welcome to everybody to another episode of glide chat my name is michael lombardo ceo of glidefast consulting and today i'm with michael alexander michael how are you hi i'm doing great how are you doing yeah just another day in in the servicenow metaverse or universe either one um curious michael how did you get involved in the servicenow well i've been dealing with itsm solutions for over 10 years and i was lucky enough to work in a place where we were looking for a new itsm tool and my director made the right decision and chose servicenow even though we had a bumpy start we actually got to call in glidefast and i worked with a guy named top tanty and he really showed me the potential of what servicenow can do compared to the other platforms that i was the administrator of before and uh he really really made me a believer that's that's for sure and i i liked how he saved the day so much that eventually i had to come to glidefast myself a few years later yeah we're so happy to have you and you really coined the term for us uh what would glidefast do i remember a team call maybe four months ago you just like you telling that story and then you're like so many of my co-workers and i we just started saying like what would glidefast do and i just jumped on that t-shirts and logos were made you know that day well that's a definitely a true story top came in and saved the day for us and we really appreciated it so much so that we we would think as a group what would glidefast do what like if top were here what what would he do and and he was always really good with his advice and it was very clear that glidefast knew the right way to go and really set us up to grow and uh so what would glidefest do was literally something we did say at my last job that's great so tell me about your time in the platform what are your favorite aspects of servicenow for me what i like about the platform is is it affects the entire organization if you're a decision maker in the organization i would say that i can get the job done with servicenow whatever that job is and you can get the information that you need immediately and that alone is is one of the biggest things for me i've been in the it service management space for quite a long time and the way that it delivered on that was a great introduction of the potential of what servicenow could do our consumers were able to get what they needed when when we wanted them to get it and how they how we wanted them to get it and as an administrator and a developer i was able to use a tool that didn't lead to premature hair loss whenever there was an update set or or a full version change so i uh as a previous administrator of several other systems with very recognizable names i was very grateful for that yeah and you know i i always try to like like figure out you know what was like why servicenow was so different and a lot of it i attributed to you know servicenow i think was built at the right time where a lot of those other itsm platforms were really built at a time where everything was really hard coded so improving the ui you know improving the user experience was was really like listen we'd have to start from scratch we we'd have to we'd have to have a whole new application and then we'd have to you know it's impossible to migrate data and you know it hit the market right like during the cloud time right where it's like we're done with installing fat clients on on customers computers and again built on the technology that allowed it to improve the ui you know improve the user experience improve the functionality add new applications as customers matured solar service now how do you feel about the two uh releases a year do you know sometimes i'm wondering like is it too much you know that they're we're upgrading twice a year uh how do you feel about that well you just use the word maturity and that's uh i was going to say that i've had to do a few elevator pitches uh for service now to some doubting decision makers people who hold the purse strings as this yeah and my pitch is this with servicenow you're maturing with service now you don't evolve evolving is the old way it's painful it takes time a maturation process that servicenow follows is planned out it's on a regular basis and it's at a pretty quick pace that's uh that's what you mentioned might it's like two times a year full version upgrades there's no joking around about that but that's why you want servicenow it's a maturation and not an evolution like the old way yeah no i think that that that's that's so spot-on you know and and i think another thing too is you have to break the the mindset of a lot of these executives that are used to implementing something and that's the way it is and you know for the next 20 years that's what we're going to have and it's like you know so it's servicenow is never done right there's always improvement there's always more automation and that that goes into two things that's into are a couple a few things right there's there's the platform itself that's always maturing that's always changing i don't want to use the word evolving because you guys i'll get you on that one and then you have then you have like you have the process side right like you're talking about the maturity of the customer that's improving and then you have the just the development that's done on top of servicenow that's always you know we we can build more integrations we can add more automation right so i always try especially when i was consulting i always try to tell my customers like listen we don't have to shoot for perfect here anything first of all anything we do is going to be better than what we're do we were doing yesterday right because before we use an email we're using you know a not a user-friendly application or making steps forward but if we try to shoot for perfect we're never going to get anything live so i always try to say shoot for better work for better and and just know in the back of your mind build that backlog you know and just know that we we have that potential to improve things in the future we're not we're not backed into our corner here yeah 100 i think the core to all of that is servicenow's ability to mature without all that previous pain where there's planning that okay well we're a series of databases we can actually scale up we're meant to scale up we're not a program that was written for a specific let's say itsm group of modules and then we're going to add on knowledge bases and then we're going to try to integrate with other things now meant to do that and it makes our life a lot easier 100 i always like to leave the audience with one piece of advice so let's say if there is a newer younger developer consultant coming into the servicenow world what's uh one piece of advice that you would have for them oh that's that's great uh great question because i've actually been working with a few and and i would say to lead by their example keep your eyes open and your ears open there's always something to learn even if it's somebody who's not an expert in the platform when it comes to the servicenow context keep humble and always learn if you're not doing that you should find something else i've i'll tell you michael you're spot on i've met a lot of servicenow architects developers consultants process architects and i've still yet to meet somebody who's an expert in the entire platform it's i'm i'm you know starting to believe it's truly impossible it's a very deep and wide platform so the second you think you know it all the second you think servicenow can't do something or um you know be be careful because um you know you i think you'll be quickly humbled if you don't stay humble so yeah yeah what is it the rolling stone gathers no moss right you don't want any moss in the servicenow game not almost all right thank you for your time today michael and and have a great weekend it's been a pleasure i hope you guys have a great weekend too [Music] you