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Powering smart factories of the future
Jason Bergstrom, principal and smart factory go-to-market leader for Deloitte Consulting, co-authored this blog.The manufacturing industry is changing fast. Modern manufacturing must be simple, agile, and intelligent for companies to remain competitive.Smart manufacturing is the way to achieve those goals. It’s a flexible system that can self-optimize performance across a broader network, self-adapt, and learn from new conditions in real time while autonomously running entire production processes.As leading manufacturers prioritize system modernization in pursuit of smart factories, the path to transforming the shop floor (and beyond) isn’t always clear. There’s a careful balance to strike between:
Accelerating time to value through modern, integrated systems
Incurring minimal disruption while modernizing factory operations
Having a unified, sustainable model for digital manufacturing takes more than connecting isolated technologies within facilities. Manufacturers need a comprehensive vision that closes the interaction gaps in traditional factory models between people, processes, and systems.At LIKE.TG, we’re committed to supporting the manufacturing sector and continue to invest in and innovate ways to solve manufacturers’ unique challenges. Together with our partners, we bring critical aspects to a modern manufacturing enterprise.The future of manufacturing is digitalAt The Smart Factory @ Wichita, for example, Deloitte is collaborating with LIKE.TG and more than 20 other market-leading partners and innovators to offer an immersive experience that helps manufacturers envision the digital future.
Located on the Innovation Campus at Wichita State University, this fully integrated production line shows first-hand how the integration of existing technologies can create sustainable investments and drive value. The 60,000-square-foot facility includes an end-to-end smart production line and experiential labs.“The Smart Factory @ Wichita is a dynamic experience center that allows visitors to engage with the manufacturing facility of tomorrow,” explains Stephen Laaper, principal and smart factory lead for Deloitte Consulting.“Deloitte is accelerating the industry’s transformation with our investments and key partnerships, and LIKE.TG has been essential in bringing our vision of the future of manufacturing to life. Together with our customers, we can brainstorm and innovate to see what’s possible.”LIKE.TG enables two of the key use cases at the Smart Factory @ Wichita: Factory Asset Intelligence/Performance Management and Quality Sensing Detection. The live LIKE.TG deployment of the factory floor will showcase how the Now Platform® drives actionable results to address manufacturing issues and deliver value to customers.Collaborating for manufacturing successCombining Deloitte’s vision, experience, and deep industry knowledge in manufacturing with LIKE.TG’s ability to enable that vision through technology can empower manufacturers to proactively manage resources, physical assets, and schedules.“Key ecosystem partners, like LIKE.TG, are essential to Deloitte’s vision of the future of manufacturing,” says Asish Ramchandran, Deloitte’s global chief commercial officer for the LIKE.TG alliance.“We’ve spent the last decade establishing our proficiency across enabling functions and industry vehicles. Now, we’re building on our relationship and deepening our capabilities in manufacturing with use cases that are already being used around the globe.”To capitalize on the value of new technologies, the manufacturing industry must evolve. Through efforts such as The Smart Factory @ Wichita, LIKE.TG and Deloitte are reimagining the entire value chain with a single system of action—turning visibility into value and making automation an advantage.Find out more about how LIKE.TG and Deloitte are bringing the future of manufacturing to life.
Helping manufacturers digitally transform and prosper
Manufacturers were already reexamining how they use technology when COVID-19 hit and significantly accelerated that need. Some transformed and were able to pivot quickly, but others are still grappling with challenges in their supply chain and demand fluctuations.There will be more changes, including unexpected ones, and manufacturing operations must adapt quickly.Digital transformation has some real advantages in the industry. The top 10% of digital tech adopters grow two times faster than the bottom 25. In addition, LIKE.TG Employee Workflows solutions have resulted in more than 18,000 hours saved per year, time previously spent assisting employees.The latest LIKE.TG innovation Operational Technology Management (OT Management) brings the Now Platform to the factory floor. It extends the platform across to OT to help manufacturers:
Understand system relationships and dependencies.
Reduce risks.
Streamline compliance efforts.
Avoid downtime.
Improve response and recovery.
Customer service management in manufacturingClearly differentiating your products is essential. So is distinguishing your relationships with your customers and resellers. How? By using a single system of action that connects your entire manufacturing value chain.Volvo Construction Equipment, which supports construction equipment worldwide, takes its aftermarket business seriously with a strong focus on customer uptime. The company built a tool on the Now Platform called CHAIN, short for case handling instructions. This tool consolidated 12 applications covering everything from technical support to mechanics and international support for parts, delivery, and quality.Previously, the company used many individual systems that required a lot of manual work. Now that’s all on CHAIN, which 8,000 employees and 265 dealers use.Traffic and parking industries company TAPCO used LIKE.TG to create links between customer service and field service and saw significant changes: improved service efficiency, reduced downtime, better customer experiences, lower total cost of ownershipLIKE.TG Connected Operations also let TAPCO transform from merely selling a product to offering a monthly service.Digital transformation in manufacturingWith advancements such as smart manufacturing and the industrial internet of things (IIoT), manufacturers have never had a better time to digitize processes. Despite that, Heineken ran on paper-based processes and had no standardized way to share knowledge across its plants and breweries. The various locations even measured success differently, meaning the company could neither learn from its other plants nor compare productivity.It solved those problems by creating a single, mobile-based system of engagement now used by more than 18,000 workers worldwide.Siemens, which supports 360,000 employees and retirees in 70 countries and handles transactional business worth $17 billion, needed to digitalize in terms of people, its ecosystems, and the field. The company used LIKE.TG to create systematic and intelligent digital transformation that makes it more flexible and productive and provides a great user experience worldwide.Collaborating with suppliersHaving a connected supply chain ensures business continuity. It also keeps a manufacturer competitive. Yet, a Deloitte study found that 60% of transport management clients use more than three technology platforms to manage their connected supply chain. With a single system of action connecting critical workflows, you gain visibility, insight, and productivity.“When we use LIKE.TG, we…improve about 40% of data quality through partner management on the one hand,” says Timm Riesenberg, director of the technology center and LIKE.TG talent group for Deloitte Germany. “On the other hand, we can improve about 10% of the delivery performance for the partner and supplier management.”Download the Manufacturing Book of Knowledge to learn more about how your manufacturing operation can take advantage of technology and thrive.
Protecting manufacturing production in turbulent times
Production is the heartbeat of the manufacturing enterprise. When it slows or stops, manufacturers can fail to meet key customer demands, lose near-horizon revenue, and risk their future order book. Industry research shows this is very real, with production downtime exceeding a total cost of $300,000 per hour, according to Information Technology Intelligence Consulting.With unpredictable market forces—including rising budget requirements, inflation, cyber risks, increased labor costs, and supply chain disruption—how can manufacturing production operate continuously and consistently?The future-ready manufacturer, based on a 2023 global survey of more than 1,900 manufacturing leaders conducted by LIKE.TG and Dynata, reveals manufacturers have opportunities to build greater resilience and increase efficiency across the end-to-end value chain.A confident, data-driven supply chainA healthy supply chain fuels production. Yet 67% of survey respondents cite a high risk of supply chain disruption over the next 12 to 18 months.Managing supply chain risk requires an accurate understanding of your supply chain dependencies and your suppliers—and their suppliers. When unforeseen disruptions arise, manufacturers need to analyze large volumes of supplier data. But inaccurate or duplicated supplier records, manual processes, and siloed systems prevent quick and confident action.Manufacturers making progress in reducing supply chain risks are investing in connecting data and insights from multiple systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM), according to the survey.Using hyperautomation to drive efficiencies can improve manufacturers' ability to assess supplier risk and compliance, accelerate supplier onboarding, and collaborate with suppliers to manage disruption.Digital skills to drive the factory floorFactory workers are integral to production. The survey shows that lack of know-how, skills, and talent is one of the biggest challenges on the factory floor.With rising labor costs and a shortage of workers, there isn’t enough skilled labor to operate production. Older workers are retiring, and new entrants to the workforce expect digital ways of working.
A digital-focused strategy can help manufacturers bridge talent and labor shortage gaps. According to the survey, manufacturers making the most significant strides toward digitally enabling factory workers are:
Accelerating time to expertise with digital tools that aid problem-solving, training, and upskilling
Implementing a knowledge repository to share best practices across workers and factories
Managing tasks digitally to connect step-by-step processes
These leaders are also making greater use of process automation, dedicated knowledge management, and AI and machine learning.A secure foundation in the factoryBecause of the convergence of unsecured operational technology (OT) into IT systems and networks, manufacturers are one of the most targeted industries for ransomware attacks, according to the IBM Security X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2023. Consequently, 64% of respondents to the LIKE.TG/Dynata survey say they face a high to very high level of OT risk in the next two years.The research shows that less than half (35%) of manufacturers have a real-time, accurate view of their OT vulnerabilities. To improve OT security, manufacturers are:
Implementing or automating end-to-end OT service management and change management
Increasing visibility/inventory of all OT and IT assets
Improving joint governance of OT and IT security
Manufacturers often manage OT and IT separately, but OT and IT teams need to work together. A single system of action can help untangle the contextual dependencies and vulnerabilities between OT and IT, devices, applications infrastructure, and third-party integrations that make an organization vulnerable. Once risks are identified, they can be proactively resolved.Collaboration across the entire value chainOnly 39% of surveyed manufacturers consider themselves digitally mature, meaning they have an integrated approach to digital transformation that’s connected across the value chain. These manufacturers see themselves breaking down traditional silos across their organization.They also report more significant progress in improving the security of OT assets, reducing supply chain risk through supplier collaboration, and digitally enabling factory workers.The sum of the entire value chain of a manufacturer is greater than the individual parts. Yes, manufacturers can manage customer experience. They can control production in the factory. They can also spur product innovation and product engineering to keep manufacturing production efficient.A single unified digital platform can connect insights and propel action across the value chain, streamlining the entire process.Find out more about future-ready manufacturing. See how manufacturers can unlock the potential of digital transformation across the value chain in the complete LIKE.TG/Dynata research report.
Gain visibility into manufacturing OT assets to reduce cyber risk
As manufacturing operational technology (OT) ecosystems grow more connected and complex, they become vulnerable to cyberattacks. In fact, the manufacturing sector was the most attacked industry in the world in 2021, according to IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2022. Manufacturing surpassed finance and insurance in the number of cyberattacks for the first time in five years.A large part of the industry’s vulnerability is due to a lack of visibility. This leaves the door wide open for a bad actor to exploit a vulnerability in an unknown OT (or IT) asset. Therefore, the first step toward reducing cyber risk in industrial environments is to understand the potential attack surface by establishing an accurate inventory of OT assets.To help manufacturers secure their businesses, I’m proud to announce the launch of the LIKE.TG Service Graph Connector for Claroty Continuous Threat Detection (CTD), available in the LIKE.TG Store today.Confidently see and secure your enterpriseTogether, LIKE.TG and Claroty help enterprises rapidly and comprehensively discover assets in their industrial environments, such as programmable logic controllers and human-machine interfaces. Once the assets are discovered, we enable manufacturers to assess the vulnerability of those assets and ensure any weaknesses are quickly addressed.In this way, we help manufacturing companies defend their enterprises, preempt cyberattacks, and prevent downtime.With the Service Graph Connector, you can:
Gain unified visibility across your organization’s entire IT and OT portfolio
Manage all alerts in one place
Get the most out of the LIKE.TG OT data model, with OT device inventory, risk, and vulnerability information feeding from CTD into LIKE.TG Operational Technology Management
Extend your existing IT security operations center workflows and capabilities to OT systems
Investigate and respond to incidents more effectively
Manufacturers benefit from a single system of action, automatic assignment of devices to the site, network-based intrusion detection system support, automatic prioritization of vulnerabilities based on their impact on the production process, and a stronger security posture to help prevent cyberattacks.Find out more about the Service Graph Connector for Claroty CTD in the LIKE.TG Store. You’ll need Claroty CTD v4.1+, LIKE.TG Configuration Management Database, and LIKE.TG Operational Technology Management to make full use of the integration.
3 leaders weigh in on manufacturing innovation
Rapid changes in the manufacturing sector are putting legacy technologies to the test. Executives have recognized modern manufacturing must be streamlined, agile, and intelligent for businesses to get ahead.Organizations are operating in a minefield of geopolitical uncertainty and mass disruption, which has caused issues such as microchip delays, production breakdowns, and supply shortages. To mitigate these issues, executives are taking steps to digitize the factory floor and create safer, smarter, and risk-proof operations. But manufacturing innovation isn’t easy.I spoke with three industry experts on the Innovation Today podcast to get their takes on how top-performing companies are building the factories of the future.The need for a unified platformManufacturers have made significant investments in their legacy tools and products, and they can’t simply shut them down and start from scratch. Graeme Wright, chief digital officer for manufacturing and utilities at Fujitsu, points out legacy technologies and approaches have created silos in most manufacturing organizations.“IT and OT [operational technology] don’t tend to talk to each other,” he says. This disconnect makes it difficult to streamline technologies and processes across departments.Most manufacturers lack a unified platform to provide visibility into the technology on the floor and how it’s being used, increasing the risk of cyberattacks and workplace safety incidents. At the same time, manufacturing is struggling to attract and retain talent.This has complicated knowledge transfer because so much information is in people’s heads and has never been digitized, says Vamshi Rachakonda, vice president of sales at Capgemini Americas. When they leave, they take it with them.Like workers in other sectors, manufacturing employees are looking for a consumerized work experience, which wasn’t possible in the sector until recently, Wright says. Today’s manufacturing firms must take major steps toward digitization to survive in this challenging landscape.
A layered approach to digitizationA number of digital solutions have emerged to create a future-proof factory floor. But where should you start? Rachakonda says executives should “peel the onion,” approaching digitization as a step-by-step opportunity rather than a problem they can solve overnight. He suggests organizations begin by taking stock of their existing technologies and processes to develop realistic goals.Once that’s done, prioritize creating a single source of truth that everyone in the organization can reference. Organizations should invest in a platform that streamlines operations, Wright says. LIKE.TG Manufacturing Connected Workforce accomplishes this by digitizing standard operating processes, simplifying knowledge transfer.While consolidating knowledge, identify places where departments might share data. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” Wright says. Data sharing should be a top priority for IT and OT.To that end, LIKE.TG Operational Technology Management can provide a unified view of all IT and OT assets. Aligning IT and OT enables the two functions to communicate seamlessly about what they need. It also allows security teams to identify and prioritize cyberthreats across the entire technology ecosystem.Wright suggests manufacturers create an automation Center of Excellence to discover bottlenecks and identify opportunities to automate. Use your existing employee base where possible, deploying tools such as robotic process automation (RPA) and machine learning to handle routine tasks so that humans can focus on more challenging and creative work.Prebuilt orchestration on the Now Platform automates repetitive tasks. “Take the human element out of these tasks so the humans can do more innovative work,” Wright adds.Once you address the knowledge repository, prioritize workplace safety. Virtual reality and augmented reality allow workers to get hands-on training without exposing them to unnecessary risk, Rachakonda says. These technologies can simulate the types of dangers someone might face on the factory floor so that workers know what to look for before they encounter those situations.The importance of cultureOverall, Rachakonda emphasizes the importance of focusing on tangible, impactful steps with a broader goal of digitizing the entire organization. “That's where you are going to get more funding, more trust, more acceptance from all the stakeholders involved,” he says.Samit Pathak, a senior manager at Deloitte, stresses that software can’t fix everything. Culture matters too. “The last few years have put a microscope on that,” he says. Organizations should develop muscle memory to respond to crises with agility and speed, he adds. That means building a culture of preparedness throughout the organization.Pathak cites the automotive industry as a positive example. The industry prizes communication, clarity, and visibility as part of its risk prevention strategy, he says. This culture helped absorb some of the shock of the supply chain issues the automotive industry faced coming out of the pandemic.“Being proactive, looking beyond your org, and thinking about the multitiered nature of the value chain,” he says, are the values that matter most.Find out more in our ebook: Accelerate time to value in manufacturing.
4 benefits of a connected workforce in manufacturing
The manufacturing skills gap is projected to leave more than 2 million jobs unfilled by 2030, costing the US economy as much as $1 trillion, according to a report by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute.When COVID-19 hit, about 1.4 million people lost manufacturing jobs, according to the report. Although the industry has hired back many workers, hundreds of thousands of positions remain unfilled. On top of layoffs, workers are retiring en masse.In response, manufacturers are scrambling to change their processes related to hiring, onboarding, and knowledge sharing. The emerging workforce will need to manage Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices, use analytical tools to inform their decisions, and oversee technologically advanced operations—while keeping the lights on and training the next generation.At the same time, manufacturers have to keep up with evolving regulatory guidelines to improve safety and ensure compliance. To meet these needs, manufacturers are trying to build the smart factory of the future.Factory workers are an integral part of this journey. After all, better enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, manufacturing execution systems (MES), computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS), robots, conveyers, and machinery still require people to make everything run.Executives should work to build a connected workforce that leverages digital tools to streamline processes and digitize knowledge. Let's explore four benefits of a connected workforce in manufacturing:1. Reduced human errorIn the coming years, manufacturers will need to onboard new workers and upskill them with on-the-job training. Experienced employees can quickly pivot to a different production run or collaborate with the team, but new hires need extra help. While new hires are getting up to speed, they have the potential to make mistakes. According to the Department of Energy, 80% to 90% of downtime is caused by human error.To reduce human error, manufacturers rely on standard operating procedures (SOPs) recorded in paper manuals or orally communicated by employees. But with the current labor shortages, and with the rapid evolution of manufacturing technologies, organizations can’t rely on paper and institutional knowledge. Outdated SOPs can even cause dangerous workplace conditions.A connected workforce that leverages digitally recorded SOPs will find it easier to capture and relay information. Digital workflows can seamlessly guide employees to execute tasks and procedures accurately, with easy accessibility from a laptop or mobile device. Digital record keeping and knowledge transfer prevent human error, provide intuitive training for new hires, and allow employees to keep up with evolving processes.
2. Supercharged efficiencyCreating a connected workforce breaks down silos and contributes to a better employee experience. Workers should be able to communicate digitally and access information on a single platform—from their office, the factory floor, or off-site.Manufacturers should look into systems that connect and allow collaboration across ERP, MES, quality management, customer service, and customer relationship management (CRM). Easier collaboration and clearer context can help employees make better, faster decisions, driving efficiency across the entire production team.3. Improved OEE and COGMConnecting plant operators with mobile digital tools enables work to get done faster, better, and at a lower cost. Digital SOPs helps ensure that even your newest hire performs the next best possible action. IoT insights, previously confined to management dashboards, are turned into workflows that drive action on the factory floor.Escalations alert operators to leave non-urgent routine tasks and rally where they’re most needed. Research has shown these improvements can yield a significant improvement in overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and reduce cost of goods manufactured (COGM).4. Increased standard work and safety complianceManufacturers are burdened with considerable regulatory reporting, from filling out forms to sending emails to making sure papers are signed. Moving those tasks online can ease the burden.When simple routine tasks such as 5S and safety inspections are digitized, the system sees to it that nothing is missed. Auditable records with time and date stamps are stored in the cloud. Issue reporting and alerts go out to the appropriate teams, with appropriate escalation paths if responses are not timely.Transform your operational processesA connected workforce is the key to manufacturing success—enabling your team to drive better action on the factory floor. With all information and feedback captured in one platform, built-in predictive intelligence analyzes trends and uncovers opportunities for improvement.Find out how LIKE.TG® Manufacturing Connected Workforce puts employees front and center, gives plant leaders visibility into processes and roadblocks, and equips workers with the tools they need to succeed from day one.
3 ways to align IT and OT asset management practices
Smart factory advancements in manufacturing mean more and more operational technology (OT) devices are connected to the network. Today, more than ever before, it’s possible to visualize and monitor OT asset health the way you monitor IT assets.It’s even possible to see the relationships and dependencies between manufacturing and OT assets. This reduces the risk that an OT-related patch or change will negatively impact the production environment. Tasks such as patches, for instance, can be scheduled during planned downtime periods, when needed.A unified approachThe opportunity to create a unified view of the IT and OT estate in one place, and a cohesive approach to asset management, is exciting in a world where IT and OT silos have historically led to downtime and introduced risk.However, IT and OT assets are still quite different—as are the priorities of the teams that manage them. It’s not as simple as transplanting IT asset management best practices for OT.OT assets tend to have significantly higher demand for reliability and availability than IT assets do—as well as safety and quality concerns to prioritize. Yet, there are many places where a more unified approach can benefit everyone—especially when it comes to security.Even as manufacturers establish OT security operations centers (SOCs) in alignment with how they’ve set up their IT SOCs, many are cautious to fully integrate these teams. The skill sets and technical requirements of IT and OT assets can still be quite distinct. However, these teams can be better aligned in three ways.
1. ProcessThe first step often comes from aligning IT and OT security teams from a process standpoint. When both teams follow a consistent workflow—aligned to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) best practices and industry standards—the manufacturer has greater consistency in how incidents are managed, no matter whether the impacted asset is IT or OT.2. TechnologyNext, there’s an opportunity to align the IT and OT SOCs with unified technology. With advancements such as the Fujitsu OT Digital Transformation solution, based on LIKE.TG Operational Technology Management, it’s now possible to gain a consolidated view of all IT and OT assets—and security endpoints—in one place.Aligning IT and OT security technology creates an opportunity to visualize and prioritize security threats across the entire IT and OT estate—and see how a threat or remediation in one area might impact dependent devices.3. PersonnelUltimately, there may also be potential to align the actual personnel supporting IT and OT security into a unified team (with specialist roles). This true IT and OT convergence could help center both teams on the right priorities: maximizing uptime, quality, safety, and efficiency.Although IT and OT convergence has long been on the radar, advancements in OT asset management have made it even more critical. Lessons from the long history of IT asset management need to be applied, and adaptions must be made to make IT asset management practices relevant to OT.However, both IT and OT can benefit from a more unified approach to security—an area that will only become more critical in an era of hyperconnected manufacturing.Find out more in our ebook about how LIKE.TG and Fujitsu help manufacturers maximize OT uptime.
Implementing ITSM quickly – 3 women who made “Why, yes” their motto
Five years ago, Maureen Robson, Anna Bisset, and Lisa Jones were thrown together on an important project at a UK-based bank. Their goal: to implement LIKE.TG ITSM platform as quickly as possible. The trio worked together so successfully (completing what would normally be a two-year-project in just 10 months) that they continued their journey together at a further two companies working with LIKE.TG, and have now decided to start their own company.Today, through their startup, Why Aye, they’ve built new careers as full-time LIKE.TG contractors. The name comes from a slang term used in Newcastle (where Robson is from) meaning Why Yes!—as in, why, yes we can.Each of the words has its own meaning as well. “The why is really about us asking clients ‘Why are you doing it? Why are you making this change?’” says Robson, the group’s leader when it comes to c-suite engagement. (She asks the question so much the others jokingly call her “the Why One.”) “And the Aye is just a very Scottish term for Yes. So it’s really us saying, ‘Why are you doing this? And yes, we can help you’.”Platform integrations at multinational banks are a big growth area for LIKE.TG—and also for Why Aye. Not that long ago, a large-scale project could take two to three years. With LIKE.TG, the trio can complete an IT service management (ITSM) integration in 7 to 12 months.That’s impressive, given the number of integration challenges, including working with new teams, plugging into legacy environments, and educating thousands of users. The payoffs can be huge: At one bank, the new digital workflows are saving 46,000 work hours a month.Trio of talentsSo how does a three-person team pull this off with multinational clients in banking, energy, and international shipping?For starters, it takes a lot of road hours and camaraderie. The three have formed a sisterly bond, attending each others’ weddings, vacationing in Ibiza and Dubai (for one of their birthdays), and making the most of their time away from home by staying in nice hotels and dining at Michelin-star restaurants.Each partner also has her own skill and each plays a distinct role in the implementation process.Often, one of the biggest challenges in LIKE.TG implementations is translating how new digital workflows will ensure tangible business outcomes. Robson, who leads the trio’s implementation team, says this is crucial.“You have to translate for a business user who doesn't know a lot about the product what it can do for them,” says Robson. “You can’t make it overly complicated. I do a lot of translation from technology to business speak.”Since February 2018, Why Aye has worked with one of the UK’s largest global banks. There, Robson has overseen the rollout of LIKE.TG’s application portfolio management, virtual agent, and recently IT risk and controls for some 100,000 business users and 15,000 service colleagues.The group recently began supporting payment processes, Robson says. “We're helping payments admin teams, organizing their day-to-day work.” The primary payoff will be faster customer service operations for primary payment channels, including consumer mortgage, credit card, auto loans, and B2B transactions. “We've built a level of confidence where the business is coming to us and asking for help with their solutions on the front end,” she says.Technical deliveryAnna Bisset, who supervises end-to-end technical delivery, calls herself “the Engine Room.” “I've got to build and test it all and make sure that it stays on track within strategy, because when you get into delivery, it's easy for things to go off the rails,” she says.Part of Bisset’s job is to protect the “authenticity” of the platform—beefing up out-of-the box capabilities instead of adding customizations. While clients often request custom features, they can make the platform harder to upgrade long-term.Even when they convince in-house teams not to change the software, they face other challenges with legacy infrastructure. “They've got bits of technology that have been around for years,” says Bisset. “But then we come along and we want to do things quickly. It's a constant battle trying to get those older parts to maintain the pace.”That’s just the machine side of things. Bisset also navigates cultural challenges. “My role is about working really well with people,” she says. “I'm imposing a challenge on their time and skills, and you really have to bring these people on the journey with you,” she says. “You have to make sure you're motivating the team.”Perhaps it’s a testament to Bisset’s technical and people skills that she was recently able to integrate the LIKE.TG ITSM module in just eight months at the UK-based bank. She also moved rapidly implementing the Application Portfolio Management (APM), and Virtual Agent (VA), in six months.The change managerWhen you’re working with a financial services company with 12,000 IT pros and 100,000 employees, you will run up against “challenging stakeholders,” says Jones, who leads the team’s efforts on organizational change, engagement, and training.Some of the toughest cases, she says, are department heads and workers who aren’t up for an aggressive timetable, protective of the legacy systems, or resistant to process change. Yet “those are the ones we love,” says Jones, because challenging stakeholders will “tell us when we're doing things wrong and will give us their honest opinions.”To engage and educate, Jones uses tools like LIKE.TG’s guided learning tour to speed up the adoption process. She also gathers what she calls her “champions community”— in-house experts from IT, HR, and other departments— for an hour each week.“We'll show them early demos and get feedback,” says Jones. “It's the way to get them on board and keep them motivated. It’s also our opportunity to be very transparent.”That includes being honest about mistakes, too. At many large companies, says Robson, failure is often not a culturally acceptable option. “It’s refreshing when you get on a call with 300 people and say, ‘You know what? We absolutely stuffed that up and we really need your help to fix it,” she says. “So this is how we’re fixing it.”That kind of transparency, she adds, can help turn a potential “us-and-them” conflict into a “we” effort. “We're not just chucking the technology over the fence. They can see we’re helping them implement their product so they can work a better way.”The payoff of teamworkThe WhyAye team has been so successful that plan to bring on nine more people by January. They also just started working with a $56 billion consumer goods giant, with more contracts on the horizon.Whoever they add to the team, the newcomers will have to learn to acquire certain tastes. “We all like food, we all drink, we all like to travel,” says Jones. Their next stop is either a ski trip or a yoga retreat. In 2020, the trio’s success will likely limit it to just one. Says Robson: “We won’t have a lot of free time.”
Lessons from a Top CIO
How does a seasoned CIO lead a digital transformation? She makes friends.Great ideas aren’t enough for a CIO to succeed in leading a digital transformation, says Teri Takai, the former CIO of the U.S. Department of Defense, the states of California and Michigan, as well as Meridian Health Plan.“You have to really understand what the organization sees as success,” says Takai. “[Sometimes] we as technology folks see everything as black and white, and we don’t necessarily realize that in order to get the best impact for our ideas, we have to modify, we have to change, and we have to fit to the circumstances.”In her 40+ year career, she has had to build consensus, prioritize projects that would advance the organization’s overall goals, communicate often, and practice a lot of patience.Read more tips from Takai on WorkflowQuarterly.com, as well as other CIOs, or watch the video below.
Survey: Less than 20% of CIOs highly effective using new tech for digital transformation
CIOs and CHROs are collaborating on talent strategies, but they are largely missing out on opportunities to improve employees’ experiences through workflow digitization.More than half of CIOs in a global survey commissioned by LIKE.TG and published in Workflow Quarterly say they have significantly increased budget for workflow digitization—a sign that these technology leaders have identified how process automation can transform work to meet today’s business demands.These CIOs also say successful outcomes from technology investments rely on how they set up their organization for success. This includes collaborating with peers and vendors, aligning IT goals with the rest of the business, embedding digitization initiatives across the organization, and holistically tracking results. However, few CIOs are developing these foundational blocks very effectively, according to the research. Read the research summary.In fact, fewer than 20% of the CIOs surveyed report they are highly effective at using emerging technologies to transform services and operations, equipping employees with digital tools to manage workflows, or even educating their organization about new technology and changes to workflows.For digital transformation to work, CIOs need to get their organizational strategy right. In the latest issue of Workflow Quarterly—The Strategy Issue—we share data and advice on how industry leaders are doing just that.Learn how CIOs from JPMorgan Chase, Siemens, and Nationwide, and other well-known organizations are building a digital strategy with the key elements to rolling out workflow digitization across business lines.This Strategy Issue also explains how LIKE.TG created a framework for digitizing any function and explores never before analyzed Now Platform® data to understand how companies are achieving value through their process automation strategies—and how you might consider tracking outcomes.Visit WorkflowQuarterly.com.
Five tips to kick digital workflows into high gear
Lessons from 500+ CIOs on how to make digitization work, betterHow can CIOs reshape the future of work? Based on in-depth interviews and a survey of 516 CIOs, we asked technology leaders to identify the top strategies for transforming their organizations through digital workflows. Most of their answers boiled down to the five tips below:1. Collaborate with C-Suite peers
2. Collaborate with external partners
3. Align digitization goals to business goals
4. Embed IT into the organization
5. Track results and adjust strategy accordingly
Download the full research overview to learn more, and read about the transformations CIOs are achieving on WorkflowQuarterly.com.
The CIO’s Leadership Moment
IT chiefs are expected to be more than technologists. The hallmarks of success today are C-suite relationships, a customer mindset and workflow digitization. Technology is projected to change organizations more in the next several years than it has in the last several decades. What does that mean for technology leaders?We polled 516 CIOs around the world, and interviewed about a dozen more experts, to understand how the CIO role is evolving. We learned that 67%s of CIOs agree that their role is more focused on digitizing workflows today than three years ago. But it’s also focused on a lot more.Their role now includes educating other members of the C-Suite on the future of work, partnering with HR to set talent strategies for the new types of jobs, supporting corporate customers as much as employees, and setting organizational strategy for the entire business with the CEO. According to our Workflow CIO Quarterly, their role now includes educating other members of the C-Suite on the future of work, partnering with HR to set talent strategies for the new types of jobs, supporting corporate customers as much as employees, and setting organizational strategy for the entire business with the CEO.“No longer are companies using technology to run their businesses,” says Martha Heller, chief executive of Heller Associates, a recruiting firm specializing in the CIO, CTO and CISO roles, and contributing editor to CIO magazine. “Technology is their business.”As a result, the CIO is now in the unique position of being the institutional expert on how companies must operate to succeed.While most CIOs recognize the opportunity, most aren’t fully prepared to take the reins. We created a maturity model for CIOs to investigate how many are well-positioned to lead. Take the quiz to determine where you rank.
For the 6th year in a row, Gartner names LIKE.TG an ITSM Magic Quadrant Leader
We’re delighted to be named as a Leader once again in the ITSM Gartner Magic Quadrant. That’s six consecutive years that we believe, Gartner and our customers have validated our efforts and success in transforming the employee experience with LIKE.TG® IT Service Management (ITSM).Gartner’s recognition only adds to our energy, excitement, and commitment as we continue to bring more innovations to our customers via the Now Platform®, which is the foundation for all our solutions. Let’s walk through some of these new developments.Mobile appsLIKE.TG is ushering in the next-generation enterprise where mobile apps get work done with simple swipes and taps. And we are inspired by our customers whose creativity and innovations on the Now Platform blaze the trail in unlocking the power of the digital enterprise.Intelligent workspacesMachine learning built into the Now Platform drives incredible efficiencies and automation. Intelligent workspaces unleash new levels of technician productivity. We pack powerful capabilities into the Now Platform and abstract away the complexity, so that IT and business leaders can easily deliver the employee experiences they envision. This enables customers to boost operational efficiency with digital workflows, empower new levels of employee self-service, and accelerate business growth on the Now Platform.The demands of the workforce are changingBusiness leaders need to understand the big picture. The workforce is changing rapidly as are the demands of the employees who expect tasks at work to be as simple as ordering on Amazon, getting an Uber ride, or reserving a table for dinner with a couple of clicks on a smart phone.Next-generation mobile capabilitiesSmart business leaders get this, and they know that ITSM is at the forefront of delivering that transformation. This is why LIKE.TG is bringing next-gen mobile capabilities to the enterprise. With our mobile solution, employees can simplify everyday moments such as asking questions and getting help from across departments with simple taps and swipes.There’s even a mobile app for onboarding new employees. Upon acceptance of the offer letter, a new hire uses the app to complete the tasks needed before the start date so they can be productive from day one.Using voice commands with mobile appThe Virtual Agent feature built into the Now Platform understands natural human language so employees can effortlessly get to resolution without the need for human agent involvement.For example, an employee saying, “I cannot connect to the VPN” or “How do I reset my password?” prompts Virtual Agent to provide the step-by-step troubleshooting required for resolution. The integrations with Siri and Google Voice allow employees to simply use voice commands to interact with the LIKE.TG mobile application. As a result, customers are reporting greater levels of incident deflection and employee satisfaction.Great work experiences require an efficient IT organizationDelightful employee experiences are possible when the service desk has simple and effective ways to drive that experience. New agent workspaces from LIKE.TG are boosting service desk productivity by bringing together in one place all the information IT staff members need to do their jobs.Built-in machine learning accelerates issue resolution by not only automatically assigning incoming issues, but also automatically proposing solutions to agents. From proactively flagging major incidents to proposing solutions based on similar issues solved in the past, machine learning is freeing up staff to focus on more strategic, career-enriching activities.In the same vein, Vendor Manager Workspace gives vendor managers a single destination to see all vendor information including profile, performance, and service satisfaction.Pushing the boundariesLIKE.TG continues to push the boundaries of what is known and accepted by bringing to the market top notch service experiences and cross-departmental digital workflows on the powerful Now Platform. The IT Staff—the enabler of those experiences—is finding itself at new levels of efficiency and job satisfaction.As IT leaders around the world use LIKE.TG ITSM to catalyze their digitalization and cultural transformation, we are excited to see the impact and inspiration with which these leaders are generating business growth and value. We believe that our focus on customer needs and customer success is what has helped us be named a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for six consecutive years. It’s ingrained in LIKE.TG culture and it inspires us to make the world of work, work better for people.
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Tools, 29 August 2019, Rich Doheny, Chris Matchett, Siddharth Shetty.Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from ServiceNow.
Deepening Partnerships at Microsoft Ignite
The future of digital transformation and workplace productivity was at the center of Microsoft Ignite last week in Orlando, FL. It’s one of my favorite conferences of the year, where thousands of technology professionals converge to hear and see the latest enterprise tech trends.This year was no exception. Announcements across Azure, Office and other Microsoft products will enable businesses to deliver services faster and compete more effectively in the marketplace – plus, that Minecraft demo that turns the real world into a playing field was seriously cool!We’re excited about the Azure Arc announcement that will be transformational for our mutual customers that manage resources across multiple clouds and on premises by extending Azure Resource Manager. Now DevOps (development and operations teams) folks will be able to practice their discipline the same way they do on premises as in the cloud.At LIKE.TG, we've been working with Microsoft to show how these new services can be effectively managed and governed so that they can be quickly deployed in the enterprise.We aim to meet employees where they are – our goal is to build seamless integrations so you can live in your tools of choice and still be connected to other systems used by your company (e.g. our Outlook Actionable Messages connector lets you approve LIKE.TG requests from within Outlook, where, if you’re like me, you spend a lot of your day!)To date, we have over 20 integrations with Microsoft and announced our strategic partnership in July. Most recently, we announced the upcoming availability of our connector between Microsoft Security Graph API(an intermediary broker between Microsoft and our partners’ security offerings) and LIKE.TG® Security Operations.With the connector, Alert Ingestion profiles ensure comprehensive mapping of details in the alert to security incident artifacts and trigger playbooks in LIKE.TG to orchestrate, triage, investigate and response actions.Additionally, the mapping of these alerts to the business services and IT infrastructure housed in the LIKE.TG Configuration Management Database (CMDB) enables prioritization and risk scoring based on business impact, allowing security teams to focus on what is most critical to their business.Feedback from LIKE.TG and Microsoft’s mutual customers was fantastic at the conference – a lot of folks came to the booth to mention how the deeper partnership between LIKE.TG and Microsoft is enabling their company to focus more time on delivering services versus writing integrations between our platforms.During this conference, we spent a lot of time with different product managers at Microsoft ideating the next round of platform integrations, and we can’t wait to tell you about new developments in the future!
IT Workflow: Q&A with Pablo Stern
Building agility into IT workflowsAcross the enterprise, no team feels the need for speed more than IT. To create the organizational agility that is essential for success, companies today are increasingly turning to digital platforms that replace inefficient processes with digital workflows and bring data to more teams, faster. Pablo Stern, Senior Vice President of IT Workflow Products, explains how IT organizations are building agility using ServiceNow.How is LIKE.TG’s value proposition for IT workflows unique?If you look at the competitive landscape, you can see that digital companies are going to be in the best position to accelerate business growth. IT is driving these digital transformation initiatives on behalf of the business.I see LIKE.TG at the heart of this transformation. Digital workflows are our core competency—they are what drives a company’s digital transformation. For the digital transformation to happen, a business needs connective tissue, meaning that all of the different pieces of the business—the work and the data—need to be connected. This is what LIKE.TG’s digital workflows do.How does the Now Platform deliver great IT experiences?Consider what the iPhone has done for your home life. What makes it so unique is that it’s one platform with a very broad ecosystem of apps that brings your home life together—friends, financials, purchases and more. That’s what we do for the enterprise. We bring together work across your business, from IT to HR, finance, and beyond. We provide one platform to help you find coworkers, get budget approvals, or order that new laptop. We’re removing the friction in your day-to-day work life.To deliver great experiences, you have to start with our customers. We want them to work where they want, how they want, when they want. The Now Platform enables just that, whether you’re at your desk or on the go.These experiences stem from the workflows that span IT. For operations, we solve the needle in a haystack problem, where people are trying to find the “needles” at the root of their operational issues. For example, we identify the most probable root cause when an outage occurs, and we also help security teams prioritize the systems that need remediation. This is the power of AIOps that the industry is buzzing about: we take the data, apply AI to it, and deliver insights. But we don’t stop there. We use these insights to drive actions: helping customers become more proactive and enabling them to get ahead of problems before they impact their customers.In true DevOps fashion, we’re also uniting developers and operations to help them release more quickly without an increased risk of destabilizing their services. And we make sure that agile teams are aligned to the priorities of the business, minimizing wasted time.For agents, we remove the mundane. We automate repetitive tasks, allowing people to focus on higher value, more interesting work. Take something as simple as password resets, a mundane and repetitive task for IT. By applying LIKE.TG and automation to this problem, we can reduce call volume to IT by 30%. That means IT can focus more of its time on higher-value problems.For all the use cases, we provide IT with a consumerized experience on the desktop or mobile phone. Our connective tissue unites IT workflows and data into one experience so people can work how they want, where they want, when they want. By focusing on the IT experience, we enable our customers to deliver a world-class employee experience.LIKE.TG is part of a broader ecosystem of IT infrastructure platforms and tools. How do we fit into that ecosystem?Our value in the IT ecosystem is using digital workflows to help businesses move as quickly as possible. Think of the lifecycle of technology, from ideating to building and delivering technology to customers. Developers love using their tool of choice, like Git or Jenkins, along that journey. With our upcoming DevOps release, we connect the entire development journey end-to-end. We also provide visibility into products and investments, and enable the teams building those products to work in an agile fashion.In the operations world, ops teams work with a broad set of monitoring solutions to assess the health of their clouds. We integrate with that ecosystem to provide operations with a unified view.In today’s security environment, cybersecurity teams leverage a variety of security solutions. Those teams are increasingly interconnected with the operations teams driving patching and remediation. We help security analysts prioritize vulnerabilities and incidents from their ecosystem and then collaborate with ops to remediate vulnerabilities, solve issues, and improve the health of the production environment.A big part of the digital transformation journey is moving to the cloud. How is LIKE.TG helping that transition?We consider it our responsibility to support our customer’s evolving landscape as they transition to the cloud. With LIKE.TG, customers can see whether their services are running on-premise, in a private cloud, or in the public cloud. LIKE.TG traverses the customer’s cloud, covering use cases from incident management to service health and vulnerability remediation. That’s how we enable smooth cloud transitions.In some cases we’re adding support for cloud-specific capabilities. As an example, last year we acquired VendorHawk, a SaaS license management platform. We’ll be releasing this technology later in the year as part of our Software Asset Management (SAM) product, extending support to manage cost and license usage for popular SaaS applications. And later this year we’ll release Cloud Insights, a solution that enables cloud operations teams to understand and optimize cost and resource utilization in public clouds.Everyone in our industry talks about digital transformation. What’s a concrete example of a customer that has used LIKE.TG to transform IT workflows?Cox Automotive provides products and services for the automotive industry. The business has grown quickly by acquiring many industry-leading automotive brands, including Kelly Blue Book, AutoTrader and Manheim. Cox now employs 25,000 people in more than 200 locations across the globe.When AutoTrader Group and Manheim Auctions merged to become Cox Automotive, they immediately saw the power of AutoTrader’s LIKE.TG ITSM platform. Cox rapidly expanded LIKE.TG’s service desk capabilities across the other major brands. They also started delivering other digital solutions using the Now Platform.Today, Cox leverages the Now Platform to streamline the software release process as they look to accelerate technology. They view LIKE.TG as a strategic platform that helps power many digital activities and applications.
High-performing CIOs: Getting out of the tech engine and into the driving seat of digital transformation
In an article earlier this year, our CIO Chris Bedi highlighted how successful digital transformation will create a place where you move faster, make better decisions and compete effectively in the digital era.Yet Chris also points out that digital transformation is very much a journey, not a switch that companies can flip. And it’s the journey that is the focus of my conversations with business leaders across EMEA. They have a vision of their digital transformation destination — what they really want to know is how to get there.This journey was a key point of discussion when I met with global market intelligence firm IDC recently. CEOs are increasingly integrating digital as a core element of their corporate strategies, yet IDC has found that 65% of CEOs in Europe are feeling the pressure to deliver a successful digital transformation strategy.Creating the new digital transformation task forceWhat’s clear is that the responsibility for delivering digital transformation is no longer being placed solely at the door of the CIO. And why should it be? According to IDC, 62% of the budgets invested to support digital transformation initiatives are coming from outside of IT.Within those organisations that are thinking strategically about digital transformation, the leads of multiple business functions are finding themselves on the front line when it comes to taking on the pressure that is filtering down from the C-suite — including finance, HR, customer experience (CX) and operations.It’s a shift that I’m seeing first hand when talking to leaders within European organisations. The CIO may have opened the business’s eyes to the potential of new technology, but heads of key business functions are now recognising the huge benefit that digital workflows bring outside of the IT function in removing complexity within their processes and creating new experiences for employees and customers.True enterprise-wide digital transformation requires alignment across all business functions, yet it’s important that we don’t underplay the role of the CIO. This new ‘digital dream team’ (as IDC terms it) needs someone in the driving seat — and the CIO is the orchestrator who will execute a company’s digital transformation.The impact of the high-performing CIOCIOs with a strategic or disruptive mindset aren’t shy to grab this new opportunity and engage in a different way with their C-level peers. For business leaders, digital transformation isn’t a technology project, it’s a business initiative — one that is supported by technology.A recent study from LIKE.TG adds support to what we’re seeing within our customer base about this change in focus: CIOs are shifting their conversations from technology to business value.Two key findings in particular stand out: nearly two thirds (63%) of CIOs believe business and leadership skills are more important than technology acumen, and the most successful CIOs have positioned themselves as business visionaries, not technology specialists.High-performing CIOs are building C-suite influence —they have strong relationships with other business leaders, in particular the CEO —and their focus is very much on strategy versus operations. By aligning the goals of IT with the goals of the business, they are executing digital transformation strategies that are advancing efficiency, financial performance, productivity, employee performance and innovation.Perhaps most importantly, the forward-thinking CIOs also report higher levels of productivity, innovation and customer satisfaction in their organisation.Building consensus and actionCIOs are no doubt ahead of their business peers in understanding the true potential of technologies such as the LIKE.TG platform in making work more streamlined and meaningful. Many are seeing success already by applying digital workflows within the IT operations and IT service management, for example.Their role today is to open up that expertise and related technology to every other part of their business. Many of our customers started their digital transformation journeys within IT and are now building consensus and action around automating work processes to drive outcomes in multiple business areas.For example, at consumer credit reporting company Experian, the VP of global service excellence has spoken out about how, with LIKE.TG, they have “a single system of engagement that extends far beyond IT”. And at the NHS Blood and Transplant, an essential part of the UK’s NHS service, the team talks about how LIKE.TG has become a way of life, citing “We don’t have to sell it… it’s selling itself.”It’s clear that digital transformation isn’t a difficult conversation starter for those CIOs who are ready to take on this challenge enterprise-wide. They have already experienced the power of platforms like LIKE.TG in accelerating their digital transformation journey, through automation and digital workflows.What’s important now is aligning with their leadership peers so they can unlock the potential of technology and drive business value in all areas of the organisation, whether that’s within HR, finance, customer experience or any number of key business functions.
Workflow Digitization Relies on Bold Goals, CEOs & Employee Support
CIOs are advancing workflow digitization by identifying big goals, leaning on CEOs for support, and showing peers how much employees love itInterviews with more than a dozen CIOs from around the world reveal that workflow digitization has become an organization-wide priority, but succeeding requires more than understanding the technology.CIOs say that they need a seat at the table, the full support of their CEO, and a clear strategy for reporting the impact on employees.Listen to the Workflow Quarterly podcast to learn more. Here are a few quotes from several CIOs:
Lori Beer, CIO, JPMorgan:“This is the first time when I got this appointment little more than a year ago that the CIO was actually part of the firm’s operating committee…I aligned the vision and the mission of delivering of technology very clearly to the strategic objectives of the company.”
Douglas Blackwell, CIO, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield:“I was actually presenting to the customer advisory board for some of our very large national accounts. I think years ago that probably wouldn’t have happened. The CIOs tended to be focused more on the back end of the business as opposed to the front end. So now it’s all about customers and sales and thinking that way.”
Helmuth Ludwig, CIO, Siemens:“My personal conviction is if you want to go as a company through a digital transformation, it can only be driven by the CEOs of the businesses, and this has to be supported by the CIOs.”
Hardware Asset Management: Knowing When to Upgrade
When is it time to say goodbye? For a hardware device, that question can be tough to answer. Though the device has been in the environment for several years, there is still usable life left. So why would we retire and dispose the device and spend additional money on a replacement?With the device’s lifecycle information, that answer becomes much clearer. We know the intentions of the device manufacturer: When the device will no longer be available for purchase, when support will end, and when the device will go end of life.The next related issue is a big one: if we know a device should be retired, do we know where all the similar devices are in our environment? Without hardware asset management (HAM), discovery, and normalization, it’s nearly impossible to answer to this question.Enter the HAMStrong HAM processes capture information from the time of device purchase/receipt all the way to disposal. In between, HAM will tell us where the devices are in our stockrooms and warehouses. Next comes discovery, which tells us where in our environment these devices are installed.Discovery captures data from the device. This data will likely be captured with numerous variations in the manufacturer name, device model, and device model number. This is where normalization solves the variation problem. Normalization groups like devices together by standardizing the manufacturer and device model and model number.Get proactiveFor example, one company I know has been purchasing and deploying industrial routers throughout their environment since 2015. The IT Asset Management (ITAM) team has had a HAM program in place since 2011, so they have vendor and purchase history for all these routers and track where in-stock routers are stored.Because of their HAM program, they know the manufacturer of the industrial router stopped selling that model at the end of 2019, so they can no longer buy replacements. They also know the manufacturer will stop providing device and operating system support at the end of this year. Finally, they know that a vulnerability with these routers was recently discovered that allows attackers to intercept and decrypt network traffic routed through them.Thanks to normalization, the ITAM team has a complete list of all its industrial routers, whether the routers are deployed or in storage. Discovery tells them the location of all the deployed routers.With all this information on hand and with the lifecycle support date at the end of 2020 as the finish line, they have an upfront runway to select the best replacement router for their environment, negotiate with vendors to get the lowest price and set up a project to replace all the to-be retired routers in the environment.Be preparedThese are the benefits of being proactive. What’s the cost of being reactive? First, you may have to pay for extended support from a manufacturer because devices can’t be quickly replaced. And failure to track equipment through its lifecycle can create significant security risks. If you don’t know there is a risk or if you don’t know where all the risk-identified devices are in your environment, then your organization may be vulnerable. A security breach is not a price you want to pay.If you’d like to learn more, watch the on-demand webinar: “The ITAM Triforce – Discover the power of SAM, HAM, and the CMDB”
LIKE.TG to acquire CMDB pioneer Sweagle
LIKE.TG, the leading digital workflow company making work, work better for people, today announced it has signed an agreement to acquire Sweagle, a Belgium based configuration data management company. The transaction will extend LIKE.TG’s DevOps and IT Operations Management (ITOM) capabilities, giving customers the ability to leverage machine learning to identify and help prevent potential misconfigurations from causing outages in production and speeding up remediation.COVID-19 has magnified the importance for organizations to quickly adapt technology to meet changing customer and employee needs. Sweagle provides a single source of truth for configuration data that is otherwise spread across many tools. With Sweagle, LIKE.TG customers can identify and intercept application and infrastructure inconsistencies during agile development cycles.“With capabilities for configuration data management from Sweagle, we will empower DevOps teams to deliver application and infrastructure changes more rapidly while reducing risk,” said RJ Jainendra, vice president and general manager of DevOps and IT Business Management at ServiceNow. “Sweagle also brings deep DevOps talent to ServiceNow. Both founders are pioneers in configuration data management, and we are honored to have this talent join our team as we continue to help customers compete and win in a digital economy.”
Along with its DevOps and IT Operations Management Health solutions, Sweagle will help accelerate LIKE.TG’s newly introduced Service Graph roadmap by managing configuration data for public and private cloud environments and modern application architectures, like microservices, containers, and serverless computing. As organizations focus on delivering great experiences to employees and customers, they often must navigate 50,000 or more configuration data items to make a single enterprise application work correctly. With Sweagle, LIKE.TG customers can quickly deploy applications and infrastructure as code changes more frequently on a single data platform.
“Today, configuration data is as important as having good code – and this is the foundation that Sweagle was built on,” said Mark Verstockt, CEO and co-founder of Sweagle. “We are proud to join LIKE.TG as it continues to enable digital transformation and drive customer success. Every day something goes wrong in a company related to bad configuration data. Together, we can help customers deliver higher-quality applications without the need for manual work, all while reducing cost.”Sweagle was founded in 2017 by CEO Mark Verstockt and CTO Benny Van de Sompele.LIKE.TG expects to complete the acquisition at the beginning of Q3 2020. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.Forward-Looking StatementsThis press release contains forward-looking statements about the expectations, beliefs, plans, intentions, and strategies relating to LIKE.TG’s acquisition of Sweagle. Such forward-looking statements include statements regarding future product capabilities and offerings and expected benefits to ServiceNow. These statements reflect the current beliefs of LIKE.TG and are based on current information available to LIKE.TG as of the date hereof. LIKE.TG does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made. The forward-looking statements in this press release are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially and adversely from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, the inability to assimilate or integrate Sweagle’s technology into our platform; the inability to retain key employees of Sweagle after the transaction closes; unanticipated expenses related to Sweagle’s acquired technology; potential adverse tax consequences; disruption to our business and diversion of management attention and other resources; and potential unknown liabilities associated with Sweagle’s business.
Cut down the time to improve with ITSM Continual Improvement Management
We measure a lot of our ITSM success through increments of time. But mean time to resolution, time on page in the knowledgebase, and cases-per-hour aren’t just go-to metrics. They set the cultural expectations for our service teams – that improving service times, without sacrificing quality, is paramount.Some organizations view the effort to change and boost service times as a separate, targeted action, but it should be an ongoing process with tracking and measurement on par with your service delivery. Improvement isn’t something that should be limited to once a quarter, so LIKE.TG created a Continual Improvement Management solution as part of our ITSM Professional package, which leverages the Now Platform and Performance Analytics to provide a structured framework that brings people, processes, and data together in one place. With that, you can access real-time feedback, while automatically initiating and tracking service improvements on an ongoing basis.“Many customers have some form of continual improvement plan in their roadmap, but they don’t have a tool to execute the continual improvement end-to-end in a more structured and efficient way,” said Manjeet Singh, Lead Product Manager for LIKE.TG during an episode of LIKE.TG’s TechBytes Podcast. “A lot of change is happening in a very reactive way. A better approach would be to make it more proactive, so you can take care of things before you can see the KPI move into the wrong direction.”
Continual Improvement Management takes a long-term approach by embedding the concept of rolling improvements into your everyday business activity. It provides a single view to track the data for each of your improvement initiatives and helps rank them based on ROI and effort so you can validate budget and resources decisions. When goals change, you can use the out-of-the-box drag and drop tool to move priorities and stay aligned with overall objectives.This solution is designed to enable smart decision making that aligns with business goals and drive service excellence, while providing an easy way to take action. It allows you to:
Create improvement opportunities from any application
Prioritize and rank improvement opportunities based on effort and outcome
Improve agent performance with real-time training
View improvements in relation to business goals
This saves time. Time conceiving and implementing a plan, time searching for the right data to show progress, and most importantly, time responding to performance dips.“When you’re tracking your improvements within email and spreadsheets, you’re limited in how you can tie that back to business goals,” said Archana Penukonda, Senior Product Marketing Manager at ServiceNow. “When your plan is in the Now Platform, you are able to look at what initiatives you’ve planned, how much effort it will take, what KPI will it affect, and who is involved. All of that is in one place, allowing you to prioritize the efforts that have the highest benefit to the organization.”Is your team moving fast enough? Think about employing LIKE.TG’s Continual Improvement Management product, which comes standard with our ITSM Professional package. Learn more about this and all the other solutions that will help you make quick changes for your service teams.
Introducing a new IT Experience Podcast Series: Timely topics for these trying times
Here’s some surprising news: Podcast listenership is actually on the rise (42% more in the US and 53% more in Europe) even with the drastic slash in hours spent commuting to and from work. To feed all those hungry ears, we’ve kicked off a new series around IT Experiences, especially as they pertain to rapidly developing needs and changes in the new world or work.Says Usman Sindhu, podcast producer and host, “The global reality of 2020 is forcing IT departments to totally rethink how they operate, the technology they use, and how they are led. These quick podcasts feature super change agents and other IT rock stars revealing their inside thoughts and strategies. Real time.”Binge the first four podcasts in only an hour.IT Experience: Episode 1: IT leaders' role in the post-COVID-19 worldTune in to hear from Deloitte's Khalid Kark, Managing Director at Deloitte CIO Program, about the IT leaders' role in the post-COVID-19 world. In this episode, we'll also discuss findings from the Deloitte's 2020 Global Technology Leadership Study." target="_blank">LISTEN NOW >IT Experience: Episode 2: AIOps on SteroidsThangavel Viswam (TV), Director of IT Operations at LIKE.TG IT, discusses leveraging the vast amount of data, combined with AIOps to achieve business outcomes." target="_blank">LISTEN NOW >IT Experience Podcast Episode 3: Role of modern architectures in shaping DevOps and ITWe discuss with Alexander Ljungström, Strategic Advisor at Einar Partner, about the role of modern architectures in shaping DevOps and IT. You’ll hear about the role of CMDB in balancing DevOps and centralized IT processes." target="_blank">LISTEN NOW >IT Experience Podcast Episode 4: Aligning IT and business to deliver digital outcomesDavid Stefferud, Execution Innovation Manager, LIKE.TG Practice at Accenture, discusses laying the right foundation for the digital transformation. You’ll hear about the importance of CMDB and CSDM to get the quality data for your transformation projects.LISTEN NOW >
CareAR announces augmented reality integration with LIKE.TG
CareAR announces the availability of its LIKE.TG integration, providing an innovative industry solution seamlessly extending enterprise-grade augmented reality (AR) visual support as part of a LIKE.TG digital workflow experience. Available for LIKE.TG® ® Customer Service Management, Field Service Management, and IT Service Management, CareAR is an augmented reality visual support platform that helps enterprises digitally transform their service experience with game-changing AR capabilities delivering greater operational efficiencies, customer outcomes, and safety.Starting from either the LIKE.TG Mobile Agent application or Agent Workspace desktop interface, the integration provides real-time visual AR assistance and guidance for customers, employees and field workers on-site. Remote agents and experts are able to virtually see the situation and visually guide customers and field workers intuitively using a suite of collaborative AR tools via desktop, mobile and smart glass devices, as if they were there, in-person.Additionally, CareAR can instantly capture content of pictures and video recordings during service sessions.“NTT DATA is focused on helping our clients use digital technology to transform their business and deliver improved user experience,” said Cris Kibbee, chief delivery officer, NTT DATA Services. “Capabilities such as AR, AI, and integrated digital workflows are transformative to enabling greater operational efficiencies and enhancing customer experiences. We are continuously co-developing innovative technologies and approaches in these areas, with partners like CareAR and LIKE.TG, to build solutions that augment and help our teams deliver faster while consistently aligned with user expectations.”Service teams today are challenged by lack of situational context and skilled resources when it comes to troubleshooting incidents, whether in the field, workplace, or customers’ sites. The ability to remotely solve or enable customers or users to self-solve problems creates greater efficiency and productivity of people across the value chain.“CareAR’s vision of making expertise accessible is more crucial now than ever before,” said Sam Waicberg, co-founder and CEO, CareAR. “CareAR and LIKE.TG are on a journey to enable enterprises to deliver intelligence and instructions, instantly for their customers, employees, and field workers, so they can provide digital experiences that deliver the greatest customer engagements and outcomes.”“Service teams today are challenged with solving problems in increasingly complex situations, especially in light of COVID-19. They want to increase efficiency, reduce operational costs, and improve customer outcomes—all while ensuring employee safety,” said Michael Ramsey, vice president of product management for customer workflow products at ServiceNow. “Together with CareAR, LIKE.TG is delivering digital experiences that empower service teams to better solve problems remotely so work can be completed efficiently and safely.”Through this integrated partnership, CareAR and LIKE.TG customers can:
Solve problems faster, the first time: Organizations can now gain valuable visual and situational context, along with the digital tools they need in order to focus more of their time on solving the actual problem versus assessing the situation. CareAR provides a visual AR engagement solution addressing common support use cases such as remote trouble shooting or smart hands for "See What I See."If on-site presence is needed, the ability to “Show Before You Go” in order to see what your customers or field workers see, prior to being dispatched, ensures greater likelihood to fix the problem the first time, using desktop, mobile or smart glass devices. CareAR recently announced support for Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2, that works as part of CareAR’s workflow integration with LIKE.TG, delivering a “hands-free” remote visual AR support solution.
Improve Operational Efficiencies: Reducing bottom line expenses is imperative, especially in today’s climate. The ability to deflect truck rolls by conducting virtual visits can also deflect significant expenses to the bottom line. These operational efficiencies correlate directly with improved customer outcomes.
Enhance Customer and Employee Safety: Organizations today need new ways to enhance their remote work and support capabilities while still being productive, effective, and now safe. The luxury of physically going onsite is less available to us today. CareAR can play a key role in delivering on the above KPIs while allowing customers and employees to work remotely.
Bridge Skills Gap and Knowledge Transfer: As more senior and experienced professionals leave the workforce over the next five to 10 years, they’ll take tribal knowledge along with them. New processes and tools are needed to help bridge skills gaps and distribute expertise across people and systems. CareAR helps make expertise accessible through real-time interactions with remote experts, self-guided instructions, and contextual insights.
About CareAR:CareAR is the augmented reality support platform for the modern service management enabled enterprise. We make expertise accessible, instantly for customers, employees, and field workers through visual AR interactions, instructions, and insights as part of an end-to-end service management digital workflow. As a result, CareAR uniquely augments intelligence to accelerate skills gap and knowledge transfer of service management teams while providing greater operational efficiencies, customer outcomes, and safety for Covid-19.
Your Golden Ticket: The Hidden Power of CMDB in IT Digital Transformation
Digital Transformation may not be a new practice in IT Services, however with the digitization of products and services it’s moved from the back room to front and center.Whether we’re creating or managing on the fly with microservices, serverless compute, or containerization and APIs, digital rules everything around us. From IT operations, service delivery and asset management to even the fundamental makeup of our company’s core products and services, it’s all gone—or going—to the cloud. With this comes a need to juggle legacy systems while transforming to what’s possible, and an even greater need for real-time visibility for monitoring security, compliance, software and hardware, end of life and compliance risks critical to infrastructure to keep today’s modern enterprise up and running—with all the added complexity that necessary change brings.Successful transformation begins with a solid digital foundation. And while the nature of IT transformation is complex, the starting point for embracing the digital revolution has lived right at the center of our world all along; the Configuration Management Database, CMDB.Today the value of the CMDB to the business is our golden ticketThe CMDB has a long history of being deprioritized as just another IT tool. Considered a repository for all infrastructure, software, applications, and assets, the CMDB isn’t usually the first thing businesses think of as one of their most critical systems. But with true transformation comes the need for innovative problem solving and fresh perspectives, including our perceptions on the role and value of our CMDB. With data as one of our most precious, utilitarian and valuable business assets as connected internal and customer experiences become the standard, our CMDB is more than our warehouse—it’s our golden ticket.How do we make the switch and prioritize our CMDB as an integral part of our IT operations and asset management motions?It all starts with making sure we are populating the CMDB with the data that brings true business value, and not as a catch all for quantity versus quality. Use these best data management practices for moving your CMDB up the organizational priority, drive true change management so your key stakeholders understand the worth of data, connected resources and teams, governance, compliance, and security benefits it brings, and drive education on why it’s just as important to your business as your financial systems of record.Make Value the cornerstone of your CMDB prioritizationLet’s face it: populating a CMDB with data or Configuration Items (CIs) and relationships has no real value in and of itself. The true value comes from the processes it supports or the decisions that can be made from it. In order to make your CMDB a powerhouse in your IT infrastructure, you need to understand what value you want to drive out of the CMDB so you can chart the course for your specific journey.Initiatives prime for CMDB prioritization:
Ensuring compliance and reducing friction in vendor collaboration challenges in IT Asset and Inventory Management
Reducing management overhead and costs with Data Center Consolidation and/or Cloud Migration
Increasing efficiency and reducing integration friction in MA
Reduce risk to the business by mitigating Security Vulnerability
Protecting your organization from self-inflicted issues and outages by implementing Enterprise Change Management and Impact Analysis
Help drive and support overall Application Rationalization and IT Transformation by giving visibility into innovation decisions
Don’t overcomplicate things: choose an entry point initiative with the most potential business value and start from there. Once you’ve set your North Star, it’s time to drill down to the details to assess your IT health and increase your CMDB business value to support your journey – like a pro.Pro Tip: Harness the Common Services Data Model (CSDM)In order to unify our organizational priorities and rally around the CMDB, we need to align on a common set of values, language and standards. A singular approach, common vocabulary and systems will allow you to enable service reporting, avoid duplication of tables and data, and remove upgrade obstacles that can derail your journey to IT transformation.That’s where having a Common Services Data Model (CSDM) makes all the difference. The CSDM is a recommended set of standard service definitions across the LIKE.TG platform and products that enables true service level reporting, as well as enabling and supporting multiple configuration strategies. And with business complexity rising as digital experience expands, having a common services data model is no longer just a “nice to have” … it’s table stakes for competing today.Ask yourself and your internal collaborators these questions to determine your need for a CSDM:
Do you have a standard way to talk about your digital services?
Do you have real-time visibility into what IT resources your digital services are dependent on?
Do you have insights into where to immediately focus to solve problems when services slow down and become unresponsive?
Do you have instant knowledge into what services are impacted by security attacks?
Are you confident of full compliance in the case of an audit?
If you didn’t answer yes to all of the above, it’s integral to make CSDM a part of your model toolkit to ensure you have full visibility and alignment in data value, utilization, hygiene, compliance, governance, risk and security. Think of it as establishing your base so you can tackle greater challenges with confidence.Now that your CSDM is in place, you can move on to managing your digital services in a real-time way that ensures you can make planned changes without impacting your business, address incidents resulting from an unplanned change, all while your employees and customers are blissfully unaware that any of it occurred in the first place.
Pro Tip: Unify language to proactively monitor and ensure data qualityThe CMDB is sometimes referred to as the heart of the IT environment, and rightly so. It’s the center of world in terms of IT health and visibility into configuration information, resources and the dependencies between those resources required to deliver digital services. And just as like a real heart, it’s critical to keep it in shape by being just as vigilant about what fuels it and what can potentially clog the arteries.One key area data quality comes into play is the need to federate with other systems. After taking the time to clean up your data and driving change management around business value, the last thing you want is to have all that foundational work ruined by ingesting data from outside sources without the same standard of quality.Potential pitfalls to look out for when factoring in outside systems:
Make sure you’re not duplicating existing data when federating with other systems during a Data Dump or Data ingestion.
Ensure you’re normalizing federated data to use the right entity in the CMDB.
Be mindful of human error when integrating data, even with rules around hygiene and standardization in place.
It’s a no-brainer that adding in outside collaborators creates another layer of complexity and risk when it comes to data management. That’s where technology is our co-pilot for reducing friction and simplifying the federation process. Solutions like LIKE.TG’s Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE) allow technology partners to start certifying the data that gets entered into the CMDB before it’s ingested into your system. Think of it as your first line of defense in protecting all your previous work and bringing your vendors and outside sources into your collaboration group for ensuring data quality and hygiene.And if you already use LIKE.TG, it gets better. Our out-of-the-box solutions for auto-populating the CMDB natively use the Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE), helping to do the work for you.Pro Tip: Accelerate decision making by understanding dependencies and CILaying the foundations of data management, standardization and federated data integration opens up the next phase of your CMDB process: impacting and accelerating decision making by harnessing data insights. Now that we have our data in one heart and have its health under control, we can drive true transformation – on small and large scales – by tracking, visualizing, and reporting on the relationships between Configuration Items (CI)s and their dependencies to one another. And the best way to do that is to start with automated dependency mapping or ‘Service Mapping.’Service Mapping is vital for:Delivering efficient IT Services. Power up your Change Management process by mapping Configuration Items (CIs) to your Services enabling stakeholders to make informed decisions by visualizing business impact of a change in real-time. Mapping CIs also helps keep your IT and business partners are on the same page about issue and event resolution by surfacing affected services for alignment in response and planning. This unified approach enables IT teams to launch or resolve incidents rapidly since they have better visibility of the infrastructure changes.Managing system outages in a better way. By linking remediation actions to CIs, you don’t just diagnose service outages faster – you fix them faster, too. Often, the first time that IT operations knows about a business service outage is when end users complain – and that doesn’t make for a good experience. Proactively stopping business service outages before they start is key to improving service availability and reducing the run-rate workload for IT operations teams. Tackle this problem head-on by integrating an event management solution with your CMDB. Connecting the two simplifies resolution by enabling quicker diagnosis of outages and visibility into how issues are propagating across all business services.Creating true value savings and risk reduction with Software Asset Management (SAM): Asset management is usually considered a financial function, but by tapping the full power of your CMDB your SAM functions can become a substantial cost savings impact on your business bottom line. Think about it: your CMDB platform can be used to track physical assets, software assets, and consumables. What if you can have software asset data in the same place where you manage IT, enabling teams to track all the installed assets and their utilization in a single platform? With a service map in place, you can do just that. This connection is a powerful part of transformation, allowing you to understand total cost of ownership to run a service, and reducing risk by being proactive in upgrading the software that runs your services before it reaches end of life. Win, meet Win.Reducing risk by responding to security incidents and vulnerabilities faster. A single source of truth — the CMDB — is also invaluable for security and risk management team. Mapping your services in the CMDB reduces the amount of noise by providing a clear line-of-sight to the services and applications that are affected, saving diagnosis time and reducing potential service interruptions. More importantly, service mapping to the CMDB allows for visibility into the information that is used by those applications – so you don’t just know where or what the problem is, but what is affected by it.Complying with regulations and requirements with ease. It doesn’t take a genius to see that the world of regulations, requirements and data management are getting more complex by the day. Practically every organization and industry today are subject to various regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes–Oxley (SOX), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA), and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Add federal government regulations and certification programs to the mix and the environment gets even more intricate. Although these various regulations differ in their requirements, they all share one common goal: ensuring that sensitive data and systems are appropriately secured, and proper governance and accountability is established. By unifying information assets, data and applications, you can better understand the relationships between them and pivot to the ever-changing landscape of regulation and compliance. Mapping services to your CMDB is an essential tool to help ensure your organization meets their audit and compliance needs by being able to track compliance at the business level- in real time.Hit the ground running with dummy-proof CMDBYou already know the power of the CMDB in your IT infrastructure, are ready to lead change management with your stakeholders to rally around its value and see the possibilities of making it the heart of all you do. Now it’s time to execute on your initiatives and turn knowledge into action.Dive deeper with CMDB for Dummies, a quick start guide for creating a configuration management plan, building a healthy configuration data management database, and aligning your plan to business use cases.Learn More:CMDB for Dummies eBookCMDB for Dummies iPaperCMDB for Dummies Animation
LIKE.TG named a Leader in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Software Asset Management Tools
I’m excited that LIKE.TG has been named a Leader in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Software Asset Management Tools. We were recognized for our Software Asset Management (SAM) solution, which we believe helps reduce software costs and mitigate license compliance risk with actionable IT insights. We think It’s a great example of how LIKE.TG makes work, work better for people.LIKE.TG innovates by listening to our customers. We built SAM because our customers wanted to manage their software, cloud and hardware assets in the same place they plan, operate, and service IT. I’m extremely proud that Gartner recognized us a Leader in this Magic Quadrant just two and a half years after we launched our SAM solution.The Magic Quadrant recognition is a testament to what we hear from our customers around the world every day. Customers all need solutions that help them achieve real business outcomes faster. In good times and bad, our customers depend on LIKE.TG to help them optimize IT productivity, cost, and resilience.Many customers aren’t just saving millions on their software spend with Software Asset Management. They are also gaining incredible efficiencies that only a single architecture can deliver. As the platform of platforms, we know a single data model is crucial to automating everyday processes for our customers. How do we know? Because they tell us.Audits are disruptive. Legacy systems and manual SAM processes leave teams disconnected and drowning in complexity. By contrast, LIKE.TG delivers digital workflows that create great experiences and unlock productivity.Behind every great experience is a great workflow. Work should flow the way your business needs it to, enabling the experiences your employees want and your customers expect. Strategic software asset management is about providing useful, actionable information to stakeholders as decisions are being made.Embedding SAM into everyday IT management, IT operations, IT business management, vendor risk management, HR service delivery and security are game changers for customers. In the words of our founder Fred Luddy, "There is no better experience than giving someone a piece of technology that lets them do something they never thought they could do."The success of our customers means everything to us. We look forward to helping your team achieve real business outcomes quickly. LIKE.TG is the smarter way to workflow. When work flows naturally, great experiences follow.Gartner named LIKE.TG a Leader in the 2020 Magic Quadrant for Software Asset Management Tools.
5 things you should look for in your ITSM chatbot
Chatbots are rising in popularity, both in consumer and enterprises circles, because they are quick, sometimes clever, and ultimately help workers and customers get answers to common questions without bogging down your service team.As part of our ITSM Professional package, LIKE.TG’s Virtual Agent far exceeds some of the chatbots you may have used in your personal life for one simple reason – access to information.By combining our robust knowledge bases and deep integration with your data, the solution can provide custom responses within the conversation unlike other options in the market. The introduction of natural language understanding makes it even more effective. End users can ask the same questions they would ask a human agent, and the chat bot understands and responds. If an employee has an IT issue, the agent already knows what equipment has been issued and can offer suggested troubleshooting within moments, speeding the task and creating a personalized service experience.“It’s very convenient for our customers to use one single platform for everything,” said Archana Penukonda, Senior Product Marketing Manager at ServiceNow. “The connectivity busts the silos. Everything is available to them on the Now Platform, so they don’t have to build integrations into something else.”Here are some ways Virtual Agent is helping organizations scale their ITSM operations:1. Available when your workers need you - Virtual Agent is available 24/7 and can resolve issues immediately without requiring a live agent to intervene. The last thing an employee or customer wants to do in the wee hours is navigate your robust knowledge base. They get lost, and their queries still end up coming into the service desk. With Virtual Agent, common tasks can be handled in that moment, articles can be curated for the issue, and humans can go to bed satisfied at a reasonable hour.2. Seamless handoff between tech and people – Nothing is more frustrating than having to re-explain your issues when you are introduced to a new agent or being transferred to a chatbot and also having to find the magic phrases to finally get your questions answered.With this solution, you can access the right agent at the right time at any point in the conversation with no drop off in engagement. Virtual Agent is integrated with the Live Agent module to ensure transfers happen seamlessly, with information shared swiftly to the next tier of support without the clunky robot-speak. The experience is smooth for the user as well, with some companies able to make the transfer to a live agent in seconds.3. A force multiplier for your support team – The goal of any ITSM leader is to deliver a quality experience while taking pressure off the service team. This has led many companies to experiment with self service.Out of the box, Virtual Agent gives organizations access to pre-defined conversation workflows that provide an automated and cost-effective resolution to many common challenges, freeing IT staff. When launched, LIKE.TG estimated that 15% to 20% of routine interactions can be handled by Virtual Agent, but some companies, thanks to self service, are seeing their service-team workload cut in half.4. It’s where your users are – Virtual Agent is versatile, helping workers navigate robust knowledge bases and complete common requests through a range of media. It is accessible on the web through an employee portal, on mobile through our iOS and Android apps, and can also be accessed through collaboration tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams.5. Know your users to support them better – Leaders need information to make decisions, and LIKE.TG is committed to providing as much transparency into their operations as possible. Virtual Agent is no different. With data on how workers and customers are interacting with the solution, as well as on incident resolution times and escalation rates, you’ll know how to pivot to your users’ needs in real time.“Leading-edge companies are beginning to adopt enterprise chat bots, and any company that wants to augment their support staff should consider it,” said Penukonda. “Chatbots are tireless. They are like little armies that just get work done.”Ready to talk about the details? Virtual Agent comes with our ITSM Professional package. Learn more about this and all the other solutions that will help you make quick changes for your service teams.
