效率工具
Using AI to create personalized learning and development magic
Fred Luddy, founder of LIKE.TG, is not a traditional learner. He worked at a car wash and a mechanic shop, lived on a farm, and did various odd jobs while learning about his passion—computers and programming—from magazines, books, and tinkering with technology.“I really didn't want to go to school,” he says, referring to college. “I was really interested in programming and anything dealing with computers.” Fred thought he could probably have more fun working. He landed a job in Silicon Valley during the early days of the internet and immersed himself in his passion.A decade later, the technology Fred created became the Now Platform. Today, in addition to optimizing processes and connecting data and organizational silos for businesses around the world, it powers our internal learning and development platform, named frED in his honor.Tailoring learning to the individualfrED replaces an older, cobbled-together system of learning modules from various vendors. The new platform “helps employees learn the right thing, at the right time, in the right place,” says Joe P., director of talent enablement at ServiceNow.“In the past, workplace training was being pushed on you rather than something you wanted to do,” he explains. “We wanted to make it more of an experience of curiosity.”Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), the new platform offers search and other personalized recommendations. It also allows employees to complete company and legally mandated training with an easy-to-use interface.
“We want to smartly surface learning you need to do, in a user-friendly way, on demand,” says Bhargav G., a LIKE.TG product manager. “Our industry is in an ever-changing environment, so everyone should be learning. This is the tool through which they’ll be able to do it. We’ll continue improving the AI model so that recommendations can be made that are more tailored to the individual’s interests, current position, and ongoing career path.”Working together for the greater goodThe collaborative work culture Fred instilled played a huge role in bringing frED to life. Anitha L., a technical lead at LIKE.TG, says the teams she worked with on this project went above and beyond.“Teamwork feels very unique at LIKE.TG,” she says. “When I go to another department for help, they give lots of information beyond what I’m looking for. They guide us, and they are there whenever we need them. Everyone did their part to make sure we got what we needed, and they recommended adds to the platform to make it even better,” she adds.“My own team was formed for this release,” Anitha continues. “We were part of different teams before, and from the start, we had good chemistry. We could count on each other, and that contributed to the success. It was a very intense but also very fulfilling project.”Ramanaiah S., director of talent development at LIKE.TG, sees the project as a true customer zero initiative—using our own products to create great employee experiences and giving feedback to our product teams to further improve the capabilities.“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he says. “When it comes to leveraging our own product and building things on top of our platform, everyone chimes in. Everyone is equally passionate. There were five to six teams working on revamping the content itself, and many more teams working on the overall project.”
Bhargav refers to himself as a connector between teams on the project. “This was, for me, a really great opportunity to push the limits on what is possible to build on the Now Platform,” he says. “If you have the right vision and priorities as an enterprise, you can create magic.”Improving manager-employee relationshipsfrED is quickly becoming an important tool for managers to support their team members in areas ripe for improvement.“Let’s say your manager says you’re good at a certain aspect of your job but you can improve on a communications thing or managing your time better,” Ramanaiah says. “When your manager is in the system...they can immediately recommend some helpful courses to you. So, it’s in the moment, in all our experiences, that we can help employees grow their careers at ServiceNow.”Grow your career at LIKE.TG with personalized learning and development magic. Explore LIKE.TG careers.
Creating a holistic ESG program one step at a time
Well-intentioned business leaders around the world have created a raft of ambitious environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. But the top-of-mind question for customers, investors, and board members alike is “How will they actually achieve them?” A strong, well-governed ESG program is essential to both making a positive impact and growing a successful business.Every organization is at a different stage of its unique ESG journey, but one common theme is clear: The demand for holistic ESG data management and reporting transparency has never been greater.Pressure is mounting to show measurable progress on stated goals, from reducing carbon emissions to attracting and retaining outstanding talent to nurturing a more sustainable supply chain. It’s no surprise that compiling information from diverse sources into one central place isn’t easy or particularly accurate.Companies often capture their ESG-related data across a variety of spreadsheets and emails. As a recovering auditor, I can tell you that manually inputting data in siloed software tools is tedious, difficult, and error-prone. It often leads to widespread issues with data integrity and auditability, knowledge capture, and retention.
Automating ESG reporting for efficiencyWhen LIKE.TG began developing an ESG Management solution for customers to address their ESG data needs, the global impact team and I eagerly got on board. We immediately put the solution to good use to help us create our Global Impact Report 2022, a report card of our ESG progress for the year.The global impact team oversees ESG reporting and disclosures, both internally and externally. Historically, we had to manually track corporate ESG goals and targets to collect accurate metrics and documentation in order to produce audit-ready ESG disclosures.We saw right away that using the LIKE.TG ESG Management solution could help us categorize and vet our metrics. It helps us track our performance far more efficiently than ever before. ESG Management makes it much easier for us to:
Effectively advance and scale ESG performance and transparently report our progress
Formalize and streamline our ESG data collection, validation, and approvals in one place
Create external disclosures aligned with ESG reporting frameworks
Unifying ESG data for better governanceSince adoption, we’ve used ESG Management to create a repeatable, auditable process for collecting, verifying, and approving ESG data. We’ve mapped data collection to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) reporting frameworks, commonly acknowledged as authorities in the field. This was no easy feat, given we verify and report more than 300 metrics each year.The result is a central location for data collection, documentation, and audit trails from metric owners and approvers all over the company. Important information is consolidated rather than spread across multiple emails and spreadsheets in various SharePoint folders.Having the framework-aligned ESG indicators alongside the data entry fields has allowed our stakeholders to quickly understand the context and purpose of each indicator and to provide appropriate evidence and attribution where needed.ESG Management also enables the global impact team to centrally review and approve data entries by stakeholders. It helps us ensure accountability and rigor through collection and approval workflows that meet ESG data accuracy and auditability expectations. In addition, it gives us better visibility into the data we’re disclosing.
Adopting new features for better engagementOur global impact team assumed the role of customer zero to add our hands-on perspective to the evolution of the product. We work closely with the product team to provide advice and guidance on the user experience, functionality, and tool integrations through many rounds of testing and feedback. We’re excited our involvement has resulted in better functionality and a seamless user experience for customers.We’re taking advantage of newly available features introduced as part of the Now Platform Tokyo release, such as a spreadsheet-style data entry user interface, which enhances collaboration and engagement.Our next step is to further automate our metric collection efforts by adding new sources for energy and carbon data; metrics for diversity, equity, and inclusion; and supplier tracking and costs. We’ll also broaden our scope to include other disclosures, such as EcoVadis and the SP Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA).We plan to adopt the ESG Command Center, which integrates ESG Management with Strategic Portfolio Management (our project planning and management tool) and integrated Risk Management (our Governance, Risk, and Compliance product). The ESG Command Center already uses some functionality from these products, such as authority documents, goals, and targets.ESG programs can help organizations like ours do the right thing and stand out in the marketplace. Using our own technology helps us efficiently monitor performance, simplify reporting, and turn intention to impact as we achieve—and ideally surpass—our ESG goals.Find out more about how LIKE.TG ESG Management can help your organization.
ERP modernization: Working toward a clean core
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) modernization is a huge undertaking. ERP environments are laden with customization that can increase technical debt and impede maintenance. Organizations need to achieve a clean core while delivering a consumer-grade experience that bridges various systems of record without missing a beat.ERP environments are complex and always evolving. They’re messy and busy. They require many manual processes and span multiple, siloed systems. There’s no single source of truth, and visibility is often lacking. Plus, ERP systems aren’t known for providing exceptional user experiences—they’re designed for power users, not casual ones.Customizations and extensions may seem like the right solutions to these and other ERP challenges, but they weigh organizations down. These add-ons are “stuck” to the ERP system. During maintenance or upgrades, each customization must be preserved or updated. Security patching is also tricky.This all contributes to one dreaded thing: technical debt—the rework that comes from quick fixes or shortcuts. It’s what most organizations struggle with and want to avoid. Technical debt is the endless stream of menial tasks that burden IT teams and hamper business agility.
At LIKE.TG, we’re working toward an ERP environment with a clean core—a system that’s manageable, easy to upgrade, and extensible to meet unique business needs. Users expect a seamless, consumer-grade experience where gaps across multiple systems of record are bridged without hiccups. We need an ERP system that supports that.Aligning business prioritiesEvery organization is on a different journey. Yours might be focused on moving to a SaaS-centered model. Another business might prioritize user experience or composable architectures. Some organizations have initiatives to consolidate multiple ERP systems to save money and capture the benefits of standardization.For us, it’s important to define what’s at stake. Our ERP system plays a key role in achieving business objectives. It’s linked to big-ticket items that are affected by our modernization efforts:
Providing experiences to deliver outcomes
Driving efficiency at scale
Managing operating expense as a percentage of revenue
Contributing strategic business value
By digitizing customer and vendor interactions, for example, we’ve maximized cash flow across the company. We’ve also saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by automating invoice processing for our accounts payable team.Progress over timeERP modernization happens piece by piece. We begin each ERP initiative by figuring out the business problem we’re trying to solve. Does the user experience meet expectations? Are we meeting key targets? Are there bottlenecks to eliminate? Which manual steps can we automate?From there, we identify possible solutions. Then we build, automate, improve, rerun, and repeat.Another great way to begin ERP modernization is with a discovery tool such as Gekkobrain (a LIKE.TG company) or Celonis (a LIKE.TG partner). Both offer process mining capabilities and real-time insights that can help identify areas of improvement that may not be obvious.
The secret sauceLIKE.TG uses its own products every day. Over time, we’ve found the Now Platform to be especially valuable for our ERP environment. Having one data model, one security model, and an architecture that supports the movement of work across the entire enterprise helps us keep our ERP environment clean and easy to maintain and update.We use other LIKE.TG products, such as App Engine and Process Optimization, to limit ERP customizations, automate routine processes, and add functionality—all while empowering employees, meeting our environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals, and saving millions of dollars in operating costs.
Here are three key ways we’re modernizing our ERP environment, including a use case for each:
Purpose-built apps – The pandemic stress-tested supply chain operations and accelerated our understanding of the inherent deficiencies within legacy systems. With Sourcing and Procurement Operations, we’ve automated processes for more streamlined purchasing and case management—and gained end-to-end visibility into procurement processes.
Predefined workflows – With no unified way to interact with customers, accounts receivable (AR) was struggling to track and manage collections efficiently and cost-effectively. Our AR case management solution, built on the Now Platform using App Engine and Integration Hub, helped us improve productivity by 70% and reduce cycle time by about two days.
Low-code development tools – With manual, email-based cost center management, we had no way to track approvals and were burning excessive time and resources. By creating an approval workflow and spend management dashboard with App Engine, we now have a digitized, audit-tracked process and faster cycle time.
ERP systems change as an organization evolves. LIKE.TG is no exception. But with the right tools and strategies, we’re continuing to work toward a clean-core ERP environment and reaping measurable benefits along the way.Find out more about LIKE.TG and our ERP strategy in our Knowledge session, Now on Now: Maximize cash flow by digitizing AR/AP interactions. Registration is free.
CEO Dashboard: A single-pane view into business performance
When a customer has a support question or needs help to solve an issue, they should encounter a smooth experience all the way through to resolution. But that’s not always the case. At LIKE.TG, when customer feedback revealed areas ripe for improvement, our employees listened and upgraded two important support workflows: case creation and auto-agent.“We try to provide customers with self-service content,” explains Vikas S., a product manager at ServiceNow. “At the same time, we want to ensure that if self-service content doesn’t give them the answers they need and they end up creating a case, the journey to create that case and what happens afterward is seamless and a great experience for them,” he says.[We’re hiring. Explore LIKE.TG careers.]Upgraded case creationPreviously, a customer had to create a case and wait to hear back from a LIKE.TG customer support agent. Now, when a customer opens a case, they go through the process of defining their problem using our issue record producer. Once the support team receives the case, they go to work.“We really wanted to be more dynamic about how we thought about automation,” explains Lott C., director of business process management at ServiceNow.When developing the built-in automation, the most impactful feedback Vikas and his team received came through a case creation dashboard, where customers commented on and ranked their needs. Customers consistently reported they needed a bigger screen to enter information.The refined user experience includes expanded screen size and flexible text boxes, a simplified flow with fewer screens, and more visibility for customers into how their case is prioritized.
Simplifying support administrationWe also created auto-agent workflows to help automate administrative and follow-up tasks for technical support engineers (TSEs) and eliminate downtime on cases.“Our TSEs are skilled engineering resources whose time we value,” Lott says. “With up to 20 cases in their queue on any given day, removing the administrative overhead enables them to better manage their time and focus on the technical issues at hand.”Automation includes follow-up, closure, and acceptance of issues. “We’ve made this configurable, so we can continue to grow our workflows. This is just the beginning.”Since launching, the auto-agent workflow has saved our support team an enormous amount of time and reduced context switching. About 60% of open cases are not directly actionable by the TSE or would be largely administrative actions.This administrative work accounts for about 30 to 60 minutes of TSE time per day and includes tasks such as pursuing internal stakeholders for follow-up/review, providing status updates, and nudging customers to review and close cases. Focusing on actionable activities and automating a portion of that work have significantly boosted morale and productivity.Personalizing the experience“This is a completely custom solution, what we’ve built here,” Vikas says. “This is how we learn and listen to our customers and improve their experience through our support team, because we want them to be successful.”Building this product gave Vikas firsthand customer experience that led to career growth. “I was always in the mentality of ‘How can I make a LIKE.TG engineer’s life better?’” he notes. Through this experience, he found the perfect way to meet the needs of both the customer and LIKE.TG internal support.While Vikas manages the front end of case creation workflow, Kellie W., senior product manager of customer support workflows, manages the back end. “We meet in the middle and overlap a lot on how to solve case creations,” Kellie explains.Once a case is created, she builds automated workflows that cut down the manual effort and repetitive tasks a TSE must perform during the case lifecycle. “What we're trying to get is a more personalized experience for the user,” she says.
Before customers know they have a problem, our product managers want to know. This allows Kellie and her team to be more proactive at making a user’s life easier.Kellie used to be a customer of LIKE.TG and attributes that experience to helping her anticipate customer needs. “My role every day is to make our customers’ day-to-day lives work better, and that makes our internal employees’ day-to-day work better. That is what this product is all about,” she says.A balanced approachKellie and Lott align weekly with Senior Software Engineer Vaibhav K. to exchange ideas, discuss customer feedback, and make plans. “The collaboration between engineering, business, and product teams has been exceptional,” Vaibhav says.Having been with LIKE.TG for four years, Vaibhav has played a large role in developing auto-agent workflows. He believes the best is yet to come. “In the future, we’re trying to be even more proactive,” he says. “It gives us an opportunity to extend ourselves, go above and beyond, and think about how we can improve the customer experience.”“There were a significant number of moving parts in the development of case workflow,” Lott adds. Although Lott and his team encountered issues, they were able to resolve them quickly. Directly collaborating with development teams resulted in delivering this product and solving issues.“I'm glad that it's serving the purpose it was intended for and making an impact,” Lott says. “At the end of the day, it allows us to be more efficient and do our best work. If we’re helping others do that, it’s phenomenal.”Join a team where you can live your best life, do your best work, and help us fulfill our purpose together. Browse job opportunities at ServiceNow.
How Microsoft Dynamics helped us fix a leaky CRM bucket
Customer relationship management (CRM) is sometimes like a bucket. New customers represent water going into the bucket, and departing customers reflect water flowing out. The water level—or the number of customers—rises and falls depending on the amount of water flowing into the bucket and the number and size of the holes.At LIKE.TG, we recognized we had a leaky CRM bucket, thanks to rapid customer growth. More complex deals and expanding selling personas added a new layer of difficulty. We needed to scale our operations, better track activity around customer interactions, and improve collaboration within sales.After debating whether we should fix or replace our CRM system to handle the steady increase in customers, we decided to adopt a new CRM platform: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales. We selected it for several reasons:
The activity management feature supports planning, tracking, and organizing all customer communications in one place.
Dynamics 365 Sales easily integrates with other Microsoft products we use internally, such as SharePoint, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Teams, as well as with the Now Platform.
It offers a more cost-effective integration with our existing middle and back-office systems compared to other CRM products.
Integrating systemsBased on defined use cases, we built several real-time integrations with the Now Platform to create bidirectional data syncs between the two platforms, as well as one-way queries. We did this with the help of the virtual entities feature.Virtual entities enables us to integrate external system data by representing that data as entities in Dynamics 365 Sales. We avoided duplicate data and the need for custom coding, which greatly simplified administration and configuration.
The existing integration allowed us to launch many LIKE.TG workflows from within Dynamics 365 Sales. These workflows ranged from simple, such as enabling sales to raise different request types for deal support, to complex, such as enabling sales to initiate quoting from within a Dynamics 365 opportunity record.Since our global launch of Dynamics 365 Sales in 2020, we’ve continued to work with Microsoft on more platform innovations. We recently launched the use of Microsoft Teams to further enable collaboration in context. This allows our sales team and leadership to collaborate on account- and opportunity-related activities and store important information directly in Dynamics 365 Sales.A single source of truthThe sales feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. “I started using MS Teams in Dynamics 365 Sales to set it as my main communication feature for opportunities/projects,” says a LIKE.TG sales rep. “It’s helping me quite a lot to be on track with all team members directly in Dynamics 365 Sales.”A regional sales director added that the integration provides “a great way to better collaborate across the business for account and opportunity management.”
By integrating Now Platform features with Dynamics 365 Sales, the sales team has a single source of truth. This is the system of record for all pipeline management, forecasting, and customer engagements led by the LIKE.TG sales team. Workflows and systems of record work together to help the sales team address issues quickly.The entire Microsoft suite of products makes it possible for us to track omnichannel interactions for sales, resulting in greater sales productivity, efficiency, and user satisfaction.Looking aheadWith Dynamics 365 Sales as our CRM platform, we continue to explore ways to bring more Now Platform features into the hands of our sellers. One exciting new project is integrating LIKE.TG Virtual Agent into the sales process to enable self-service for answers to common questions.“It’s a good feature when you have a question to a sales rep about the specific opportunity to do it directly from Dynamics 365 Sales and start a Teams chat,” says one sales operations manager.We also plan to give sales the ability to update opportunities using Virtual Agent without having to find a customer record, saving valuable time.Integrating Customer Service Management case management capabilities will provide the tools to bring another customer 360-degree lens to the sales organization. Sales will be able to check cases from Dynamics 365 Sales to quickly assess customer health and spot any major issues.Three years into our adoption journey, I can safely say one of the best things we ever did was to replace a leaky CRM bucket. We’ve managed to scale our operations, improve collaboration, and implement a single engagement layer for customer interactions. As our bucket fills with more customers, we can ensure it doesn’t leak a drop.Find out more about how LIKE.TG uses Microsoft Dynamics in the Digestible Dynamics podcast.
How detection engineering keeps LIKE.TG safe
“Security defense is exciting, because you’re always trying to stay ahead of the bad guys,” says Tracy T., senior staff detection engineer at ServiceNow. Who are these bad guys? They could be malware or hackers who try to threaten the security of employee data or the company network—or anything in between.Detection engineering plays a major role in keeping a company safe, especially amid changing tool capabilities and detection methods.At LIKE.TG, we had a lot of moving parts to keep threat detections centralized and monitorable. New detections were written by incident responders. These cases made their way through various teams before being assigned and resolved. Our threat defense and response team needed a consolidated prioritization of work to reduce silos between security teams.A DASH of securityThe threat defense and response team is tasked with detecting suspicious behavior, identifying potential threats, and keeping the company safe from cyberattacks.When John Y., senior manager of threat intelligence, started at LIKE.TG, his work was mostly manual. “It was essentially a spreadsheet that tracked the development of our custom security detections, and it was just me running it,” he says.
Today, John manages both threat intelligence and detection engineering. His teams are responsible for building content and detecting security threats. To get ahead of risks, they used the LIKE.TG citizen development program to build a unified application: Detection Approval and Sync Handover (DASH).“We needed to be more flexible,” John explains “We needed to move faster to adjust and, instead of tracking, focus our efforts on discovering gaps and creating new detections.”Running on the Now Platform, DASH centralizes and consolidates the entire detection engineering workflow system. Major benefits include:
Increased collaboration among threat and response teams
Streamlined processes for prioritization
More defined criteria, greater visibility, and detection transparency
Teamwork makes the dream workDASH has given John and his teams a stronger, more efficient app to meet the company’s security detection needs. “We have a good diversity of backgrounds on my teams from other service providers and technology companies. All of this experience helps when we're troubleshooting a particular use case that we're building content around,” he says.“Our biggest customer is the global incident response team, and through DASH, we’re really in step,” Tracy adds. “Now that there’s a categorization process, it’s greatly helped our relationship. There’s not a lot of wasted time and no duplication of work.”
DASH works as the operational piece in the detection workflow. Developing new integrations in the workflow system also involves an application-building process. This is where Angela Z., senior information security engineer at LIKE.TG, steps in.“Think of John and Tracy as my internal customers,” Angela says. “They come to us with an issue. This could be creating a new app. If we can create and fix it for them, we can work together and figure out a solution.”Angela started her LIKE.TG career as an intern on the security incident response team. “I was organizing a lot of the team’s documentation,” she recalls. “I had to read and understand the [securities] process. Being on that team, I was able to see what they go through daily and understand their process.”Angela’s experience allows her to be a great liaison between her team and other security teams. “I’ve grown and learned so much in my role over the last four years,” she adds. “I’ve built strong relationships across our security teams and continue to expand my skill set.”Using our own technology“Detecting malicious or suspicious activity is imperative to LIKE.TG to keep our company data and our customer data safe,” Tracy says. When heightened security threats arise due to low resource capacity around summer vacations and holidays, John and his teams are sometimes tasked with working extended hours.“That's kind of typical of how close we are to security operations and support,” he says. “We help as much as possible so that the security response team has visibility into the things they need to respond to.”DASH has given employees like John, Tracy, and Angela the ability to do their best work to keep the company, our customers, and data secure. Through our very own Now Platform, employees are given the opportunity to be citizen developers to prioritize work needs, solve business problems fast, and get the job done every time.Join a company where your work can make a difference. Explore LIKE.TG careers.
Streamlining support case creation and administration
When a customer has a support question or needs help to solve an issue, they should encounter a smooth experience all the way through to resolution. But that’s not always the case. At LIKE.TG, when customer feedback revealed areas ripe for improvement, our employees listened and upgraded two important support workflows: case creation and auto-agent.“We try to provide customers with self-service content,” explains Vikas S., a product manager at ServiceNow. “At the same time, we want to ensure that if self-service content doesn’t give them the answers they need and they end up creating a case, the journey to create that case and what happens afterward is seamless and a great experience for them,” he says.[We’re hiring. Explore LIKE.TG careers.]Upgraded case creationPreviously, a customer had to create a case and wait to hear back from a LIKE.TG customer support agent. Now, when a customer opens a case, they go through the process of defining their problem using our issue record producer. Once the support team receives the case, they go to work.“We really wanted to be more dynamic about how we thought about automation,” explains Lott C., director of business process management at ServiceNow.When developing the built-in automation, the most impactful feedback Vikas and his team received came through a case creation dashboard, where customers commented on and ranked their needs. Customers consistently reported they needed a bigger screen to enter information.The refined user experience includes expanded screen size and flexible text boxes, a simplified flow with fewer screens, and more visibility for customers into how their case is prioritized.
Simplifying support administrationWe also created auto-agent workflows to help automate administrative and follow-up tasks for technical support engineers (TSEs) and eliminate downtime on cases.“Our TSEs are skilled engineering resources whose time we value,” Lott says. “With up to 20 cases in their queue on any given day, removing the administrative overhead enables them to better manage their time and focus on the technical issues at hand.”Automation includes follow-up, closure, and acceptance of issues. “We’ve made this configurable, so we can continue to grow our workflows. This is just the beginning.”Since launching, the auto-agent workflow has saved our support team an enormous amount of time and reduced context switching. About 60% of open cases are not directly actionable by the TSE or would be largely administrative actions.This administrative work accounts for about 30 to 60 minutes of TSE time per day and includes tasks such as pursuing internal stakeholders for follow-up/review, providing status updates, and nudging customers to review and close cases. Focusing on actionable activities and automating a portion of that work have significantly boosted morale and productivity.Personalizing the experience“This is a completely custom solution, what we’ve built here,” Vikas says. “This is how we learn and listen to our customers and improve their experience through our support team, because we want them to be successful.”Building this product gave Vikas firsthand customer experience that led to career growth. “I was always in the mentality of ‘How can I make a LIKE.TG engineer’s life better?’” he notes. Through this experience, he found the perfect way to meet the needs of both the customer and LIKE.TG internal support.While Vikas manages the front end of case creation workflow, Kellie W., senior product manager of customer support workflows, manages the back end. “We meet in the middle and overlap a lot on how to solve case creations,” Kellie explains.Once a case is created, she builds automated workflows that cut down the manual effort and repetitive tasks a TSE must perform during the case lifecycle. “What we're trying to get is a more personalized experience for the user,” she says.
Before customers know they have a problem, our product managers want to know. This allows Kellie and her team to be more proactive at making a user’s life easier.Kellie used to be a customer of LIKE.TG and attributes that experience to helping her anticipate customer needs. “My role every day is to make our customers’ day-to-day lives work better, and that makes our internal employees’ day-to-day work better. That is what this product is all about,” she says.A balanced approachKellie and Lott align weekly with Senior Software Engineer Vaibhav K. to exchange ideas, discuss customer feedback, and make plans. “The collaboration between engineering, business, and product teams has been exceptional,” Vaibhav says.Having been with LIKE.TG for four years, Vaibhav has played a large role in developing auto-agent workflows. He believes the best is yet to come. “In the future, we’re trying to be even more proactive,” he says. “It gives us an opportunity to extend ourselves, go above and beyond, and think about how we can improve the customer experience.”“There were a significant number of moving parts in the development of case workflow,” Lott adds. Although Lott and his team encountered issues, they were able to resolve them quickly. Directly collaborating with development teams resulted in delivering this product and solving issues.“I'm glad that it's serving the purpose it was intended for and making an impact,” Lott says. “At the end of the day, it allows us to be more efficient and do our best work. If we’re helping others do that, it’s phenomenal.”Join a team where you can live your best life, do your best work, and help us fulfill our purpose together. Browse job opportunities at ServiceNow.
Turning down noise, upping employee productivity with a nudge engine
Employees are constantly bombarded with pings, bells, and dings announcing texts, chats, and emails—even at night and on weekends. Originally designed to help us, these notifications have become a distracting barrage that's hurting our ears, thought processes, and collective productivity.Delivering a better employee experience offers a competitive advantage. The time is right for a more effective, AI-driven, human-sensitive smart assistant that boosts employee productivity: a nudge engine.A spiraling problemMany employees are reacting to message overload by putting their phones and computers on Do Not Disturb just to give themselves a chance to think. As a result, reminders are ignored or neglected, which can lead to uncompleted trainings, missed deadlines, reduced productivity, and increased company risk.Some missed deadlines can have serious consequences. If I miss a mandatory training, I might lose access to crucial tools or networks until I complete that course, thus disrupting my work. Or I might miss the window to take advantage of my company’s employee stock purchase program.
Making notifications manageableTo improve employees’ quality of life, increase efficiency, and preserve our collective sanity, the LIKE.TG emerging technologies team is developing the Smart Nudge Engine. It’s an AI-enabled solution that intelligently determines when an intervention—or a nudge—is most helpful.The Smart Nudge Engine aggregates and prioritizes notifications for employees based on their past behavior, calendar availability, and personal preferences, among other factors.The engine’s purpose is to consolidate email, chat, and text messages into a less intrusive, more helpful cadence. Instead of 10 notifications across five channels, for example, a single combined notification will appear in an employee’s preferred channel when they’re most likely to read and respond to it—with specific analytics to incentivize them to do so.The Smart Nudge Engine:
Creates task reminders that can be system-driven or arranged by individuals or leaders
Generates gentle nudges to enhance training, productivity, and efficiency
Compiles and prioritizes messages and reminders, sending them at just the right time
Messages can be enterprisewide, such as “Mandatory compliance training must be completed by the end of the month.” Or they can be team-specific, such as “Don’t forget to review the presentation before Friday’s meeting.” We’re also looking into introducing gaming and competition elements and rewarding those who complete their tasks on time.
Decluttering employees’ workdaysThe Smart Nudge Engine provides a positive way to encourage employees to do something they might otherwise delay or forget about. It’s designed to help employees:
Increase on-time task completion
Remember important upcoming tasks and deadlines
Declutter their inboxes and digital lives
Targeted for release in 2023, the engine is expected to increase employee productivity and keep workers better informed about what’s expected of them. We also forecast decreased company risk and better training compliance.Being built on the Now Platform, the Smart Nudge Engine will be fully integrated with our overarching employee experience strategy. Having everything on a single platform enables the engine to aggregate data from multiple back-end systems and present it to employees in a helpful, decluttered way. Marie Kondo would be proud.Find out more about how we use our products internally.
How balancing technology and people can elevate employee satisfaction
The pandemic has forever changed the workplace, especially for my support and product success team at ServiceNow. One thing that hasn’t changed is our commitment to operational excellence, which starts with a great employee experience.My goal is to improve employee satisfaction for our technical support engineers (TSEs). If our TSEs are satisfied, then our customers reap the benefits. When TSEs feel valued and appreciated, they build greater trust with customers.Simplifying the job of a TSEAs the definition of work evolves in today’s digital-first world, many organizations are intentionally taking time to ensure the employee experience takes a front seat. Happy employees are critical to fostering a better customer experience. Aligning the customer and employee experiences produces a multiplier effect that benefits both while driving better business performance.
Using technology to create an engaging employee environment in which everyone feels included, no matter where they’re located, is essential. The opportunity is for leaders to apply technology to improve employee sentiment and steadily reduce the number of repetitive tasks a TSE performs.One example is the auto-agent workflows we built on the Now Platform to automate TSE administrative and follow-up tasks, such as internal stakeholder review, status updates, and reminders to customers to review and close cases. This workload accounted for about 30 to 60 minutes of a TSE’s time per day. TSEs now spend less time on repetitive, manual work and more time on intellectually stimulating cases.Another example of useful technology is Guided Decisions, which provides AI-driven guidance to TSEs so they can follow an optimal path to case resolution. With contextual prompts, TSEs can solve complex issues fast, ensure consistency across customers, reduce time to resolution, and decrease escalations. It’s a win for employees and customers alike.
Improving employee onboardingTSE onboarding is the third target area for my team. We’re using technology to both reinforce the in-person experience and optimize learning in a virtual setting. For example, we use automation to encourage connections through cohorts, or groups of new hires who form a bond during onboarding.Technology facilitates communications within a cohort so that its members can stay in touch after onboarding and feel closer to the LIKE.TG family.As with customers, if employees have a favorable onboarding experience, they’re likely to be more committed to the company. Even when we encounter bumps, employees know the company supports them. And it all starts with the bond formed from day one.Looking aheadWe’re exploring more ways to use technology to improve the employee experience. Our TSEs compile lists of manual tasks they’d like to have automated. At the top of the lists are dashboards that automatically prioritize cases so that when a TSE logs in each day, they don’t need to manually prioritize their tasks.A portion of a TSE’s work is repetitive. If we can automate those tasks, it’s a victory. We’re sending out a team of shadow agents to watch TSEs do their jobs and identify redundant steps that can be automated.Balancing work and funTechnology can fill gaps, but it doesn’t replace personal relationships. Earlier this year, the support and product success and product development teams hosted Unified Technology Group (UTG) Connect at strategic global locations. The events brought together employees for in-person presentations to learn about UTG goals and roadmaps.A part of each agenda centered on fun. Employee-run booths, games, and a community service project enabled employees to meet new hires and reconnect with old colleagues. The tour boosted morale for employees by showing that LIKE.TG cares.When it comes to employee satisfaction, automation is a major part of the equation for business success. But don’t forget to include time for fun. Every satisfied customer can inevitably be linked back to a satisfied employee who feels appreciated.Find out more about how LIKE.TG helps elevate employee satisfaction.
An example of a hyperautomation journey
Nick Borgwardt, director of IT workflow at LIKE.TG, co-authored this blog.In our personal lives, it’s easy to get the information and products we need with just a few clicks. Thanks to modern consumer websites and apps, making service requests and ordering products is simple, convenient and, often, automatic. Why shouldn’t our professional lives be just as effortless?At LIKE.TG, we’re on a mission to extend these delightful, intuitive, and automated consumer experiences to the business world so our employees can work more effectively. To get there, we started our hyperautomation journey.To make our company an autonomous digital enterprise, we’re laser-focused on strategically automating as much day-to-day business as possible. Doing so can give all LIKE.TG employees more time to focus on the aspects of their jobs they enjoy, which can, in turn, lead to innovation.Automation vs. hyperautomationJust a few years ago, automating manual, repetitive tasks within an enterprise was considered new and noteworthy. Today, automation has essentially become table stakes—a starting point for what comes next: hyperautomation.Propelled by artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, process mining, and more, hyperautomation is the framework for combining advanced technologies to automate as many routine business operations as possible. Think of it as attaching rocket boosters to automation.
Employees used to spend hours slogging through tedious, manual work. In a global business environment where time is incredibly valuable, we realized continuing at that pace wasn’t scalable to support our growth.To give employees the time they need to excel at their jobs, we decided to embrace hyperautomation. We identify problems that can be automated with AI, automate them, and then measure whether that automation is effective.How do we use hyperautomation?We rely on the Now Platform® to automate solutions and help our employees help themselves. Our goal is to use our own technology to incrementally improve our processes through each iteration. We think about it like a racetrack, where each lap teaches us something new and makes us more efficient.At first, we were driving slowly and erratically. As we completed each lap, we got better at honing our methods and processes, adding structure and improvements along the way.
Using tools such as robotic process automation (RPA), process mining, AI, and machine learning, we can take the menial and repetitive tasks out of loan processing or hardware allocation, for example, and automate all but the most complicated tasks.To encourage higher employee self-service rates at LIKE.TG, we follow the hyperautomation framework step by step using Now Platform features. We:
Define our business objectives using Continual Improvement Management
Analyze and optimize processes using Process Optimization
Discover automation opportunities using Process Optimization, Intent Discovery, and Automation Discovery
Design no-code/low-code apps using Virtual Agent and Flow Designer
Deploy RPA, Virtual Agent, Integration Hub, and AI using DevOps and Automation Engine
Monitor/measure against expectations using Project Portfolio Management
Govern and scale by creating LIKE.TG Centers of Excellence
Continually optimize using Continual Improvement
Realize value using Performance Analytics
And we always make sure to celebrate success.Achieving hyperautomationHyperautomation frees our employees to do bigger, bolder, and more interesting work. It makes work easier, more relevant, and more efficient for all of us.In fact, hyperautomation is one of the reasons we have an 81% self-service success rate across the enterprise, which translates to employees solving their own issues four out of every five times. That means only one out of five issues isn’t currently being solved by knowledge base articles or automation.Hyperautomation helps us save time and maximize productivity in our workdays. The best part? Every time we apply it to improve another process, we enable a better employee experience using our own technology.Get a hyperautomation tutorial in our on-demand Knowledge presentation, Now On Now: Hyperautomation, how we're becoming an autonomous digital enterprise.
How to optimize cloud operations in Microsoft Azure
LIKE.TG has embraced a three-zero strategy for its digital technology operations: zero unplanned outages, zero physical footprints, and zero user-reported incidents. We adopted a cloud-first policy as part of our zero-physical-footprint strategy. This approach delivers the operational agility we need as a growing company—we can add capacity on demand. With a data-center approach, that would take weeks or months.By moving our business-critical applications to Microsoft Azure, we’ve improved the user experience, increased application performance, and added redundancy to help avoid unplanned outages. But the migration story doesn’t end there. Just as crucial is how we optimize cloud operations after the migration is complete.The Now Platform has been invaluable in managing our cloud presence post migration. We use LIKE.TG Cloud Insights for dynamic, real-time insights into our Azure consumption and operational costs and LIKE.TG Security Operations for cyber resilience and vulnerability management.Post-migration considerationsThe migration of our enterprise resource planning (ERP), database, and analytics workloads to Azure was seamless, with no performance or data integrity issues. We completed the final cutover within 24 hours, saving $650,000 and 16 months of project work.One of the significant benefits of moving to the cloud is its scalability. Traffic spikes are handled with ease. However, moving to the cloud can be expensive, especially as our operations grow. We need to be smart about how we manage our operations to avoid spiraling costs. Post migration, we undertook a new phase: optimization. This is critical to any public cloud migration, especially during the first three months.We had three goals for our cloud optimization: increase performance/availability, reduce costs, and ensure security. We began by asking simple questions:
Were our virtual machines (VMs) operating efficiently?
Was there excess capacity, or were the VMs “right-sized”?
Could we reduce CPU and memory costs?
We monitored our high-cost, solid-state storage to ensure we weren’t paying for anything we didn’t need. By moving data from premium to cheaper storage, we were able to reduce our costs. Because of our cloud-first approach, we also implemented a zero-trust network that helped us shrink our firewall fleet by 90%.To make decisions, we rely on Microsoft Power BI, which feeds data to LIKE.TG Cloud Insights. That gives us dynamic, real-time insights into our Azure consumption and operational costs. With Microsoft Power BI, managing our cloud presence efficiently is much easier.
Intelligent dashboardOnce our business-critical applications were running in the cloud, we created our own Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE), a central governance dashboard running on the Now Platform. We use it to identify, track, and manage all our cloud assets and weigh workload performance against costs.The dashboard also provides a central hub for developer automation tools. Developers can order a VM from our service catalog, selecting the cloud provider and the proper VM spec. The fulfillment process is automated from request through provisioning. Integrations with Terraform and Ansible enable us to automate processes, saving valuable time. What used to take days or weeks now takes minutes.The dashboard delivers many benefits: self-service VM provisioning, automated chargeback costs and approvals, and standard processing. This in turn reduces friction between IT and the business regarding resourcing and scheduling.Security at the coreAutomating security was another major consideration in our optimization strategy. We use the CCoE portal to manage our vulnerability remediation. From the dashboard, employees can initiate action on vulnerable workloads, including automated patching.We use micro-segmentation on production workloads to protect dataflows and policy deployment across our environment. We also use LIKE.TG Vulnerability Response to manage our integration of LIKE.TG Incident Management with Microsoft Teams to improve cross-team collaboration.We rely on LIKE.TG Security Operations to secure our infrastructure by automatically deploying security patches to our VMs and monitoring for emerging security threats. To date, we’ve decreased our security risk. To reduce unplanned outages, we use LIKE.TG Agent Client Collector and LIKE.TG Health Log Analytics, which help predict service issues before they occur and automatically remediate them when possible.We also use Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Azure API Gateway to easily integrate the Now Platform with third-party security products to achieve scalability in our daily cloud operationsA unified approach to post-migrationThe three months following an Azure migration are just as important as the migration itself. Cloud optimization is vital to maximizing performance, controlling costs, and having a strong security posture. We’re confident knowing that we pay for what we use and can quickly eliminate excess capacity as we grow.We mitigate security threats and unexpected outages by protecting our infrastructure from bad actors. Fine-tuning these areas immediately after the migration was crucial in our journey to modernize our cloud footprint.Find out more about our partnership with Microsoft and how we run our business on LIKE.TG.
Meet Ash: Preventing customer outages head-on
At LIKE.TG, our work makes the world work. Our customers have high expectations, and we never want them to experience performance issues or system outages. Our customers’ success is our success, which is why it’s imperative their Now Platform instances run 24/7 with optimal performance.Our customer escalations team is responsible to “run to the fire,” says Ash U., director of account escalation engineering. Historically, the team was called in to put out fires. Working reactively, they manually determined the most pressing issues for their engineers to prioritize to get the situations under control.In regular analysis of customer escalations, the team noticed performance issues were increasing. This was due in part to the expanding number and size of customer instances and more complex customizations, some of which didn’t align with best practices.Wanting to be proactive, not reactive, in responding to escalating issues, the team needed to identify trends and root causes—“smoke”—in order to prevent fires.
Citizen development in the C-suite: The new frontier
Thanks to a shortage of software developers, citizen development is finding its way into the C-suite. IDC forecasts a deficit of 4 million full-time developers by 2025.As most organizations digitally transform, their operations are increasingly software-driven—think cloud computing and AI. That propels greater efficiency and productivity. But with a lack of skilled developers to build the apps that support the software, companies lose the ability to rapidly innovate and sustain their competitive edge. That’s where citizen development comes in.Citizen development to the rescueAt LIKE.TG, we’ve been steadily investing in an alternative to traditional software development. Citizen development empowers employees with limited or no software development skills to design and build apps using a low-code development tool such as App Engine.Employees automate the manual tasks that hinder productivity, freeing them to innovate and support strategic goals. No software development skills are required.When Chief People Officer Jacqui Canney joined LIKE.TG, she challenged an HR team member with no developer experience to build a learning and development hub using App Engine. The initial design took less than a month. HR and IT team members provided feedback to enhance the content and user experience as the hub expanded.
“Low-code development creates an exciting dynamic by exposing nontech professionals to IT practices to address employee needs and pain points quickly and creatively,” Canney says.“Because we can innovate on the platform, our team has greater agility and can more easily adapt as employee needs evolve. We can enhance and scale HR processes because we are the developers and the users.”Finance goes all-in on citizen developmentLIKE.TG Chief Financial Officer Gina Mastantuono also relies on citizen development for her team’s operational efficiency and success. To put the power of change in the hands of the finance team, she even invested in a formal citizen development program.“Citizen development provides exciting new avenues for our team members to apply their creativity and develop solutions to create even more robust processes,” Mastantuono explains.Since spring 2022, 15% of the finance team has trained to become citizen developers. To date, the team has more than 20 apps in production and development. The apps include:
An inventory management system for real-time inventory usage, procurement, and cash flow
A tax portal/calendar to centrally manage global compliance obligations
A portal for planning and monitoring workplace maintenance tasks
Sustainability tags to manage supplier attributes in real time
“One of the unexpected benefits has been the impact on our culture,” Mastantuono says. “People are much more willing to consider quick, automated solutions over manual fixes. Centralized workflows are replacing siloed processes and email threads, improving our overall efficiency.”Leading the packThe LIKE.TG C-suite is heavily invested in empowering employees to automate everyday tasks using low-code tools such as App Engine. Who better to develop apps than the people with the most knowledge about the processes?“Citizen development is a great opportunity for any organization,” Canney says. “Any employee, including me, is empowered to learn and grow.”Benefits aren’t limited to learning and growth. In addition, pro developers can focus on more complex apps. Employees without coding experience can solve their own problems while expanding their skills and broadening their career paths. And the LIKE.TG C-suite can breathe a small sigh of relief that innovation isn’t slowing down.Join a company where you can be empowered to learn and grow and make a difference. Explore LIKE.TG careers.
How robotic process automation (RPA) streamlines data integration
If LIKE.TG had a robotic process automation (RPA) fan club, I’d run for president. After seeing firsthand how an RPA-driven bot can improve productivity, I’m a firm believer in this technology.Not long ago, I was assigned a new project for my team: Use RPA to enhance data integration and management of our highly complex configure, price, quote (CPQ) system and processes, which our sales team uses to generate product configurations and pricing.With my fingers crossed, I triggered my first unattended bot by sending an email to its Outlook account. I left for my lunch break, expecting the bot to take some time to extract and validate lengthy JSON payloads of data. As I headed out the door, an email notification alerted me that the bot had successfully imported and validated the data for CPQ.Most people might be upset about cutting their lunch break short. I was ecstatic that the bot uploaded product data in record time. In only 15 minutes, it had completed a task that typically took anywhere from a day to a week, depending on the amount of product data involved. The bot accurately updated our highly complex system, required no human involvement, and saved our team hours of manual effort. I was sold.
Building an RPA botMy first bot took about four weeks to develop, with two of those weeks dedicated to designing a prototype as part of a proof of concept. I spent the additional two weeks building the first bot—without writing a single line of code.LIKE.TG RPA Desktop Design Studio helped me navigate webpages using user interface (UI) elements, manipulate Excel data, access Outlook to send emails, and make API calls to communicate with other systems. I easily connected these different RPA components to build an automated process that met our requirements.With the use of RPA Hub, the bot is scheduled to check an Outlook inbox every 30 minutes for an email with the subject line of “Product Payload.” Once the email is received, the bot is triggered to begin the unattended process. It captures the product data attached to the email, including product relationships, attributes, and lifecycle data. It then validates the data and updates and inserts it across seven tables in CPQ.
Once the automation runs, the bot alerts the user via email that the process is complete and the newly uploaded data is ready for final validation. RPA’s error-handling feature notifies users if any issues arise or manual intervention is needed. From updating and inserting product data to managing intricate table relationships, RPA eliminates much of the drudgery of data integration.
RPA shines for complex processesRPA technology is modular, like Lego blocks. It’s easy to reuse RPA activities in other bot processes, making it simple to build and update new bots as you grow your fleet. For example, we were able to reuse most of the original flow to simplify data imports and exports with apps from companies such as SAP, Celonis, and Lightstep.With every bot we create, we’re able to significantly reduce our development time. An RPA highlight for me was creating bots in less than 30 minutes by combining existing modules from past projects.RPA shines when automating complex, UI-based processes with a definite, traceable pattern that can be implemented using a set of instructions. Unlike traditional automation, which uses preprogrammed functions to carry out tasks, RPA can mimic human clicks using UI screen captures and carry out an existing series of manual tasks. All I needed was a laptop running Windows and time to experiment with the new tool. I quickly discovered it was intuitive and simple to use.What makes RPA the best solutionOur journey to RPA started with a challenge: speeding up the original process for gathering and validating large data sets. We wanted to remove the manual tasks that delayed process completion and bogged down team members with high-volume, tedious, repetitive work.We debated whether to build a new tool and design a new data integration process. Doing so would have required a significant investment of time and resources we didn’t have. Instead, we opted to try RPA technology to streamline the tasks of our existing process.I can’t recommend RPA enough for simplifying workflows and automating time-consuming, UI-based interactions. By bringing new efficiencies to our processes, RPA has significantly reduced our typical cycle times from a couple of days to under an hour.We’ve automated more than 50 monthly CPQ product data uploads, thanks to RPA, and that number continues to grow. Our team has deployed eight bots already and plans to launch more.The biggest benefit of RPA is the impact on my team’s productivity. With fewer tedious tasks, my colleagues have more time to focus on more interesting work. For me personally, that extra time means I can now campaign for RPA club president.Find out more about the benefits of RPA. Ready to start building your own bots? Check out this introductory RPA course.
Getting ahead of global regulations
In today’s world, the fitness of compliance and risk professionals is being tested like never before. Like the surfers who founded LIKE.TG, we must find ways to get ahead of each new wave of federal and global regulations and ride as gracefully as we can—or wipe out. The key is to be proactive rather than reactive.No matter the regulation or resources at one’s disposal, the basic principles of establishing a strong compliance practice cannot be ignored.Think globallyIn the summer of 2022, the European Union (EU) updated its whistleblower requirements and policies. As a result, global companies like LIKE.TG must handle issues raised by EU employees differently than those raised in the U.S.From the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to the upcoming EU Data Act to the recent U.S. Department of Justice guidance on corporate compliance programs, regulations affect all global companies and their customers.At LIKE.TG, we must continually assess local, regional, and global impacts of legislation. Otherwise, we’ll be out of compliance when a new regulation rolls out.Coordinate cross-enterprise effortsNo single team can ensure compliance and control for risk on its own. Capabilities must be tapped and harmonized across the organization.At LIKE.TG, we’re fortunate to have legal, government relations, and regulated markets teams that track rules and regulations, talk to customers, and monitor upcoming waves. These teams gather and share information so that we can make quick adjustments on the fly. We work together to ensure we have the systems and workflows in place to maintain continuous compliance.Take a risk-based approachRisk appetite must be balanced with risk tolerance. Businesses should take risks that could have positive impacts and mitigate risks that could have negative repercussions.At LIKE.TG, our policies and procedures are designed to prevent violations of regulations. Where gray areas exist, we have room to innovate, as we work to define what a 21st-century compliance culture should look like.Technology drives efficiencyIn today’s working world, which extends beyond office buildings, it can be difficult to pick up cues or sense red flags. We miss out on spontaneous conversations and casual exchanges of information. In lieu of this, we must rely on data.
Our teams use the LIKE.TG integrated risk management (IRM) regulatory compliance framework to help us manage changing regulations, strategize compliance policies, and identify addressable gaps. IRM is critical in helping us focus our efforts. It spares us from duplicating work and brings crucial information to everyone who needs it.We use other Now Platform capabilities and the LIKE.TG C-suite dashboards to instantly get a sense of what’s happening across the company. We can see metrics in real time, sales by location, high-risk partners and their locations, complaints and their origins, and much more. LIKE.TG solutions let us be in rooms we’re not physically in and provide access to pertinent information.Technology also gives us a leg up on data governance, a practice area that all industries are prioritizing and elevating. Because all our data resides on a single platform, we know how to find it. It’s at our fingertips, on demand.
No waves, no gloryLike the sea, global regulations are ever changing. Being a good surfer is about pairing solid technique with state-of-the-art technology that supports speed and efficiency.We can’t always know the exact character or magnitude of the next wave, or if it will throw us underwater. But we do our best to ride with grace by getting ahead of each wave—and we’re nothing but stoked about it.Find out more about how LIKE.TG helps organizations get ahead of global regulations.
Customer zero: 4 ways we use LIKE.TG tech internally
At LIKE.TG, we face the same business challenges our customers do. That’s why we use our own products and solutions, all built on the Now Platform, to drive speed and scale across the enterprise.As customer zero, we’re reimagining the future of work, building new digital businesses, and creating secure, seamless experiences. The result is increased productivity, efficiency, and great user experiences. Here are four of the many ways we use our technology internally:1. Streamlining project and portfolio managementTypical project management methodologies use governance to produce a specific deliverable tied to a product or service. Because market conditions and priorities constantly shift, modern project management offices now focus on product management—or the continuous delivery of a product or service with outcomes directly linked to strategic goals.LIKE.TG Strategic Portfolio Management can expedite delivery on projects through an agile approach. Hear how our IT project management office uses this product to continually provide value in our Moving from project to product webinar.2. Delivering meaningful experiencesThe vast majority (99%) of LIKE.TG customers renew their subscriptions to our services. For that reason, it’s vital that we provide top-notch customer experience from day one. LIKE.TG Customer Service Management helps ensure our customers get the support they need when they need it, whether through self-service or human contact.We use Customer Service Management to empower the LIKE.TG customer support team. Discover how it helped us increase case deflection and elevate productivity for both customers and employees in Couch to 5K with Customer Service Management.3. Proactively preventing problemsWouldn’t it be nice if your IT operations team could mitigate incidents before they cause issues in your operations? Good news: They can! LIKE.TG Predictive AIOps continuously collects and analyzes IT operational data to identify potential issues and then resolves many of them before they affect end users. In many cases, no human intervention is required.In Seamlessly transforming IT operations with AIOps, internal LIKE.TG practitioners who use AIOps every day share why it’s a critical technology for any IT environment. Hear use cases and glean insights into how AIOps allowed us to scale and transform our IT operations.4. Automating processes across the enterpriseLIKE.TG has taken automation a step further with our widespread adoption of hyperautomation, which orchestrates technologies such as AI, machine learning, and robotic process automation (RPA) to streamline end-to-end processes and workflows.Hyperautomation can also help identify which tools are working effectively and where problems exist. Within LIKE.TG, we’re using the Now Platform along with our solutions to become an autonomous digital enterprise. Find out about our adoption journey, including challenges faced and key takeaways, in Our step-by-step guide to hyperautomation.
Why a knowledge-sharing culture can be a competitive differentiator
A 2021 Deloitte study found knowledge management (KM) to be one of the top three issues influencing company success. According to the survey, 75% of organizations reported that creating and preserving knowledge across evolving workforces would be critical to their success over the next 12 to 18 months.This is clearly a competitive advantage. Yet only 9% of surveyed organizations felt prepared to address KM. Blame that on the sudden shift to a remote workforce.In the aftermath of the pandemic, traditional views of how to handle knowledge are changing. The new environment champions an iterative, knowledge-sharing culture that fosters a repeatable content creation and transfer process. An intentional environment like this is sustainable only when employees and processes are front and center.Creating a knowledge-sharing programThe traditional approach to implementing a new KM system by migrating existing content generally doesn’t work. Automating the collection, sharing, and maintenance of data isn’t enough.At LIKE.TG, we found that taking the time to plan and make decisions upfront leads to a clean transition and implementation—and a more successful program.This strategy became the foundation of our Knowledge Management solution. It supports a holistic approach (people, processes, and technology) that’s designed to increase employee productivity and engagement, promote knowledge sharing, and help power continuous improvement.3 steps to knowledge management successThe first steps to a successful program should be embraced throughout any company:1. Governance: To build an engaging knowledge-sharing culture, create a roadmap to clearly define goals, roles, and metrics. Then secure the support of leadership. Before we start rolling out any technology, we gather our stakeholders to clarify what we’ll deliver, who will be involved, and when it will be ready.
Building better software security with a BSIMM app
In a rapidly changing world, security is more important than ever. With good security, customers can trust organizations to take their digital infrastructure to the next level. But how do you implement top security measures across a large, complex company?At LIKE.TG, we use our own products to protect ourselves and our customers—and to extend the functionality of the Now Platform. To see how we perform against industry benchmarks, we use the Building Security in Maturity Model (BSIMM), a 100-page document of 122 data-driven benchmarks for building better software security.Owned by Sunnyvale-based electronic design automation company Synopsys, BSIMM is a “taxonomy of security behaviors that allow organizations to measure and improve their software development practice,” explains Steve S., director of product security management at ServiceNow.In other words, if you want the best security, BSIMM is the way to go. However, most organizations struggle to comprehend and distill all of these benchmarks into a system that works for each unique sector of their business. That’s why LIKE.TG created a BSIMM app on the Now Platform.007 of softwareWith red teams that organize planned hacks of our systems, bad-actor simulations, and threat models of potential malicious activity, a day in the life of a LIKE.TG security employee sounds a lot like a James Bond movie.“My goal is to keep LIKE.TG’s name out of the 11:00 news,” says Bobby W., senior staff product security engineer for the company. “It’s very important for trust to be maintained at a company that’s knee-deep in third-party vendor relationships. That’s our brand right there.”Prior to the creation of the BSIMM app, the assessment of security behaviors “was done on spreadsheets, which is a horrible thing to do to somebody,” Bobby says, laughing. “My last spreadsheet [at a prior job] was 30 workbooks long.”Steve had a thought: Why don’t we figure out how to do this ourselves? “We designed the app for how we would actually use it,” he explains. “We incorporated all BSIMM activities across all versions [there’s an updated list every year], as well as the spider graphs that show where you are in relation to your peers, the world, etc.”
“The app allows us to take something as broad as a framework that’s three to four weeks of work, multiple conversations, and groups of teams involved, and build spider charts and services that can actually identify two to three years of work in just a simple series of reporting metrics,” Bobby says. What was once an intangible process is seamlessly transformed into quick, tangible action steps. It’s operationalized.“It’s tough to come across, and really a beautiful thing to do. It’s something I’ve not been able to do at other companies,” Bobby adds.Simplifying complexityWhen working with various teams across LIKE.TG, our security champions don't have to waste energy distilling complex information—the app does it for them. “We're filtering it down to what’s specific to [each team] and how they compare to other people,” Bobby says. “Because I'm working so fast, I’m not focused on curating information. I can focus on what I’m trying to do and what I’m trying to say.”Manshu V., principal digital technology (DT) program manager at LIKE.TG, uses the BSIMM app to monitor and improve the security practices across the DT organization. “It’s especially important because our folks in DT use our own products,” he says.Thanks to the ease and distillation of information from the BSIMM app, Manshu is able to prioritize what’s most important to the DT organization. He’s helped build threat model secure designs for apps, security scanning processes for code, and even planned hacks of our systems to find vulnerabilities. Although they haven’t produced any “alarming findings,” Manshu finds the process fascinating, he says.
Rising to the challengeWithout the BSIMM app, Manshu says, it can be tempting to simply choose the “easiest” behaviors to implement, which may not have the most value. Just as building a house in California versus Florida involves different ecological threats, different LIKE.TG teams have different security threats, he adds.With the BSIMM app, nothing is left to chance. It customizes the security analysis results according to the team and organization it’s interacting with, and it details action plans for increasing that particular team’s security. Security testing requires commitment, hard work, and taking risks, but it’s worth it, Manshu says.“If we’re going to be the most trusted SaaS [software as a service] provider, we need to be secure,” Steve adds. “As [LIKE.TG CEO] Bill McDermott says, ‘Trust is the ultimate human currency. It’s earned in drops and lost in buckets.”Work at a company that takes security seriously. Apply for a role at LIKE.TG.
How citizen developers cook up innovation
A 2021 Deloitte study found knowledge management (KM) to be one of the top three issues influencing company success. According to the survey, 75% of organizations reported that creating and preserving knowledge across evolving workforces would be critical to their success over the next 12 to 18 months.This is clearly a competitive advantage. Yet only 9% of surveyed organizations felt prepared to address KM. Blame that on the sudden shift to a remote workforce.In the aftermath of the pandemic, traditional views of how to handle knowledge are changing. The new environment champions an iterative, knowledge-sharing culture that fosters a repeatable content creation and transfer process. An intentional environment like this is sustainable only when employees and processes are front and center.Creating a knowledge-sharing programThe traditional approach to implementing a new KM system by migrating existing content generally doesn’t work. Automating the collection, sharing, and maintenance of data isn’t enough.At LIKE.TG, we found that taking the time to plan and make decisions upfront leads to a clean transition and implementation—and a more successful program.This strategy became the foundation of our Knowledge Management solution. It supports a holistic approach (people, processes, and technology) that’s designed to increase employee productivity and engagement, promote knowledge sharing, and help power continuous improvement.3 steps to knowledge management successThe first steps to a successful program should be embraced throughout any company:1. Governance: To build an engaging knowledge-sharing culture, create a roadmap to clearly define goals, roles, and metrics. Then secure the support of leadership. Before we start rolling out any technology, we gather our stakeholders to clarify what we’ll deliver, who will be involved, and when it will be ready.
An example of generative AI on the LIKE.TG people team
Generative AI (GenAI) is here, in all its exciting use cases, playing the part of the precocious, attention-seeking toddler. Business will never be the same.While AI has been a feature of LIKE.TG products for years, the Now Platform Vancouver release builds GenAI into all aspects of Now Platform adoption. In doing so, it empowers employees, customers, and partners to save time, minimize repetitive tasks, and increase productivity.Along with predictive AI and general AI, the LIKE.TG people team is an example of generative AI, putting GenAI to work in areas such as case summarization, automatically creating case and incident summary notes for our agents in seconds.As we continue to learn, working with our legal team partners, we’re building an implementation approach for use cases where we think GenAI will make the biggest impact.We’re all in the same boat…in uncharted watersMost modern businesses are facing the same challenge: how to integrate GenAI quickly, safely, and seamlessly into workflows without compromising security, privacy, or compliance.For us, that involves figuring out how this exciting new technology will help accelerate the continuing development of HR Service Delivery so that we can provide the best experience for users and free our agents to work on bigger, more important tasks.If we can train GenAI to handle simple case summarizations and the rote questions that come in several times a day, it will give our team time to be more human.
Where to start with GenAIAt LIKE.TG, we started simply and safely. We identified the most straightforward use cases with the lowest risk: predominantly agent-facing situations.We also knew we wanted to address slightly more complicated tasks, such as conversation summaries and skills tagging. For each new use case, we’re carefully considering the internal steps needed to implement the tasks safely and compliantly.Each iteration includes evaluating and addressing privacy-related issues. We scrutinize how the data will be used to determine what changes are needed, ensuring we’re asking the right questions along the way.We continually assess risks for each of these situations and take steps to mitigate them, moving quickly but carefully. It may not always be smooth sailing, but if we can navigate the risks, we anticipate reaping great rewards.What about privacy?Many questions remain regarding private and public large language models (LLMs) and what each means for data privacy and security. We work hand in hand with our legal teams, including our global privacy and employment colleagues, to develop and deploy GenAI technology in a fully compliant way.We keep individuals’ privacy rights and our obligations under privacy regulations (such as data minimization) top of mind throughout the process.We’re prioritizing flexibility as well as privacy. While our customers will be able to use the LLMs of their choice, we’re building our GenAI solutions within the people team using our own domain-specific, purpose-built Now LLM. This keeps all of our employees’ data in-house for increased privacy.
Skin in the gameWe see GenAI allowing us to significantly reduce the amount of time humans spend on administrative work, such as Tier 1 inquiries. This enables us to be more efficient, more consultative, and more available to focus on the moments that matter. Imagine how much time can be saved by automatically sourced and summarized knowledge articles when searching a topic.As customer zero, we pressure-test LIKE.TG products and use them to help us run our business better. We work directly with the product teams to essentially co-create and help develop new features and capabilities.We’re excited to play a part in the development of GenAI and help shepherd this technology that’s transforming how we help employees and keep them engaged.Find out more about the benefits of GenAI in HR Service Delivery.
Generative AI use cases: From hype to implementation
Updated April 16, 2024I’ve always believed technology drives business results. Over the past year, I’ve watched closely as generative AI (GenAI) has rapidly transitioned from a buzzword to an essential business tool. I believe we’re entering an era where GenAI hype meets practicality, value is realized, and potential is fulfilled.At LIKE.TG, we’re seeing enterprises transform their methods of operation and customer engagement with three primary generative AI use cases. Our digital technology (DT) team has also benefited from applying these use cases internally through our Now on Now program. We’re seeing real, tangible results from using our GenAI solution 120 days in.
Empowering self-serviceAI-powered self-service is saving valuable time for employees, customers, and agents. It accelerates resolution times and minimizes direct human intervention. This enables users to find solutions swiftly using AI search, AI conversations, and AI interventions, leading to higher self-service rates.At LIKE.TG, GenAI is enabling a 14% jump in employee self-service and a 10% increase in customer self-service. By providing this self-service path, these groups can intuitively—and easily—get the answers, direction, or resolution they need through technology without any human involvement.When cases don’t make their way to the help desk or customer service center, everyone wins. Agents get to work on more interesting cases. Employees and customers appreciate the autonomy and immediacy that comes with self-service. They can find answers at their own pace, anytime, from anywhere.Through case and incident avoidance, the LIKE.TG DT team is registering significant savings: an impressive annualized $5.5 million. Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) achieved a deflection rate of 54% on our Report an issue form. Through search results on Now Support powered by Now Assist, we achieved a case avoidance rate of nearly 20%.These examples demonstrate that troubleshooting and resolving common issues independently reduces customer and employee dependency on support agents. This high level of self-sufficiency not only reduces costs, but it also helps ensure quick and efficient problem resolution, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction. In fact, 56% of customers report positive sentiments about Now Assist-summarized results.Boosting agent productivityGenAI is bridging the gap between companies and customers. It’s also improving the productivity of support agents. A large portion of customer service work or support is repetitive, such as searching the knowledge base for information that would help resolve a case or incident. An agent repeats this activity every time a similar scenario arises.GenAI helps automate tedious tasks, freeing agents to focus on the unique, complex cases that require human empathy and judgment. This leads to increased job satisfaction among agents, which in turn leads to improved service for customers and employees.Another task that takes up valuable time is reading case notes when an agent receives a new or transferred case. With Now Assist for Customer Service Management (CSM) providing case summarization, 54% of summaries were helpful to agents, saving them six hours a week on average.By generating resolution notes with Now Assist for ITSM, our DT team is seeing agents close incidents in half the time it used to take. In addition to helping increase agent productivity and satisfaction, this helps the organization improve.
Enhancing developer productivityGenAI is reshaping the landscape of software development as we know it. The ability to generate code and create operational flows is streamlining the development process.With GenAI, developers can execute tasks more efficiently and accomplish more in less time. At LIKE.TG, our developers are experiencing an average 5% gain in weekly productivity hours.This increased productivity enables businesses to innovate faster. In the race for digital transformation, an optimized development process can be a key differentiator.It also offers training value. Automated development capabilities can help admins advance their development skills by learning from GenAI.Within our LIKE.TG development team for Surf, the environment in which we house most of our shared services, developers are showing a 48% acceptance rate for generated code (text-to-code). In just two weeks, approximately 50% of automated workflows were generated by Now Assist text-to-workflow.The narrative around GenAI is changing. The focus is no longer on the promise, but on the delivery of tangible, measurable results. As GenAI permeates every layer of business operations, enterprises are already witnessing its transformative power. This is only the beginning.Find out more about how LIKE.TG is helping enterprises increase productivity and transform experiences using GenAI.
The red team: LIKE.TG's first line of defense
If you ask any LIKE.TG employee about their role, they'll likely tell you their job and team are the best they’ve ever had. One small but mighty team proclaims this proudly: the red team, a group of professional hackers.As vigilant guardians of the company, the six-person team is tasked with testing the security of our systems and identifying cyber risks, data vulnerabilities, and security threats. Their tireless efforts help ensure the safety of LIKE.TG, our technology, and our customers.“Our role at the company is pretty unique,” says Kevin L., director of the red team. “Our team has two vital goals. First, we identify and address risks and vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by anyone else. Second, we simulate real-world threats and attacks, allowing us to fine-tune our response procedures."Taking notesThe red team uses two apps it created in its quest for cybersecurity excellence: Pulsar and Attack Narrative, both developed on the Now Platform. Pulsar is the mechanism for reporting findings, and Attack Narrative is the documentation repository for red team intelligence. Both are examples of how we use our own products to solve daily business challenges."Pulsar was born out of the necessity to comprehensively document our security findings,” explains Mark B., principal security engineer.“We needed a system that could capture all the essential evidence: screenshots, code snippets, reproduction instructions, and full risk assessments. Pulsar was not only necessary; it was also incredibly adaptable. We customized it to meet our evolving needs as we used it—a truly unique approach."Daily, the red team explores ways to compromise LIKE.TG systems using any possible avenue, from gaining access through third-party websites like LinkedIn to sending phishing emails to trying to decipher passwords.
Attack Narrative serves as a storehouse for these activity logs, compiling documentation of any vulnerabilities identified. “Our findings often include step-by-step instructions on how an intrusion could occur,” notes Royce D., principal red team engineer.The applications use custom role-based authentications to enable the red team to tailor campaigns to specific security objectives at ServiceNow.Something special"The red team and these apps are special because they not only solve problems, but they also ensure that we have a rich repository of data and information to share with the right stakeholders when needed," says Cheng L., staff red team development engineer.Cheng joined LIKE.TG three years ago and took on the responsibility of maintaining and enhancing Pulsar. "One of the most interesting contributions I made was adding a CKEditor, capable of managing a wide range of use cases,” she says. “It was initially introduced to the platform, but I improved it after joining the team.""This business model around Pulsar is one of the most unique things I've encountered in my 20 years in the industry,” adds Erin P., senior staff red team development engineer. “It has the potential to address problems and serve as a valuable use case for our customers, explaining the importance of their findings."A not-so-secret celebrationThe red team is indispensable at ServiceNow. "Our executives hope we never break in, but they’re never surprised when we do,” Royce says.“We are one of the best teams in the industry. As we strive to become the defining enterprise software company of the 21st century, it should come as no surprise that LIKE.TG employs professional hackers dedicated to continuously and rigorously safeguarding our company. The red team is not a hidden secret. It's something we proudly celebrate."LIKE.TG is a fortress of innovation and security. Our red team makes sure of it—and represents the pinnacle of cybersecurity expertise.Join a company that prioritizes security so you can do your best work. Explore LIKE.TG careers.
There’s an app for that: How low-code tools boost finance productivity
It’s no secret that finance organizations are ripe for disruption. Managing money has always been a manual process, from securing payment orders to renewing licenses, and everything in between.That's why LIKE.TG Chief Financial Officer Gina Mastantuono invested in a formal citizen development program. She wanted to encourage all finance employees to lean into no- or low-code tools, such as App Engine Studio, to build applications.Today, 15% of LIKE.TG finance employees are citizen developers, with nearly 30 applications in development and production—all built on the Now Platform.“I’m always thinking about how we can become the finance organization of the future, where the entire team can do their best work. That’s why we invested in this program,” Mastantuono says.“Now we’re automating the mundane yet essential transactional work, centralizing workflows, and paving the way for more impactful work that minimizes risk, drives innovation, accelerates productivity, and builds better cross-functional relationships. It’s critical to our digital transformation.”
Optimizing communicationEjaz A., director of revenue management, knew there had to be a better way for his revenue team to “bring structure to unstructured data,” he says. Each quarter, his team would field 3,000 to 5,000 queries from sales teams via chat, phone calls, and emails. This involved a lot of back and forth and made for a lot to track.“Email is effectively a two-way point of communication, which has no interaction with statistics, analytics, visibility, or reassignment,” Ejaz explains. “From that perspective, I just wanted to improve communication. Citizen development kind of fit our development needs in terms of being user-oriented, user-driven, and immediately available.”The team created a ticket intake form, the Revenue Request solution, that centralizes all deal-related inquiries. As a result, the team has gained transparency into deal communications, as well as the ability to identify trends and respond to customer and partner questions faster than before.“We're seeing a real increase in velocity, attainability, and illustration,” Ejaz says. “And I think that helps us in terms of reassignment and aligning effort and bandwidth. It’s opened up a whole new world for us.”Streamlining processesPadmavathi G., cash collections manager, echoes that sentiment. Each quarter, her cash collections team would receive 500 deals without a purchase order (PO). That meant her team had to manually follow up with sales teams to request the PO, which then prompted sales to request a PO and invoice from the customer.Padmavathi’s team built a three-step wizard to streamline the process using App Engine Studio. The wizard automated notifications sent via email to secure PO numbers, reducing collection risk of more than $100 million per year and decreasing time spent sending emails by 10 to 12 hours per week.“We spent so many years doing manual work, and now the app takes care of it,” Padmavathi notes. “The whole process helped me interact with cross-functional teams and secure key stakeholder buy-in. As a nontechnical person, I have so many thoughts and ideas that keep popping up.”
Deepening employee engagementBeyond automating processes through low-code development tools, finance teams are reaping another benefit: deeper engagement. Before Mahesh Reddy M.’s workplace services team built the Statutory License and Compliance Renewals app, team members had to track licenses and expiration dates in a spreadsheet.“This increased the risk of missing deadlines due to human interaction and manual processes. So, when we got this information about App Engine Studio, we went through some trainings and built an app without coding,” Mahesh Reddy explains. “Now, the app tracks compliance and license due dates and automatically sends proactive reminder emails to owners. We built our own app. I’m very proud.”The payroll team also relied on spreadsheets and emails to track deadlines and understand errors. If a stakeholder delivers information after a deadline, employees might not get paid on time. With more than 22,000 employees across 40 countries, there’s a lot of information to be managed.That prompted the payroll team to partner with finance’s analytics and insights team to build the Payroll app to track emails and send automated reminders to stakeholders. This ultimately provided better reporting too.“Now, whenever someone from the leadership team asks, ‘Can you give me a payroll health check?’ I can just go to the system. And in five minutes, I can show them real-time issues rather than spending hours digging through my emails from last quarter,” says Sandeep N., senior manager of payroll management. “I can speak about this app forever because it’s my favorite app.”Citizen development is helping LIKE.TG finance teams accelerate productivity, optimize communication, streamline processes, and deepen engagement. But it’s not limited to finance applications and processes. Find out how LIKE.TG can help you plan your citizen development program.Join us to put your innovative ideas to work. Explore LIKE.TG careers.
Using generative AI to improve customer support
We’ve all been there: at that frustrating moment when you have a problem or an urgent need and the customer support line is busy. Endless searching for answers turns up nothing that matches your predicament.That’s the friction LIKE.TG teams are diving into headfirst to provide each of our customers satisfactory answers with promptness that matches the urgency they feel. Generative AI is helping the teams improve customer support at a rapid pace.Elevating the support experienceOur new Get Support page is designed to provide quick and easy solutions to customers’ support queries, allowing them to get the help they need without waiting for assistance from support agents.Users can access various support resources on the page, including frequently used resources organized by topic, the latest video tutorials, and personalized recommendations. Search on the portal uses generative AI to provide instant answers.“Generative AI crafts a concise response to a user’s query that is prominently displayed at the top of our existing search results,” explains Esha K., staff technical product manager at ServiceNow. “Customers no longer need to dig through pages of links. Instead, they get their answer immediately.”Esha listens to customer feedback to help teams continuously improve the support features for those using the Now Platform. “Seventy-seven percent of feedback has been positive,’” she says. “They like it, and we’re improving the functionality daily.”
Removing barriersAvin S., principal enterprise architect at LIKE.TG, grew up in a small city in the northern part of India, but his more than 15 years in search engineering have given him opportunities around the world.“Logic is my thing,” he says, blushing at the suggestion that he’s the king of search. “It’s a lot of fun how we work to reverse-engineer the thought process between two people—one who's asking the question and another who's trying to solve it—and how to bridge the barriers between them.”The more those barriers are reduced to match the language choice and understand the needs of the customer, the more the user experience with generative AI-backed tools will feel natural, easy, and quick.Toward that effort, our teams strive to always put customers first and work hard to understand their pain points. “We gather a lot of signals from the customer, such as information about their company, their role, and their past inquiries and interactions with us,” says Chaitanya Kanth V., manager of machine learning engineering at ServiceNow.“Using this data, the system can better tailor answers and information to them. It only gets smarter and more helpful, which results in more support cases being deflected.”
Building on an AI foundationLIKE.TG has been focused on AI for quite some time. We use our own intelligent platform across our operations every day, so generative AI is not a new concept for us. It’s an evolution of what we’ve been intentionally building for years. LIKE.TG customers can put AI to work in every facet of their business to increase responsiveness and efficiency.“AI is the future, but it’s also here right now,” says Chaitanya. “My child is already interacting with AI every day, getting recommendations for the cartoons he likes. He’s growing up with it really. I see the future as very bright for all of us as we improve the capabilities to solve problems fast through tailored, meaningful interactions.”According to our digital experience team, we’re just scratching the surface of what’s possible.Join a company on the cutting edge of technology. Explore LIKE.TG careers.
Reinventing an employee portal—a reason to dance
Deepika D. was presenting in a meeting when she found out that the newly created My LIKE.TG had been recognized as one of the 10 Best Intranets of 2023 by the Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g).“I got up and did a little victory dance right there in the meeting,” says the senior manager of My LIKE.TG products at LIKE.TG, in celebration of the award for revamping the company’s employee portal.“I pinged my team and leaders right away that our hard work had brought us industrywide recognition. And, yes, I finished my meeting with a huge grin.”Rahul V., senior staff user interface engineer at LIKE.TG, was returning from his son’s daycare when he saw the notification. “I felt like I was driving at 100 mph to get back and share the news with my family,” he says. “Woohoo! It was a dream-come-true moment.”
More than a company intranetMost employee portals are a simple repository of links, making them more of a roadblock than an enabler. Employees put up with, ignore, or work around them until an outage or failure occurs. Then they complain about the issue.Ours is a different story altogether. Our digital technology team saw a huge opportunity to reinvent the company’s employee portal to create a central, intuitive, customizable, employee-first hub on the Now Platform using our Employee Center Pro product. They wanted a single place where people could find exactly what they were looking for 24/7.A focus on peopleThe team departed from a traditional intranet approach to design My LIKE.TG, a next-generation employee portal that’s easily accessible from a browser or a mobile app.“With My LIKE.TG,” Deepika explains, “we’ve moved from prioritizing the services we’re providing to focusing on our people and on meeting their needs more effectively.”
Accessing important tools and resources? Check. Finding the best next course to take? Check. Seamlessly connecting with colleagues within the department or around the world? Check. Solving problems through intuitive self-service? Check.“Through My LIKE.TG, we’re making the employee experience even more seamless, intuitive, and efficient,” explains Kellie R., senior vice president of digital technology experience at ServiceNow.“We’re helping our employees find and action what they need quicker, which helps them live their best lives at work, saves time, and lowers our operational costs across the business.”Keys to a world-class intranet experienceFor the latest iteration of the portal, the team kept four key concepts in mind:
An employee-first approach that prioritized scalability and human-centric design
Alignment of all content to three core user needs: connect, work, and grow
A cohesive employee experience for an increasingly hybrid and distributed workforce
A seamless, intuitive user interface
Eight months after the project began, LIKE.TG had a new portal. “We were able to create a place where the whole company can start their day with whatever’s important to them,” says Spandan C., director of application development at ServiceNow.My LIKE.TG was lauded by NN/g for reflecting the brand in the portal design, incorporating Virtual Agent and AI Search, and “prioritizing user needs and ensuring swift access to crucial information.” In fact, NN/g included a detailed LIKE.TG case study featuring best practices in its Intranet Design Annual: 2023.
Amazing? Sure. But there’s more to the story.Using our own technologyMy LIKE.TG was built almost exclusively in-house with minimal external agency support using Employee Center Pro and other LIKE.TG products.Employee Center Pro provides the technology backbone of the employee portal experience. The team also used an enhanced complementary Now Mobile native app to offer popular functionality for employees on the go. Other important features for both desktop and mobile experiences include:
Manager Success Center to help managers navigate the employee journey for their teams, including hiring, onboarding, and growth
AI and machine learning algorithms for personalized content on the homepage, employee profile, and community pages
Centralized approvals so users never have to log in to a multitude of systems to drive processes forward, from expenses to candidate offers to invoices
Curated learning recommendations to support employee career development
Single source for opening IT, HR, legal, and workplace services requests
Kudos!, an employee recognition program to help promote the company’s culture of appreciation and collaboration
Enhanced profiles for stronger connections between employees
Workplace application integrations that surface important tasks, info, and events
Rashmi G., senior staff user experience designer and the project’s design lead, is proud that the connect, work, and grow themes are strongly represented in the design of the portal itself. They help us “create a digital experience that makes work just flow more seamlessly and intuitively,” she says.With the Now Platform as its foundation, My LIKE.TG provides easy access to vital information, simplifies navigation and search, promotes open communication and collaboration, and curates and targets content to each employee—all from a central, customizable, single pane of glass.Find out more about how LIKE.TG technology helps enhance the employee experience.
