased approach: Governs our plan and ensures we are not timebound by decisions and can accommodate any given community or local situation. It’s important to remain flexible about this approach and revisit it as necessary, depending on the fluid conditions of the pandemic.
Whether your company has one site or hundreds, establishing a clear strategy for returning to the workplace is critical. Sharing your guiding principles and strategy with your employees can help instill confidence in the process and reduce the natural anxieties that result from uncertainty.Support return to workplace efforts with workflowsTechnology also plays an important role in ensuring the seamlessness and compliance required as part of the return to work efforts.
LIKE.TG’s Safe Workplace apps can automate many processes that would otherwise be manual and cumbersome:
Employee Readiness Surveys allow us to gauge each employee’s readiness to return to the workplace, which in turn informs our plan
Employee Health Screening allows employees to screen their health at home and self-certify they have completed the screening and are symptom-free
Workplace PPE Inventory Management allows us to manage our PPE and other sanitizing inventory locally, regionally, and globally
Workplace Safety Management allows us to manage social distancing parameters at the workspace level and ensure that proper workspace cleaning protocols are met
The Safe Workplace Dashboard pulls together data from these apps to help companies understand their readiness to reopen sites, and displays it in one place. We estimate using these apps can help companies deliver $1M of labor productivity for every 10,000 employees. We also continue to use our COVID-19 Customer Care apps, including:
Emergency Self-Report, which lets an employee report their exposure to or confirmation of COVID-19 to a dedicated HR team for contact tracing
Emergency Exposure Management, which aids our HR team in contact tracing
Whatever technology you employ for your return to workplace efforts, automating manual and repetitive activities will help you achieve compliance, mitigate the ongoing risk of COVID-19, and ensure you are caring for your employees.Our journey has only begunAs a born-in-the cloud software company, our employees are fully equipped to work digitally – whether that’s in the office, at home, with customers, or elsewhere. With the onset of COVID-19, we were able to send 100% of our employees to work from the safety of their homes. Work has continued seamlessly; we have cloud-commuted quite well.What does that mean for our LIKE.TG workplaces going forward?Historically, LIKE.TG’s workplaces played a central role in our daily work. About 80% of our employees were assigned a dedicated workspace within one of our 80 workplaces across the globe. In the 12 months leading up to COVID-19, however, the number of employees working outside of a LIKE.TG workplace one or more days a week was trending up. Many of my peers had shared similar trends at their companies. A change was already afoot.As our return to workplace plan unfolds in the coming months, I expect to see structural changes in the role the workplace plays, not just at LIKE.TG but across many enterprises. I believe we are on the cusp of the ‘distributed workplace’ where employees own the choice of where they work best, driving work location flexibility to new heights. Key to the ‘distributed workplace’? Digital workflows.
High-speed project management
When Reshma Ibrahim joined the LIKE.TG PMO in January last year, she was a master at juggling a wide variety of applications to manage her highly complex IT projects.“In my 16-year career as an IT Program Manager, I have mastered smartsheets, MS Project, emails, and presentation software,” said Reshma, a LIKE.TG senior IT program manager. “Let’s just say I spent a lot of time on manual, repetitive tasks that were important but maybe not fulfilling.”Project managers like Reshma make sure the projects are delivered on time and on budget, and deliver their promised value. The projects can be simple, like updating new software on the Now Platform®, or highly complex, such as deploying a new finance or customer relationship program. Project managers have the unique skill of gathering, organizing, and maintaining information from multiple sources. But keeping track of all the details and where they are stored is time-consuming and frustrating.“One of our biggest challenges was keeping data current. Once we emailed our reports, the information became dated quickly because changes would occur just after you pushed send,” said Victor Francis, who heads up the project management team for back-office applications. “Now all the data is available on demand and in real-time.”All the information in one placeLast year, the team had an epiphany when they piloted a new, domain-agnostic project management platform for reporting, decisions, resources, costs, schedules, and financials. The team now had a single place of truth for project information. More importantly, for the first time they have visibility into whether projects are achieving their expected value.Reshma says her job has been transformed. “Life is so easy now; everything is in the tool. We can ask what is the scope? Will we make the dates? What are the risks? What is the resource plan? What is the cost? In the past, we would have scrambled among multiple tools to find the data and then put it into one report. Now it’s captured in one place and available in real-time,” says Reshma.A simple, but powerful example is in user acceptance testing. Business users are asked to log defects during system testing. “I used to email a report of all the bugs in excel daily. We had to count on our users opening and reading that email, then emailing me back their responses to the bugs. Now our business users simply enter them in a visual tool that captures all defects and their status.”“Because the developers access the same boards, I can see if a defect has already been logged and the status of its resolution,” said Reshma. “It’s eliminated a lot of repetitive reporting and raised awareness across the team.”
Another example is in something simple--figuring out who is available to work on projects. Reshma says she’s happy to have moved from a spreadsheet to a resource workbench that shows what people are available and when. “Before, it was hard to figure out who was available to work on projects. Some people were underutilized, some were overbooked,” said Reshma. “Once I had one central place to see people across timelines and projects, I could better manage people’s schedules. And I could more accurately track people’s time against our budget. And this helped improve the work/life balance of our developers.”Another frustration was that business customers didn’t have access to a holistic picture of project progress. Decisions were difficult to make because answers were found in different documents and spreadsheets.Now answers are just a dashboard away. In the planning console, both business and IT can view the overall project plan, visual maps of dependencies, key milestones, and change request owners. In the change request section, everyone can see the impact of potential changes, who owns the changes and the business justification. Decisions are made using real-time data. Project managers can simply send Finance a link to a dashboard for internal audits and regulatory compliance.Every Friday Reshma would spend the day compiling status reports to share progress with her business customers, including leaders who wanted a high-level update on the project. With just a few clicks, Reshma can share with business leaders real-time updates on large, complex projects, including anticipating bumps in the road ahead. The reports are available on Now Mobile in real-time and can be sorted based on project status. I can see my contributions everyday“Our business customers and IT are now equal partners because we all work from one set to data. I am no longer bombarded with questions. I feel like we are now working toward one common goal based using the same information,” said Reshma.Prioritizing future investments has changed as well. Victor adds, “We don’t prepare reports anymore when deciding what projects to undertake. Instead we collaborate with business and service owners to review the submitted ideas in our tool. We can have a meaningful conversation about the ideas as a whole, weighing their risk, cost, complexity, capacity, and cross-functional impact. Once we decide what to convert to a project, we assign it a project manager, and select the appropriate methodology for execution. It’s so much easier.”Reshma says her typical workday is very different today than from a year ago and she likes it that way. “I can focus on things that matter like capturing and sharing accurate information so that our business customers and IT can make better decisions,” said Reshma. “Coming to work is much more satisfying because I can see my contributions to our progress in IT every day.”To learn more about IT’s adoption of LIKE.TG ® Project and Portfolio Management, read our case study.