2020 was a year of reckoning for companies across all industries. Businesses were challenged with adjusting to the new realities of work and life brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and many organizations quickly responded to help meet evolving employee needs.
At ServiceNow, we’re proud that we were able to bring our Emergency Response apps and Safe Workplace suite to market within a matter of weeks to help our customers respond to COVID-19 while helping to keep their employees safe and productive. More than 900 enterprises globally have downloaded our Safe Workplace apps, with more than 9,500 app installations to date.
We will continue to enable a safe and efficient workplace, releasing new workflow solutions and capabilities twice a month to support organizations – regardless of when and where their employees work.
Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Kristin McDonald
Co-host: Becky Whiten
2020 was a year of reckoning for companies across all industries. Businesses were challenged with adjusting to the new realities of work and life brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and many organizations quickly responded to help meet evolving employee needs.
At ServiceNow, we’re proud that we were able to bring our Emergency Response apps and Safe Workplace suite to market within a matter of weeks to help our customers respond to COVID-19 while helping to keep their employees safe and productive. More than 900 enterprises globally have downloaded our Safe Workplace apps, with more than 9,500 app installations to date.
We will continue to enable a safe and efficient workplace, releasing new workflow solutions and capabilities twice a month to support organizations – regardless of when and where their employees work.
Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Kristin McDonald
Co-host: Becky Whiten
WEBVTT
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Andy Whiteside: Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode.
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Andy Whiteside: Oh, gosh! I've already forgotten
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Andy Whiteside: of seeking with service. Now, Becky, by the way, this is a one. Take podcast whatever, we get wrong. We fix it right then. And we don't go. And we just keep going.
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Andy Whiteside: How are you? guys welcome? This is what is today? It's June fifth, 2,023. This is a episode 18 of seeking a service now excited to have Kristen Mcdonnell with us who's been on with us? Well, by 6, 7, 8 times now, always a lot of fun. And Kristen brought a friend. Who did you bring with us today. And where's Fred?
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Kristin McDonald: Yep, Yup, we are missing Fred today, but we do have our special guest, Becky Whiten, that he is actually my sister, and we are both senior solution architects with service now. So she's joining this integral team. I'll let her do a quick intro.
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Andy Whiteside: Hello, everyone!
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Becky Whiten: How about yourself? And how this happened. Sure, so a long time ago, I got started with service now
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Becky Whiten: back prior to service, now being even aspen release. So I've been working with service now since about 2,012.
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Andy Whiteside: Okay? And and I'm sorry I don't know this. But okay, what was the name of the first release if they even had one. And what was the year of the first release?
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Becky Whiten: Oh, great question!
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Kristin McDonald: Hmm!
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Becky Whiten: When did it become relevant to the 2 of you when when did okay? So 2,012 Kristen, when did you start?
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Kristin McDonald: So Becky actually pulled me into service. Now, working on Bmc. Remedy at the time, and she's like, Hey, you have to come. See this new system. It's so cool you're going to love it. So I had this weekend. I list to a podcast about a a lady in Canada that went from the mail room to be in the service now architect. And now she's our service. Now, support person. Now she's a service now architect and then
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Andy Whiteside: I was just interacting with a guy I just randomly met. He was putting a security system at my in-laws house, and he was awesome, and I was like, man. What do you? What do you want to do with your life. I want to get an it. I want to get into the enterprise. It I'm like, I got something for you. Check this out It sounds like that's pretty common.
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Kristin McDonald: It is. It's yeah. Service. Now, it's a great on ramp for new people new to technology, because you don't really have to know scripting to get started with service now, scripting is there, and there are more advanced things that you can work your way into. But you really don't have to know that to begin on the platform. So it's actually a great on ramp for new people to it
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Becky Whiten: it is. And it covers just to give you a little bit more onto that. it covers so many different areas. So people that are are used to more HTML pieces or portal like work. where they really like the uiux look and feel. There's, you know, a lot of room for that particular area within service now as well as you know, just adding fields and working with, you know, data and data importing. And then there's the integration side
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Becky Whiten: and so for so service now is so large and robust that it can do so many things you don't necessarily, you know, have to have all of that scripting knowledge at the beginning, but you can easily learn it and get into it and grow your level. Set to where you can easily mature and continue to grow with the tool
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Becky Whiten: as they continue to add new features and functionality within it.
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Andy Whiteside: Yeah. So a couple of things on that note, the guy I was talking to the day after I had a little brief conversation. What do you want to do? I introduced in concept of service now? And I said, well, in the having experience. He goes. Yeah, I host my own websites. I'm like, well, you're perfect for doing this. You're ahead of the curve.
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Andy Whiteside: I guess something else I heard at the conference couple of weeks ago, and maybe I heard repeated, is that service now? The code that they do use isn't their all proprietary stuff. It's based on Java language and things like that which make it even more readily available for people who do want to get into the coding side of it to pick up
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Kristin McDonald: Yup absolutely. There are other platform as a service providers. But service now made. I think the very wise decision to use Javascript is their base language. So there are aspects of the platform that use other languages like Becky mentioned. HTML, Css. You've got angular on the portal side. But the base platform uses almost entirely Javascript. So it's really readily accessible to new developers, because it's such a popular regarding language.
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Kristin McDonald: So so based on the way the the workflows work and the drag and drop, and then if I picked up like the Javascript for Dummy's book, I'd be in a good good spot absolutely. I think I see it on Becky Shelf back there, that's on. I'm just kidding.
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Kristin McDonald: Okay? Well, glad to have you, Becky. all right. So since you're new and we're gonna make fun of Kristen for just a second, only a story, you can a perfectly tell on a podcast, with maybe hundreds of people that will listen to it at some point
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Andy Whiteside: about Kristen.
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Kristin McDonald: Oh, boy, I have so many!
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Becky Whiten: I grew up with her.
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Becky Whiten: I guess one of my funniest, I guess. memories of her
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Becky Whiten: her when we grew up. So we we both have 3 other sisters. and
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Becky Whiten: we we used to like what we call meal day. It might would be our meal day, and so Kristen was so
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Becky Whiten: would be what would take it to the next level, so she would ride out our menu. What we're gonna have, what was for dessert? What was for drinking? you know, sweet tea. Of course we live in Texas, so sweet tea was it And so forth. But she would. She was very prim and proper, and would make our little menus and set at the table for us and A lot of times we would get corrected at the table.
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Becky Whiten: She was a lot younger than all of us. But if we said, you know 2 times she would try to tell us what you know you could say twice.
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Kristin McDonald: so she like to keep us all in line.
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Andy Whiteside: Kristen, here's what I'm gonna do to keep our listeners coming back. I'm gonna let you respond to that
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Kristin McDonald: the next time Becky is on a podcast.
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Kristin McDonald: And then you get to tell one on her. Alright. So let's see, let me share my screen here. So we can talk about the topic.
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Andy Whiteside: So, Becky, we try to have fun in this. Fred and I here let we can make fun of him.
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Andy Whiteside: Not here to fit himself. He took vacation, you know that's his fault. all right. So the the blog that was brought by Kristen today. and I think Becky actually influenced it, too, is a new employee. Workflow solutions, keep workforces safe. Kristen is this, the one you sent me
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Andy Whiteside: for this podcast is the one you sent me after we talked about doing an Hr. Related one.
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Kristin McDonald: yes. So that's the one for this one. And we did just want to talk about workforce or sorry workplace service delivery in today's podcast we've had a few clients actually expressed interest. we've done a couple of demos for it for clients. So we thought it would be a viable topic for today. I know the blog post is a little bit old. There's not too much out on the blog for the specific topic. but Becky is our expert in the area. Which is why she's joining us today.
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Kristin McDonald: so yeah. So let me understand. We're going to talk about workplaces, you know. Workplaces, workplaces are work spaces.
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Andy Whiteside: and we're going to go back in a time machine and be like during the pandemic a little bit, but super relevant because this concept is never going away like in our entire lifetime. There will never be the idea that the workplace doesn't need to be safer than it was
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Andy Whiteside: prior to March 2,020.
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Kristin McDonald: Sure, yeah, absolutely.
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Andy Whiteside: All right, Becky. You're the subject matter. Expert. Help us understand what they mean when they at the intro here, and then some of the stats are bringing up, and how they talk about the pandemic and the and the virus.
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Becky Whiten: Sure. So what they're saying here is in workplace. So solutions our service delivery, there are quite a few components of that application.
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Becky Whiten: And there is an area they are called emergency response, and they have different applications into there. What was really neat, what what I helped to deploy for for a large Federal client was around the emergency response. And this and and site workplace. What that allowed them to do is if there were You know they have employees all over the world.
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Becky Whiten: and if there was some type of an outbreak or something that happened, one of the places that I also implemented had a nuclear facility, and they had an issue at a reactor. And they needed to quickly get a message out and get everyone out of that particular area.
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Becky Whiten: And so they use the application. And it used Toillo as well. And it text message and emailed all of the people at a certain location to let them know that there was an issue they needed to evacuate, and so forth.
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Becky Whiten: What was really nice about this feature is a lot of times when you're told to leave a building sometimes you might not have your phone with you. and of course not your laptop. You're gonna leave it at your desk and just get out.
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Becky Whiten: And the nice feature that the managers had within this was, if they were, you know, standing outside like, if they had to evacuate the building or their employee contacted them, they could easily mark that
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Becky Whiten: employee as being safe. And so this kept track of all of that information, so you would be able to kind of track and make sure all of your people if you needed to follow up or It also kind of rolled into some of the Hr pieces. So if something happened to someone, then, you know, Hr. Could start checking on them and doing different things that they might need to do
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Kristin McDonald: so. It's a really nice application
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Becky Whiten: in different ways that you can utilize it as well. And even in the pandemic there were other pieces of that where? you know, an employee may be 6, so you could do health screening. So there was a portal you could check into each day and say, if you were well or you weren't well, or what your temperature was to know whether or not you were going to come into the building today or not.
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Becky Whiten: If not, then you know they would just mark that and kind of keep track of it, and know that you were working from home that day.
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Andy Whiteside: And I think what's so unique. And we kind of talked about a little bit ago, and I meant to bring it up then, is because service now is a platform
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Andy Whiteside: that can bring forth applications relatively quickly but robustly. it makes it the perfect solution for this scenario. Kristen, would you agree?
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Kristin McDonald: Absolutely in? In fact, during the whole pandemic situation, that was my thought. When I saw this come out, I I can't even remember how long it took them. It. It seemed like it was maybe 6 weeks or so, and I forget the exact timeframe, but it was incredibly rapid between the time that pandemic started, and the time that service now came out with version one of some of these tool sets it was very, very quick.
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Kristin McDonald: I don't even think they waited for a full release. I I don't know if you recall that, Becky, but I think they just posted it to the store. It was a very rapid release.
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Becky Whiten: you you're you're correct, and what was really nice is, they kept adding new features to it, and so you could go out to the sort. Or
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Becky Whiten: I, I was part of the development team. So I kept getting the emails that there was a new release out there. So they kept either making new features or fixing a few particular areas and so forth. And so it seemed like every 2 weeks. We're getting newer features into what the application could do, and they and they wanted feedback, which was really great. So we were one of the first ones to deploy it
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Becky Whiten: as well, and we got to work with the team. somewhat at service now, and talk to them, and talked about some of the features that we would have would like to see into it. And they they were really quick to turn different things around.
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Andy Whiteside: So this takes me back to the conversation I was having at the time. We'll say we have a customer. We'll call his call him Charlie.
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Andy Whiteside: I'm Gonna send Charlie this. Podcast. I'm listen to it we call him Charlie, and he was saying, Let's write an app that's gonna do this, and and I was all for it. And then I brought it to some of our developer friends, and and they were like, Well, there's a lot of people doing this. Maybe we shouldn't do it But then. Now, if I could go back and and have that conversation with myself again, I think the response I would have was, Yeah, I love the idea. But if it's not on top of some existing platform like in this case.
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Andy Whiteside: then it'll be. This is constant state of missing things with, you know, a lot of uplift to get it done, whereas, since this is on top of a platform.
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Andy Whiteside: it would make a lot of sense to get it done quicker and more more robustly as it as the need evolved
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Kristin McDonald: absolutely. And and it really speaks to the power of service now, because it it gives you that baseline for for building these types of apps quickly, and and
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Kristin McDonald: the data oftentimes is already there because you've already got your your companies, your locations, your employees, loaded into this system. So you're not even migrating data to kick it off. You've already got the data there. You've already got the supporting teams there for for any workflow that's required or task management that's required. And you you've got this just solid baseline to build on.
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Andy Whiteside: And in the case of Charlie they have service now. I don't know if they had it then at every moment, so now it might have been a no brainer, and they would have solved it exactly this way, plus.
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Andy Whiteside: and the app is already there. So, Becky, I'm I'm still struggling in the world of service now, figuring out what's the what's the workflow. And what's an what's the tied to about over the weekend? I was having a conversation around service now being a pad, and then the applications that get ridden for it could be either an integration or a sas. In the case of this one is the is the workflow we're talking about here, or the module. The safe workplace? Is that the
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Andy Whiteside: the the foundation we're talking about?
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Becky Whiten: So the actual. So so what service now does is they do what's called a plugin, and it's to open up all of these different applications which have modules. So when you log in, based upon what your role might be, whether you're an employee or a manager or an administrator. you would see different applications or modules on
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Becky Whiten: on the left hand side when you log in for what you have access to be able to see.
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Becky Whiten: And so
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Becky Whiten: the workplace service, delivery has a lot of different applications into it. It kind it. It really started out with that emergency response. And now they've added in
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Becky Whiten: reservation. So a lot of a lot of things that happen within Covid brought up brought around more things that the user or the customer were really asking for, you know, maybe they had buildings, and they only allowed so many people to come in onto the different floors, or you were visiting another building, and you needed to reserve that space
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Becky Whiten: for the conference room. So there's reservations you could do, you know, hot seating and so forth as well. So it allowed for those things to happen as well as different maintenance. So a lot for facilities went more underneath this particular area as well, because it really brought in more of the locations and
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Becky Whiten: the floor plans and the mapping of the buildings. emergency response. for those buildings as well different things that might need to happen And so for so so it it started out very small and then. Now, there's probably about 10 or 11, or maybe even more than that. Now, applications that are consumed within the workplace.
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Andy Whiteside: So, Kristen, you guys are having some conversations out. So to get work? Well, first of all was it was it called Workplace? And now it's called safe workplace? Or is it safe? Just kind of a an adjective that we throw on? Is it really called safe workplace?
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Andy Whiteside: Okay, so you got safe workplace? what? What? What do I have to own in order to get access to that suite
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Andy Whiteside: workplace? service delivery. Okay. So serve the workplace service that gives me safe workplace.
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Andy Whiteside: And then the emergency response app. Is that something that just gets bubbled up to me? Or do I go out to the app store and find it there and all it as part of my license.
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Becky Whiten: So so to see they're here like the emergency self report and emergency outreach. That is all a part of that emergency response management.
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Andy Whiteside: Okay? So I just go out here. And I, I get it from here.
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Andy Whiteside: But I have the rights to it based on my licensing.
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Kristin McDonald: That's correct.
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Andy Whiteside: And and I struggle with all this because it's just so much.
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Andy Whiteside: And I really haven't taken the time to learn, and I and and part of that may be the fact that I think they may have changed it end of last year because of year, and then, whatever I thought I learned it was wasted.
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Andy Whiteside: So I need to relearn, I guess what I'm saying.
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Kristin McDonald: And there there are often licensing changes with service. Now they'll they'll come out with their new licensing models, and and the partners receive information about that.
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Kristin McDonald: They they try to stay generally within the scope of of the application. So if an itsm was a per user model, it typically stays the per user model, they don't often change the type of licensing, but a lot of times they'll change the features as they come out with new features. They may change the groupings of those, whether you have standard pro enterprise.
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Kristin McDonald: So as consultants and partners with service. Now we do have all of that information, and we can certainly advise customers on that. Yep.
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Becky Whiten: So
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Becky Whiten: I see you're highlighting Twillo there!
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Andy Whiteside: How does 12 fit into this particular service now, scenario? And well, let me say this, this one's been challenging me to to come out with. So I I get this, as it relates to the pandemic
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Andy Whiteside: man. You guys are both old enough to know what I've been already talked about. Imagine this in like a 9 11 world, and how that could have changed the scenario and outcomes in Manhattan, that even in DC.
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Andy Whiteside: Of what could have but could have been different had you had some kind of systematic way to say
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Andy Whiteside: hopefully, say. you know, something's happened, and another building. Get out of yours the best you can.
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Andy Whiteside: or you know, and and and and know that the only elevator shaft it's the only stairwell that's still available is the one on the southwest side.
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Andy Whiteside: Imagine if we could have done that
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Kristin McDonald: and blasted, you know, that's the thing last. It's so fast.
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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, you know that's a Kristen. You probably know we had that we had our mad mother against drunk driving walk this weekend, and we were talking about getting involved with those guys, and you know what what we, as a company can do for nonprofits to enable them to have enterprise platforms that
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Kristin McDonald: they don't even know exist. And sure as he can't implement.
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Kristin McDonald: Yeah, absolutely.
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Andy Whiteside: There's a lot of opportunity there to to help and just just improve things in general. Yeah, or potentially worse, like one of the other nonprofits that we're talking to now. They they they think they want to build it from scratch. And like guys just put a platform in place so that the next 50 things you want to build don't have to be a start over every time. You only make it a problem worse.
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Andy Whiteside: Also, Becky. twilio we've been around here forever, and have a sense of what they can do. Tell us what twilio is what it did here and where it fits into service. Now, world.
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Becky Whiten: okay.
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Becky Whiten: with service, now with the When that I an implemented you do have to have a subscription with totally. Also that you have a phone number. And what it did here was it massively set out
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Becky Whiten: text, it can do email as well. But service now can as well. So we utilize it mainly for the SMS text messaging and for people to be able to respond to that whenever they responded to it. Service. Now read that into, you know that piece back in and updated their record to let us know whether or not they were safe, or if there was something else that they needed to let us know
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Becky Whiten: and And so that's how we utilize it as an integration piece and also for it to send out the mass. text that needed to service now knew which group of users based on their location on their building and so forth, that it could send to. So it would group those in and then just
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Becky Whiten: send out that type of text message
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Andy Whiteside: live long enough to be a world where it was one way, and it was, you know. Just get it out there and hope people hear it, but they couldn't tell you in in reverse what their scenario was.
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Kristin McDonald: Right.
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Andy Whiteside: Kristen. Anything to add. I mean, it sounds like it's something Becky was doing, and you were watching from a disc from a distance is, what was your thoughts as you saw this on voting?
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Kristin McDonald: Yeah, absolutely.
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Kristin McDonald: yeah it again. My personal response was just amazement at the speed of of the whole roll out. It's just you don't every day see a full application built and available within a matter of weeks, and that was quite substantial to me. Now, a lot of the features they had already built on. So again the foundational pieces were their facilities. Management was already in place in the platform.
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Kristin McDonald: The twilio integration was actually already existing in the platform, but in use in a different way. So they were using that, for example, with Csm, an its to notify agents via SMS tech texting or have virtual conversation support type conversations.
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Kristin McDonald: So just because there are so many integrations and so many features already on the platform. you can not just build from scratch, but also leverage a lot of those existing pieces to rebuild things. So
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Andy Whiteside: so, Becky, I had to assume there was a a an element of this. It was, you know, every day new requests were coming in. How iterative was the development of this and how did having that platform enable that
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Becky Whiten: it was there were a lot of different requests that that did come in again. We.
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Becky Whiten: whenever I did, deploy this with a large Federal customer. As I mentioned. We were one of the first ones to get it going. And so it was really nice, because we also got
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Becky Whiten: got to work hand at hand with service now development team. And so we were pushing ideas to them as well as far as. And they wanted that. They wanted to hear what the client that was utilizing it. Upfront needed as well. So that was nice. We did some customization as well. but at the very beginning we we really kind of
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Becky Whiten: set back a little bit. We did a few things within workflow, you know. Basically, we need to route this to go somewhere to let somebody know something, and as well as you know, the manager to be able to do certain things for their employees. And so that piece of it But we also work like, I said, hand in hand with service now to help them understand
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Becky Whiten: how it would better other clients within it, because, as I. As I did mention, we were one of the very first customers to start using it. And and and they were rolling out updates and releases literally every 2 weeks to us. So it was really nice.
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Becky Whiten: They were quick.
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Andy Whiteside: very, very quick onto it. and I didn't feel like hit me, and I should have been the first person I thought about this is how this impacts that such a distributed workforce today
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Andy Whiteside: only makes this more necessary, doesn't it?
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Kristin McDonald: Yes, absolutely. Yeah.
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Andy Whiteside: I'm still struggling with the distributed workforce thing, even though I'm a proponent of it, and I live it every day.
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Andy Whiteside: And how you manage it how you make sure it's being productive as it should or could be. I think platforms are the only answer for that.
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Andy Whiteside: Becky. I missed it earlier when you said, this is a Federal related customer.
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Andy Whiteside: other than the improving the the knowledge of the user. The the employee and their their workplace related. Was there any other in tangible that came out of this implementation for the business?
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Andy Whiteside: Was there anything else besides, you know the obvious? It's pointing out here that you know, maybe we maybe it's not highlighted in the blog. Was there anything else that came out of this implementation that was unexpected as a result of putting this in place.
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Becky Whiten: I think what what what happened is that more and more applications now are developed within this apple, within this module, or within this plugin. Now? such as the space piece of it, the reservations? not everybody going into the office anymore. And so, or when they did, they needed to acquire
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Becky Whiten: a space, because a lot of the customers would, you know, gave up some of their space because a lot of the. They found out that a lot of people could do their job at home, or remotely, versus having to be right into the office.
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Becky Whiten: And then there would be reasons why they might need to go into the office. So they were able to yep build the reservation management piece where you could go and book a hot, you know, a room or a conference room. So so that became something that that was very nice. Another piece of it. piece of this is also called the visitor management.
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Becky Whiten: and so you could check people in and out of the building, which is really good, because there we might be visitors in, and if they just signed a log.
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Becky Whiten: you don't know how many people are in that building, and then you have an issue with the building. How are you going to get to notify them, or, be able to know that they were truly in your building at that particular time. So that was another piece piece or nice feature that got added into the application.
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Andy Whiteside: So that that's interesting for me, because, you know, I'm old enough to remember Pre. 9, 11, when you just pretty much walked into a building. You may or may not sign the visitor log, and then, after 9 11 there was a whole lot of you got to sign this. You got to prove who you are. All this stuff happened, and that kind of some places. It kind of diminished a little bit, and most places it didn't. And then you had the pandemic kick in. So are you saying that the the what I got on the screen here like workplace reservation management that was that came around after
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Andy Whiteside: the the safe workplace emergency response stuff did.
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Becky Whiten: It did so. This was more reserving
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Becky Whiten: reserving different seats. also being able to reserve a conference room.
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Becky Whiten: and you can also map So where different people into the organization sit? so you can see all of that. There's a there's a mapping piece for this. It's actually called. It's another piece of, but it relates back to reservations. but it's called space mapping.
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Becky Whiten: And so yep. So here you can see all of those things. You can also see whether you you can map out your whole floor plan. You know where the elevators are, where the bathrooms are, where the cafeteria is at and so forth. So there's a lot of different things that that became came about after the reservation piece, so that people could actually visually be able to see. So there's, you know. Now, another piece of that called space mapping.
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Andy Whiteside: Yeah. So what I'm holding up in my webcam here is our new office layout for the office to January first. Excuse me, July first. I need that for this.
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Becky Whiten: There you go.
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Andy Whiteside: and you know it's it's good to have that now it' be good to have that in the future. I you know, as it relates to things like contact tracing.
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Andy Whiteside: It could only be been more beneficial to have this type of technology in place, and and knowing that you got a platform that you don't know what's coming next, that you could easily create something on top of is super empowering
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Becky Whiten: right? And then this also helped them, you know, with facilities. So service now
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Becky Whiten: had a section called work orders, and that you could do some facility management. And but this really brought into more of you're gonna see? There's a also an area called workplace,
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Becky Whiten: case
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Becky Whiten: management as well. And so that's a lot where the facilities are in. So maybe a conference room might need
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Becky Whiten: a new TV, or something is broken inside of there and so forth. So when you're doing the reservation management, it can work in conjunction with the cases and be able to say, Okay, well, I was in here. The video projector broke, or somebody spilt their coffee all over. You know the plugs. And now they, you know, don't work anymore.
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Becky Whiten: And and so for so you can kind of put in these different ticket types as well. And then we can do workflow behind that to route it to the right group.
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Becky Whiten: to be able to respond and
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Becky Whiten: go in, fix those items or or order new items that might need to be into those particular areas.
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Andy Whiteside: So I've got one for you guys, it's okay, just wild. Guess here it was, we're either one of you guys, ever a teacher or some of your immediate, immediate family and elementary school teacher.
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Andy Whiteside: either one?
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Kristin McDonald: Oh, wait, Jacob.
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Kristin McDonald: what's that?
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Andy Whiteside: You guys have the personalities of school teachers, and I'm married to one, so I can. I can tell you that. And like the the patience and the the way you would address people, you know pleasantly, but yet with a point
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Andy Whiteside: anyway.
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Andy Whiteside: my point in that cold comment was, I was hoping one of you say, yes, th! This will never happen. But this seems like the perfect approach. You know, school teachers spend all their a lot of time trying to to organize their classroom and and have get sip aside kids that don't distract each other, and maybe one's got a hearing issue. And one's got a vision issue. This would be like the perfect way to solve that. I don't. I don't know if we'd make any money. but it would be a heck of a good story.
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Kristin McDonald: Hmm! Maybe for that nonprofit.
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Kristin McDonald: Oh.
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Andy Whiteside: so Becky, what's this? in? Mapped in? No, that in thing
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Becky Whiten: so mapped in as a new type of integration piece that service now is utilizing. It will take autocad files or different type of image
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Becky Whiten: files and read them in. So that for plan you were holding up. If you had that in a auto cat file we would be able to bring that file in. It would map it. There's a little bit of configuration we would have to do, but at least your floor plan then, would be in, and then we could start
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Becky Whiten: putting the people setting that people are saying, where? What location that they're sitting in. So as you held up that map, we could say, Okay, well, Andy sits in Room 101. And so we could go and start tying those users to where they sit into the building.
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Kristin McDonald: and so forth. So.
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Kristin McDonald: But really, I mean, it's a platform. There's nothing that says you couldn't do that. That is correct, absolutely. And we do have user profiles in the platform. So you do have pictures of their smiling faces. If those are uploaded and yep.
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Andy Whiteside: that's awesome.
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Andy Whiteside: There's anything to add to the map mapped in piece.
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Kristin McDonald: I don't think so. I think they covered it. Well, yeah.
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Andy Whiteside: So, Becky, we're kind of at the end here. This great conversation. What would you want? Someone to take away from the workplace capabilities within service. Now, just in general.
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Becky Whiten: I would say something that
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Becky Whiten: I think nearly all companies could utilize in some manner. I think a lot of times it's overlooked mainly because it's not necessarily marketed as much it was it? It came about because of a bad situation. But some of the things that it does. We're not going to get away from it. It it brought us some neat features for service now that service now can do.
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Becky Whiten: and I think that more and more. It's going to continue to grow. And we always have. If if we're a company, we normally have a building, we have employees, we're gonna have modes that need to occur. We may need to reconfigure the floors and so forth. And why not keep it into your same application that you're running all of your other
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Becky Whiten: applications in our our tools in. So which is a really nice feature a lot of times. That is an area that's left out. They usually have to work off of spreadsheets, and if this particular person or that spreadsheet goes away, then they've lost all that somebody's got to go and figure all of all the floor, plan out again
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Becky Whiten: or update it. And why not? Just keep it in the tools? Very easy to say. I move from Room 101 to 102 or 105, or I went to the fifth floor and be able to keep track of all of that information. Yeah, I'm gonna tweak something you said that you you meant it. I know you meant in in the application, really in the platform once we get it on the platform.
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Andy Whiteside: I'm trying to decide if I want to use the word on or in. And and the reason I'm doing this is because I I have this conversation with people all the time now, and they're bringing up all these challenges like, Look, if you could just get that and that into a platform. Then what you do with it is limitless afterwards, that's really, what this whole service now, platform things about
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Kristin McDonald: Kristen, are you
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Andy Whiteside: Are you having to bring this up to people, or like, they becky hit it on the head who needs this well, anybody who has a building, almost everybody has at least a building. Are you bring this up to people or people? Bring it up to us, saying, hey, what what can I do about this? Our customers are actually bringing it to us, which is why we wanted to cover it today and make sure that more people were able to hear about. It is Becky mentioned. It's it's not as widely marketed as some of the other applications
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Kristin McDonald: on the platform. So we just want to get this out there, get some visibility to it that people know it's available. Yeah.
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Andy Whiteside: you know that whole marketing thing something. I'm kind of most excited about with service now, because they've got a lot of good stuff on their platform.
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Andy Whiteside: and maybe it's too much to market, or maybe just marketing is not their thing, but that's what we do, and marketing it, and then executing on it. And that's actually really exciting for us to be able to fill that gap on both ends on the front and back side, and that's part of what's making us a unique partner for them.
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Andy Whiteside: Well, Becky, welcome to the podcast, I don't you? You you're welcome to all of them. but love to have you as much as it makes sense.
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Becky Whiten: Thank you
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Andy Whiteside: that definitely gotta have you back on one soon. So Kristen can tell us something funny about you.
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Kristin McDonald: And and she's got like, maybe a week or more to think about it.
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Kristin McDonald: I'm in trouble. I'm sure she'll be nice about it. Yes, absolutely. And I think our next topic is going to be Hr, so I, I think we're going to have the same crew back on. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, that's a well, okay, so what what customers of ours, what potential customers are of ours need an Hr. Talking to around service now.
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Andy Whiteside: probably pretty high percentage.
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Kristin McDonald: Everybody's got each hard.
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Andy Whiteside: I mean, in in my experience, you get up to about 70 employees, you gotta implement some form of Hr, and there's a lot of companies out there with 70 or more employees.
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Kristin McDonald: Absolutely. Yeah.
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Andy Whiteside: In fact, I would love, maybe to throw that one into the mix as one of our managed platforms at some point, because it's so relevant. But I I could probably argue that about everything service now has
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Andy Whiteside: Becky Kristen thanks for the time?
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Becky Whiten: Thank you like. Thank you.