Syncing with ServiceNow: 4 key takeaways from Knowledge 2024

Knowledge 2024 was an incredible, action-packed three days of inspiring keynotes, exciting demos and breakout sessions, and plentiful networking opportunities for the 20,000 ServiceNow customers, partners, and developers in attendance.

In addition to announcements about expanded GenAI, workflow automation, and partner solutions, here are the key takeaways from Knowledge

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Fred Reynolds
Co-host: Mike Sabia
Co-host: Eddie McDonald

Transcript

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Andy Whiteside: Hello, everyone! Welcome to Episode 34 of syncing with service. Now I'm your host, Andy Whiteside. I've got the team here. They're all rested up from knowledge

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Andy Whiteside: except for Eddie, Eddie's been so busy falling up with clients that he had a chance to sleep in a week and a half, but everybody else has been relaxing a little bit. Not true, not true. We had a good trip Fred Reynolds. We'll start with you

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Andy Whiteside: What do you think of the conference?

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Fred Reynolds: Well, I thought the conference was good. I think I definitely enjoyed it a lot more. The issues different perspective, I think just the fact that we were really busy. We had a lot better presence there, or bigger presence.

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Fred Reynolds: I think what I joined.

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Andy Whiteside: Like we belonged.

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Fred Reynolds: But sorry.

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Andy Whiteside: It felt like we belong this year.

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Fred Reynolds: It really did. I mean, I really like the combination of customers service. Now, seller service, now, leaders just every bit of it itself a good mixture to me, a meeting with different people. I will say. I don't know if we're gonna go this far yet in the intro, Andy, but I would say my favorite time in the overall Conference, and you said it all. It's probably helps integrate foundation. But having that time to get with our customers, you know, and and service now

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Fred Reynolds: in the atmosphere. Just kind of let you hear down and just talk, play darts, and just hang out, I think, was just the most productive time I think I had there so.

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Andy Whiteside: It's the biggest selling week interacting with clients week of the whole year. And we definitely saw that this year, and we'll continue, I'm sure.

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Fred Reynolds: See the heart of who we are, what we do and why we do it, because it's just not about out there trying to chase them, chase anybody. It's really about, just build that relationship and and connect it with them.

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Andy Whiteside: Yup, Mike Xavier. That was your second, third, fourth, fifth service. Now.

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Mike Sabia: Maybe fifth, but it's actually the first one I've attended as a partner my early years on the customer side. I attended

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Mike Sabia: maybe 4 of them. But this is the first opportunity I had to attend in person as a partner, you know, with Covid happening all that I thought was fantastic. You know, when I was on the customer side I got to go to a lot of sessions. They were, you know, generally. General learning.

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Mike Sabia: I was talking with a a customer, and it was his second year, and in his first year he went to all the sessions, and it was great, but it was all general learning and his plan. This

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Mike Sabia: knowledge was not to go to any sessions. Just talk to partners, go to the the service now boost and and learn directly. And I I personally, you know, aside from his experience, my personally. I learned a lot, you know, talking with our our service now, partners talking with some other service, now partners talking with our clients what their needs were. I thought it was fantastic.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, I agree with your customer. If you could just go to the Expo Hall and go to the little breakout sessions in the expo hall hosted by service now, and and maybe some other partners vendor partners or partners I got a lot out of the handful of those I was able to just sneak off and go. Do.

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Andy Whiteside: Eddie Mcdonald. That was

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Andy Whiteside: tenth service. Now, knowledge for you, or something.

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Eddie McDonald: So I can't remember. It was my sixth or seventh, and because I used to drink a lot when I was younger, I think I blacked out during one of them. I'm not sure but no drinking this time at all. It was a sort of water in line, and I had a blast I bought a new suit and a suit looked amazing. And you know, so I looked amazing. So that's always a win. One of the big takeaways was how much the service now leadership wanted our time.

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Eddie McDonald: Our name is everywhere, and everybody wants 5 min of our time, and some of the biggest wigs on service. Now we're you know we were there, you know, Andy, Fred, we're, you know, blocking us down in offices, picking our brains about what we're doing. So that was a very exciting part for me.

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Andy Whiteside: Has no doubt that I felt we were much more accepted there this year because of the way we're doing it, and how much hard work we put into this last year. We're definitely getting attentions from from service now. Other partners, other vendors and civic room customers that I I was shocked. How many came to find us

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Andy Whiteside: at our booth?

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Andy Whiteside: You guys brought this blog from? What Lana Gates here from May fourteenth of this year. It says, 4 key takeaways from service. Now, knowledge 2024. Let's jump into this

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Andy Whiteside: number one listed. Here is AI is the future, and the future is now. That's not surprising to hear that. But

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Andy Whiteside: I think it's applicable. Fred, you wanna jump on.

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Fred Reynolds: Sure I mean I I would tell you that what's interesting like I said I didn't really get to go to any of the breakout sessions. What I did get to go to was couple of the keynotes. We knew the AI was gonna be the main focus for this. And I think this blog is really talking about the key

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Fred Reynolds: focus, or takeaways from knowledge from from their perspective. With this person's perspective. What I do like about the conversation about AI and the ones that I had a sidebar, as people who went to the sessions came out was a good use of

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Fred Reynolds: bad terminate use cases that we use to talk about it, how they can use that right? So I think a lot of people are interested how they can use it. And they get a lot more use cases because we have a lot more people starting to dabble in it. So I do think that it is here now to help them to figure out how to. You always have that lingo

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Fred Reynolds: service. Now help break down silos and service now helps you automate the mundane, and I think now AI is trying to help them do the same thing in different ways.

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Fred Reynolds: The most exciting conversation I had around AI with this was, I think, Mike, you were there. Talking to Cj and a couple of others that we're gonna have a panelist around AI in the development space was how they're using AI to go back to some historical documents or knowledge, sharing documents to go and and pick some more information around trying to help them solve or trying to find code for certain things. So I thought it was really neat. How the development team just wanted to use AI as well.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, Mike, your thoughts on that.

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Mike Sabia: I I I think it is fantastic. I mean, the the main use cases are, hey, caseless case summarization helping developers. But at one of the keynotes. They had a kind of a a

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Mike Sabia: real life acted scenario of a bakery and the bakery, you know. They don't know how many know how many cake pops to order, and you know the weather is certainly a factor, but also other details, such as news articles, or, you know when schools letting out or when the days are and the you know what a. In addition to what things are actually selling in the store today. So they know what to to order, and

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Mike Sabia: all of that's gonna be influencing AI. Now, when a customer comes to service now and says, Hey, what does AI mean. They probably think of how to automate their their their business automate, some of their things. But you have to realize it's that whole scenario of what your factors are, and

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Mike Sabia: as a customer, and as they should be planning for AI, they need to not think more than just, hey, AI! They need to think about, hey? What type of things are we going to measure? What type of things do we need to measure? How? What's the investment going to be because service now does charge for AI. But what is the return? It's you have to start planning now, even if not, you're not ready to do AI. Now.

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Andy Whiteside: And Eddie from a business development perspective as the business development overlay talking to our our customers. Where did they walk away with AI as part of knowledge and feeling more comfortable with it, is something they've got to be looking at.

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Eddie McDonald: It. It absolutely is. And you know.

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Eddie McDonald: so technology in general and I heard somebody describe it this way. And I thought, I think is so applicable.

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Eddie McDonald: It's like business. AI platforms are kinda like the journey of the cell phone. Right now, we're in the blackberry stage and generative AI is like a blackberry. It changed the game versus the previous iterations of cell phones.

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Eddie McDonald: Have we gotten to a smartphone yet? Probably in the next 2 to 3 years. It's going to explode. But this blackberry version of generative AI changes the game it makes that that's what Blackberry did. The business is what generative AI is doing to business right now. It's bringing it up to the next level.

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Andy Whiteside: Right

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Andy Whiteside: and it, and it makes the future undeniable.

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Eddie McDonald: It's going. It's going to overtake all of it pretty soon, which is, gonna get really exciting.

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Andy Whiteside: Next topic here, and I know Fred is really excited to talk about this one. So, William, go!

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Andy Whiteside: Let him go. We'll we'll let him go first, since he had the biggest opinion on this one. The human creativity can never be replaced. I think this is

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Andy Whiteside: kind of the offsetting of the AI conversation. Fred, your take away from maybe seeing this session and then, now that you've had a chance to reread what the what the session was about your thoughts.

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Fred Reynolds: Yeah, interesting. Great thanks for putting on a spot. Also, when I go last on this one. No, I think it's about having an open mind in this. I think I was so super hyper focused on AI and the machine part, and that taking away from jobs even when they started talking about noise from Coden. I really was concerned about how AI would play a role of that. So much focus has been about AI and and replacing humans. So think this whole session. It might really open my mind up to it because of

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Fred Reynolds: this session. I really just started multitasking. But it was really trying to

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Fred Reynolds: put the human element in there. Human creativity, what we come up with to make it work. So it's kinda like collaboration with the machine. And how do we make these things work? So you know, for me, I think the conversation I had post this to around the human creativity. Part of it is made me start thinking about a couple of customers that we have, and I started talking to them, although it doesn't seem like a an ideal place to put AI

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Fred Reynolds: especially when there's a lot of things out in the field. You wouldn't think it make a lot of sense, but really just trying to explore some of those conversations of you know, how creative can we be? We're trying to automate some of the things using Gen. AI,

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Fred Reynolds: that was kind of cool.

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Andy Whiteside: I just thought it was funny. In the middle of the session you stood up and shouted, you you wanted more robots, more robots.

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Fred Reynolds: I just didn't quite. I didn't understand why musician and A. And A. And a actor was on stage talking about service now, but I kind of get it more now. It's more about the creativity in their roles.

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Eddie McDonald: I loved it. I thought that I was. I was actually in the expo, and they were showing it up on the screen, and I went and sat down. Because, I think John Baptist and Jam Dan leave. You are both amazing. But and I was on a call. Right before this podcast started, I was just on a call. And I just told a customer a few minutes ago.

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Eddie McDonald: He asked me about integrated risk. And I'm, like, so I'm not an expert. And I said, I'm not an expert because it's so boring. I like the parts of the platform that engage the end user that actually helps them with their individual work days and get them better. And this is where the creativity piece of that human element of service now comes in because nobody follows it to the letter. We all have good practice. Nobody's ever following best practice.

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Eddie McDonald: so strict AI and strict processes. We have to be creative to meet the customer where they are and pull them into good practice, and that can't always be done by machine. So you have to have that human element involved.

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Andy Whiteside: Mike, your thoughts.

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Mike Sabia: I think

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Mike Sabia: exactly what we were just discussing. You know

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Mike Sabia: AI is a tool, and they were talking about John Fist and and so forth. But you know, earlier, Fred was mentioning, hey, I'm really excited about what it can be done doing with development. And that's true. But you still, it's not as if you could just hand it off development. You need to somebody to review it. You need to somebody to say, Well, this is what I want, but how can we do it in a different way? A new way. So it's not stale.

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Mike Sabia: super powerful. I think there will always be a human element.

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Mike Sabia: But you know, even in the in the first keynote,

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Mike Sabia: When the CEO was mentioning the fact that you know.

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Mike Sabia: 30 years ago, they said computers was, gonna lay everybody off. And now new positions opened up. I think the same is going to be true with with AI. It's gonna open up new possibilities. It does need review and oversight and verification. But it's just gonna open up new possibilities.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, I think for for me it's it's an enabling tool. And that tool might be the thing that can do the mundane stuff.

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Andy Whiteside: And it might be the thing that's also teaching and educating and coaching the stuff the human has to do. And if a human can manage to organize both of those things, they'll be able to get a lot more successful work done quicker.

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Andy Whiteside: Alright Michael, let you go. This on. This one first collaboration is vital, is number 3 on the list.

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Mike Sabia: You know.

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Mike Sabia: I think it was during the second keynote they brought somebody from Nvidia on, and they were talking about the fact that service. Now's ability with AI is is based on the fact that these other companies have brought up the capability and service now is doing its

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Mike Sabia: generative. AI with its own Llm, so that, you know, when

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Mike Sabia: service now needs to do a case of summarization, or it needs to make the code suggestion is doing it with its own Llm. Not sending it out to the public that is based on the fact, not that service now created to themselves, they are leveraging a relationship, but keeping it themselves. There's there's always that opportunity to collaborate with others, but be distinct.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: that's I mean, there's a lot of talk about open AI and Openai started as a nonprofit that became a for profit company, and and how the idea was this collaborative place where was gonna be free for everybody to to to learn from, and that was gonna accelerate this thing. And then people started to realize, why would I do it for free now that I can monetize, that is service now, saying that they they want theirs to be available, they want to use others. And it should all be collaborative. Is that kind of the idea?

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Andy Whiteside: Or are they saying that that there's areas where it makes sense to be open. But there's areas where it makes sense to be closed.

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Mike Sabia: I think the fact that

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Mike Sabia: our service as customers don't want to send their information outside of the service now universe means it to some extent has to be private, but they're able to leverage the work that other people are doing and addition, of course, going back to the previous topic number 2 is the collaboration with.

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Mike Sabia: you know, AI as a tool, as it's a collaboration to find something bigger.

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Andy Whiteside: Eddie, is this coming up in your conversations with customers.

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Eddie McDonald: Well, not specifically this right here, but this has been the message from service. Now, as long as I've been in the ecosystem, I mean they've they had a slide that they would show people called now on. Now it was a service, now internal system, with all the integrations, and they would say, we're never gonna replace sap or work day or aws. That's not what we do. But we integrate with them. So we're better together. That collaboration message is built into their DNA. So this

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Eddie McDonald: does not surprise me at all. You know.

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Andy Whiteside: For this kind of aligns with. You know, my my logic of how all these it integration systems come into service now and then go back out from service now, but it doesn't replace them all. Is that kind of what you're feeling.

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Fred Reynolds: Yeah, I was gonna say, 2 things from this collaboration vital. So from from this article, they're thinking back to knowledge. I mean, that's what knowledge is a big collaboration of of everybody, the ecosystem coming together, and I love to see how much collaboration was really happen in a couple of ways. I mean Eddie, I mean, Andy, you're one that love that collaboration. When you brought me in, Eddie over to talk to the partner people and brought us here and brought us here to really collaborate. What I've seen since then is we've had couple of customers

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Fred Reynolds: make some connections there, and their talk with other people collaborate to solve some of the use cases. So into back to the point of like

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Fred Reynolds: understanding how service now integrates or works with others. I mean, you got a lot of list of big names there, Microsoft, with others which we know last, should even talk about how to do it with salesforce in my conversations last week. So far with some of the people we met at knowledge. I'll bring up that one slide. Always do that kind of says, Hey, here's our view on it. Right? Service now is in the middle. And here's all these other types of technologies. And be it what it is monitoring tools, or whatever that really resonated both the calls I have, because they're like, you know, didn't realize you guys

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Fred Reynolds: did more than just service now. And that's really important. Because, yes, we have experts in all these areas. We collaborate with ourselves internally, deliver some of those sync integrations that are needed. So

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Fred Reynolds: that's what I took from it.

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Andy Whiteside: Ma'am.

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Andy Whiteside: Okay. Finally, the fourth one is number 4 women techies are on the rise.

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Andy Whiteside: you know. I'll I'll start off with this one. And I find it interesting because

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Andy Whiteside: this concept, this workflow, this world of you know, as a service delivered platform, not product, but platform. I I see a very, very applicable

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Andy Whiteside: space for women to be engaged in. Because if we're

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Andy Whiteside: serious, if it's us 4 guys here and we're serious about, you know how things get done in our households and our and around us a lot of times. It's the work flows that the the women in our household are making applying to our our daily lives. And now it's taking that same concept through technology like service now and applying it to business

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Andy Whiteside: when it comes to technologies like this. Not necessarily the old school stuff, you know, the routers, switches and the and the old engineering type of technologies which women could do just fine as well. But the idea of this workflow and improving process. Yeah, I'm I'm not surprised that women are playing a larger role and expect them to play even a larger role. What do you think.

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Eddie McDonald: Well, I can tell you from personal experience. It was a woman that got me into service now 12 years ago, and she is. I am a tiny fraction as intelligent as she is.

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Eddie McDonald: We all know her as Kristen. So she I mean she was my entry point, and you know. I think there's half of our architects here at Zentra are women, I mean. So we we embrace the talent where it is, and I don't know that that was a conscious decision to choose the men or women on our architectural team. We hired them because of their skill set.

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Eddie McDonald: and I think that speaks volumes to to women in tech are getting the recognition they deserve.

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Fred Reynolds: You know, and I like you said like that one. I like diversity cause. I think it's great for people to come from all different walks of life, all different type of skills. Yes, but you know. See that the women techies are Rosa or women of this, whether that I'm not sexist. So when it's based on their talent, and I have me and Mike about it in a lot of interviews lately is some of the resources that's really blow me away is some of these women techies? Because, just like you, said Eddie, they they put some of those a different touch toward their thought process like, I just talked to someone recently about Hrs. D.

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Fred Reynolds: She was so passionate about it, so passionate. I'm like, I've never seen anybody be passionate about that I'm like Eddie, that's my that's boring. But she was so passionate, and we're seeing a lot of that interviewed a young lady this morning straight out of college. She doesn't. I was like, Oh, man should be great, the pre sales and try to, though I want to get in there code. I was like dude. That is awesome. So it's really interesting to see some of how how much, and getting in there when I was in college and you with me you didn't really see any women in the engineering. I had like one in my whole.

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Fred Reynolds: a computer engineering firm. Now it's completely changed. It's it's very interesting in the.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, well, I think the times have changed. But I also think

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Andy Whiteside: you know, work, flow technologies, process improvement technologies are very logical for women more than they are for men, Mike, any thoughts on this.

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Mike Sabia: I I'm gonna echo what Fred said and add a little bit. You know, we've had quite a number of interviews. And yes, I absolutely want technical skills. I want experience with multiple platforms. I want to ask some technical questions, have them answer it. But some of the soft skills which we traditionally associate with women are the ability to empathize with the customer to, you know, work on those workflows, and and

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Mike Sabia: neither one or the other can, is strictly women or or men. But I've been pretty excited about the perspective that the women I've interviewed have on the approach to service now

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Mike Sabia: more so than, or in addition to the actual technical details.

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Mike Sabia: number.

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Andy Whiteside: Well, there's there's certainly an area in this part of consulting, and all parts of consulting, where some of those empathy understanding.

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Andy Whiteside: caring

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Andy Whiteside: being willing to ask the one extra question that everybody may assume they know the answer to.

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Andy Whiteside: I mean, guys kinda like to assume we know things right.

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Mike Sabia: Yes.

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Fred Reynolds: Corrections.

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Andy Whiteside: So there might be there. There is an area for for women to add value and actually be better at it than

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Andy Whiteside: Then, guys, I have no doubt.

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Andy Whiteside: Mike, anything we didn't cover from service now. Knowledge 2024 that you would have put on your top 5 list.

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Mike Sabia: Bing! Bring more comfortable shoes.

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Andy Whiteside: Lot of walking.

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Mike Sabia: Lot of walking, lot of walking.

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Andy Whiteside: Mike had newer shoes or nice shoes, and we even showed them to me day one. And then by day 4. He was like, I hate these shoes.

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Mike Sabia: I actually switched shoes, cause the first ones gave me blisters.

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Mike Sabia: comfortable shoes is on my

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Mike Sabia: radar for next year, but overall it was fantastic. I I loved being there. It was a great venue I thought the engagements we had with customers on the expo floor, as well as our our happy hour was was fantastic.

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Mike Sabia: Yeah, looking forward to next year.

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Andy Whiteside: Eddie, what would you put on? What would you? What would you put on? Number 5 on that list?

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Eddie McDonald: Well, unlike Mike, I did know about the shoes, so I bought a pair of amber jacks before, which is supposed to be the world's most comfortable dress shoe, and they did not disappoint so big thumbs up for Andrew Amber jack shoes.

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Eddie McDonald: The you know what the

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Eddie McDonald: the logistics? It was a little bit off, because it was a bigger footprint. There was more people like the, you know, logistical things like you had to get your lunch, and there was nowhere to eat. You had to go downstairs, and so little things like that. But for me

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Eddie McDonald: I found it. What I found interesting was. There was a lot of what I call micro partners there that had a very, very tiny sliver of area of expertise, and it made me curious why they would come to such an event because their target market is so small. So

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Eddie McDonald: I was, I'm wondering if years that go on, if that trend is. Gonna continue where you've got this integrs and the Cdw's and the censures. And then you have 50 partners that nobody's ever heard of, cause they do this tiny little sliver that was that was curious to me.

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Andy Whiteside: I I think so, and I think couple of things from that, I think, Will. It'll give us an opportunity to continue to add value to people who attend as part of us

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Andy Whiteside: while, and not get washed out by the the size of the events.

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Andy Whiteside: And I also think there was an announcement this week where a partner, at least a part of their business, if not the whole thing, was bought by service. Now, because they had this one little special app that service now wanted into their into their.

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Eddie McDonald: That. Yeah, that might have been what they were doing. They were putting up for sales, sign on their booth.

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Andy Whiteside: Pretty much. Yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: Alright, Fred, one more takeaway you would have. That wasn't in the 4 that we just reviewed.

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Fred Reynolds: Oh, man! Well, personally, I would say that everything in my power I can never be late to one again. I felt like. I was always running behind, and and I needed an extra day. I would love to see knowledge be, you know, 2 days prior to the the event starting with people can meet, sit down and have good conversations that last longer than 5 min, and feel rushed, and then be able to go to some of the sessions, you know. To me it wasn't long enough, but that's probably just because I was a day late. But anyway, Overall

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Fred Reynolds: did not attend a session this year, which is odd. I usually do but I don't feel like I missed anything. Good thing is they record them. So we're all get recordings of all the sessions, so I can go back and do those. But no, I just I think it was just a great year, I mean, I was super energized for the number of people we brought

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Fred Reynolds: there spent time with and the vestment that's integrated into the overall you know, knowledge 2024 this year. So already looking forward to next year. But don't want the synergy to stop. So I think we do a lot more through the years of taking that same atmosphere, you know, that has to be smaller, obviously, but doing more what we've had there, more conversations.

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Andy Whiteside: Well, I'm glad you brought that up right. So we have a directive to maybe get some executive briefing field trips set up I'd love for us to get some type of you know, user syncs, user group type thing going. I know. Service now has this nugs. But, man. They don't seem to really be happening. If we could find a handful of key markets, maybe where you guys just live.

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Andy Whiteside: that we get snugs going or not, if if not snugs, then some form of a user group meeting. But for me, the takeaway was. There's so much more we can do. We're just getting started.

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Fred Reynolds: Absolutely.

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Andy Whiteside: Alright. Well, gentlemen, thank you for the time today, and I appreciate you recapping this with me, and I'll get this posted, and I look forward to have another conversation in 2 weeks.

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Eddie McDonald: Alright. Thanks. Guys.

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Fred Reynolds: Zoom.