[Music] hello and welcome to the friday fast 15 the snack sci show where we break down big topics in under 15 minutes the end of the year is often a time for review and reflection in our personal and our professional lives so i thought why not dedicate a whole show to gratitude i've invited crossfuse managing consultant and servicenow certified master architect allison walker on the show to share with us a few technologies innovations that she's grateful for this year and it has been a year of innovation servicenow introduced the app engine with a quebec release and as justin meadows shared with us it got even better with the rome release now i'm not an expert on all of the technology so i'm just grateful to be surrounded by folks like allison who can explain why these innovations are worthy of our gratitude welcome to the show allison thanks kim i'm excited to finally get to join you on one of your friday fast 15s allison i always like to start the show with an icebreaker tell us a little bit about yourself um i live in aiken south carolina i actually just moved here in may from oklahoma i have a three-year-old son named dexter who after only being three for a week has already in base embraced being a three three-nature i have a very supportive better half who puts up with my shenanigans honestly he's a saint for putting up with me most of the time i've been in the servicenow ecosystem for the past 12 years and like you mentioned i'm a managing consultant but have been everything from an admin all the way up to a technical architect team lead and like you stated i do have my cma which is the highest level certification that servicenow offers now alison in your role you've helped companies speed up their digital transformation in surprising ways can you think of one thing in particular that's made your job easier this year yeah i'm not sure of any that have impacted me significantly here at crossfies but for our customers i think one of the biggest things i've gotten the chance to participate in was a current state assessment and roadmap we were able to go in and identify areas where they weren't using the platform to their fullest they were entitled to things they weren't using so they were just leaving money on the table and they weren't really sure how to capitalize on them i was able to help them target a three-phased approach because you don't want to just do a big bang but by that they were able to get what they should out of the platform but also to help automate streamline and create a better customer experience all around the outputs of the roadmap usually include efforts around process re-engineering organizational change management or ocm end-user engagements and getting to a shift-left mentality trying to put up more support on your service desk so that they can you know solve problems quicker and faster and we were also able to free up higher level resources to work on more critical items instead of being in the weeds on smaller tasks which was great these are some really interesting points you're making here allison one the road mapping for our customers and the other is extending servicenow capabilities beyond the service desk so that it positively impacts the customer experience can you tell us a little bit more about road mapping and the impact a better customer experience has on business outcomes as a whole absolutely the service desk is generally the heartbeat and the face of i.t by giving them the tools they need that help provide that service it allows that to trickle through the organization and put it into a positive light which usually isn't the case usually i tease the black hole nobody knows what's going on you know they're i love it people but they're not always thinking of their customers so when we start talking about automating from a roadmap perspective servicenow has so many capabilities it's hard to know what you should do next or what order you should implement so one of the key things i like to talk about in those road mapping sessions are what are your goals in the next one three five years or even next six months sometimes it's a little bit more accelerated whether it's an audit coming or something else that their cio or a director just wants to get more out of it so by understanding what those outcomes are that they're looking to achieve we were able to help target different paths of the platform that either the customer didn't know existed which happens more often than not or capabilities that were already included in a module they owned so we were able to strategically phase in the work in a logical approach where we can get any prerequisites out of the way an earlier phase and then build upon it it's also a huge help for directors and sea levels to plan their budgets for the upcoming year which we all know can be very painful when we don't plan for this would you like to touch on any other innovations that you're grateful for this year so completely not work related but we are a huge fan of our google nest and smart plugs everything from thermostats to lamps they're all scheduled and it's amazing and also a huge shout out to the 1 million streaming services so my son can watch any and all versions of batman at any time he wants i'm a huge fan of alexa myself and yes to those streaming services what did we do before disney plus anyway on that note allison do you have any final thoughts for us in the season of thanksgiving i really think it's important to remember that everyone's facing their own battles whether it's work or home related especially with kovid and we should always try to treat everyone with kindness no matter what our differences are myself i try to lead by example with my team and i hope there's a triple down effect through that we can't control others but we can't control ourselves i'm also extremely grateful for cross views i will hit my one year anniversary in december which doesn't seem possible but i honestly feel i made the best decision coming here my co-workers and manager are a big reason i love working here and why i am so successful at my job you are so spot on treating one another well leading by example and working with a team that's invested in you are keys to individual success and a successful organization thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on gratitude with the friday fast 15 audience and thank you everyone for joining us this week this has been a friday fast 15 of gratitude with cross fuse managing consultant allison walker if you'd like to learn more about any of the cool ideas we talked about on this episode or work with a team that would be so grateful to partner with you visit crossfields.com or reach out at let's talk at crossviews.com and for more snack sized conversations follow the friday fast 15 on apple podcasts spotify or youtube see you soon [Music]