welcome to another episode of glide chat my name is mike lombardo ceo of glidefast consulting and i'm sitting here with harry tillman senior technical consultant at glidefast harry how are you i'm doing great mike glad to be here glad to be here manny live and in person live and improv straight from colorado huh absolutely how was that flight that flight was long but a couple stops and we're here man maskless yes all the way all the way so harry i've known you man going back i think six years ago if i had to say absolutely i can't believe it's been that long okay so i met you six years ago when man glide fast was like me he's like two three of us and it was for we'll just say a large company that does uh uh a lot of different things so you were basically a servicenow customer but it was before you didn't really you weren't really involved with servicenow right what was your role there actually at the time at the time i was a program manager yeah for branch services branch services okay so the way i what i understood of what you guys did was you guys did kind of massive rollouts for example like a large shoe store that has multiple chains they may roll out 20 stores in a night is that on point to kind of what you did yes we had some large customers we would have many technicians going to different locations and we had a lot of gear a lot of equipment that needed to be there on time to work with these guys yeah all at the same time like overnight and a lot of coordination a lot like yeah so that that's cool and so i was there kind of i think you and uh another great guy david benich we got to give him a shout out we love david we love david david we love you um he took a real chance like i think service now this could be done in service now and i don't even know how he even knew about service do you know how he first knew about servicenow well we had an opportunity as a pro program manager to to figure out a way to deliver thousands of locations yeah and solve the problem of making sure we have pieces and parts and all the all the logistics yeah managed three service now yep and what we ended up doing was taking over an abandoned domain separated instance and we created something in the ppm tool that is actually still being used today yeah it was a mobile app it was the hawaii instance if i'm correct right yeah yeah that's what they call it that's what they called it i still wow that's i killed me six years ago i mean that was uh that was exciting i remember being i remember the first time i met you like you came in you were like no bs you like listen mike if you can help me do this i'm on your team i'm with you we're me and david we're doing stuff people don't want to do here and if you help us achieve our goals we'll stick with you and i was like all right man let's go that's a great uh interpretation i remember my job was on the line yeah i know i yeah and i really needed something to really you know save our team and yeah you came in and vouched for us and said this service now instance can do it yeah and once you gave us the green light david david rolled with it and man we we got hundreds of technicians on there we had crazy our shipping information tied to locations yep and we technically was able to move 10 20 30 tasks of things going to one location to another and wow really we i don't think we really missed any shipments or had any you know truck rolls that that's unbelievable that's unbelievable and so so where did the platform go from there your organization used servicenow in different ways and even you know was an implementer in some some scenarios where did branch services go did it just keep expanding and building on that where did it go after that first initial goal lab that we had i would say there was a moment in time where we created the managed service instance yeah and i'll give a shout out to rich dobry yep and at some point we migrated off the domain separated instance into that managed servicenow instance and i will tell you the program expanded quite rapidly because then we had multiple uh large companies working with us on many different levels and we basically proved out that we could do 10 000 sites with a very low amount of project managers and project coordinators and we were able to tie a lot of things together based on location information mobile and getting people registered did you guys ever calculate roi on on that or it's so it's tough right it's it's tough well if i had to take a swag i mean if you think about any time you reroute an engineer or you reroute you know missed deliveries yeah and the pain that hits your customer i mean it could be an upwards in the millions before you know it and you are losing money on a project yep so if i had to calculate we were saving so much money because we didn't have the truck roll yeah and i'm not saying we were perfect but i would say our missed deliveries were drastically reduced reduced yeah and that that's that's the overall business is improved right it's the efficiencies are are you know go up and the risks and the issues go down right it's it's just life causes so many issues and when you don't have technology adding to that and being on your side and helping i think it just makes everybody's lives easier well paint it this way if you were doing this all in email yeah and you had hundreds of televisions yeah and you had inventory going from many different locations around the world you lose track and everything becomes a spreadsheet and what do we do best in servicenow we centralize yeah that i put in a location hey this is what's all going to happen in these series and these time stamps of how we're going to complete the work yep and we can share that with the customer that was branch services right yes at what point did travis come into play here and then josh right because i know yeah so at some point i kind of moved out i think we just ended the contract for a while and then travis came in i know travis like kind of reinvented you know how are you guys use service now or that was i mean that's i i would say man travis yeah toolson that was your guy shut up travis we miss you trout man yeah i would say travis took us from the domain separated abandon instance and he helped create the service now wwt1nsc instance that we're using today for professional services yeah but csm right well actually it's a csm contract but we did it in an itsm way wow and we built out that capability and i will tell you travis is a wonderful guy because i couldn't believe he could migrate us from that terrible instance because i wanted to keep all our data because the data was important he converted all that data into this enterprise instance and i'll tell you he did a great job he took our team to the next level he taught me a lot about servicenow yeah at some point i think when we when we slowed down with the other company and working with glidefast it was less than a month yeah because david benichi worked his magic yeah and uh next thing you know somebody's telling me you um i got a guy for you yeah and i'm like no you don't no you don't i remember it's going to replace travis i know i remember that so i yeah i remember um you know having that tough call because you cause one of the things you told me was hey just you can never take travis from me and uh so i had to have that tough call couple tough calls we raised the raid a couple times but i told you listen josh i know we love travis no one can ever replace travis but josh brostoff is is phenomenal and so tell me what josh comes into the picture how'd that how'd that work out wow the word is wow amazing and i i would i am glad to say he's my friend yeah yeah he loves you i i talks about you all the time a good guy you know i'm not gonna age myself but i'm an older gentleman in the i.t industry and meeting josh young guy hungry hungry he's he's a grinder he's a grinder and he's very smart whatever it takes he he took us to a different level yeah and he stuck with us for four years yeah wow at least that i can remember wow is he still there he's still kind of there yeah he's still kind of there but you know i learned more from josh in the four years that i've learned in almost any platform and and josh actually built out everything for us the managed services piece he's doing the csm i mean he's doing the right things uh he's a great consultant architect and leader i mean i gave him i gave him a very tough task to help manage my team because at the time i was a service program owner or you know platform owner and i also am a technical guy and i had a team that was not just glide fast but i had other partners to help me yeah and i tasked him to be the leader yeah of the of everything technical yeah talking about your growth because i really wasn't there for you really getting down and deep into service now so like talk to me about that transition because it's hard you know like i went from i was a help desk guy to get into that so i wasn't like really technical to start but how did you make that transition how did you you know what was like this is what i want to do what what what changed you oh boy i'm gonna i'm gonna date myself now so 96 97 i started my technical career at ibm wow and then from there i worked there for six years or seven years as a technical person and then i decided i'm going to be a project manager and go into leadership and i did that for you know for 14 years before i made the transition of service now yeah i still remember seeing servicenow for the first time on eureka yeah and i was like man this is a clumsy looking thing yeah it was this is not cool it was very boxy and then and then of course once once i was at wwt and and i was and i knew i was on this big program and my job was on the line i i needed an enterprise platform to support a fully centralized process to support branch services yeah so how i got introduced to this was i someone it's like someone threw away an instance that no one wanted actually i had four to pick from i pick one that looked like it was a servicenow instance i had no idea what's the back end of it yeah i had a junior uh developer configuring ppm for me to do the things i needed to do was that stephen stephen stephen chan shout out to steven absolutely great kid great guy oh my god yeah he he started my process yep good guy and then from there i i went to uh knowledge uh seven or eight 18. i went out there and uh i took my first servicenow class as a field service management class i met goron yeah yeah and anyway where does he live where does he live i think he's somewhere in europe i want him at glyphast you know i'm like gonna start an entity out there just to get him yeah absolutely he's at servicenow now shout out gorham yeah yes goran you remember me i was the the guy that didn't know much and i was in my first class of fsm in knowledge18 and uh i i fell in love with the idea of field service management then yeah because they had the app you had the mobile capabilities yep and i needed that for my text yeah and that's where the love happened right there and from there that's when david reached out to you and this is how it all began yeah that's crazy and then i would i'm not going to say this to brag but i think glidefast university was me yeah yeah because yeah travis josh was teaching me what the heck is under the hood and how it works i know the best way to solve in a learning for me the best way to learn something is having a problem and solving it you know in real time you know instead of reading a book and saying here's how to solve the problem i can't like i need to actually solve the problem you know and that's how i learned yep exactly but i i i didn't have to solve it like you did i had the best experts yeah when you i had the extra you're telling me how to do the things my learning curve went really quick but since i couldn't be technical i had to be like a leader i didn't get the chance to become a true developer until you know you gave me this opportunity first of all thank you for coming to clydefast because i mean nobody was more excited than josh he's like man i don't care just get harry here i'll take i'll put him on my team uh you know this is what he wants we got to do this for harry blah blah and uh thank you for david for not uh killing allowing us that that to happen to but um one thing i wanted to ask you you know because i feel like field service management is an underutilized application in servicenow i don't think enough companies use it one thing on that is maybe why do you think it's overlooked or or and why you think there's so much value and then one like maybe specific question i was thinking is did you use the mobile app or did you use like service portal also available mobley like did you did you do that did you go the app route or did you go like use a browser on the on the iphone the way i looked at it i looked at a couple personas yeah right there's the people that coordinate and manage the logistics yep which is usually on the desktop yes yeah and then there was the field technicians that can't pull out a laptop and ipad and they have you know everyone has an android everyone has an iphone yeah you have one or the other one or the other that's it and what servicenow did was solve the problem of hey you could put this on my app so there's the classic app yeah right yeah that that was pretty clunky yeah and then they came out with the mobile app and i just need the technicians to do a few functions yeah understand what they're doing while they're there can they get it access to a document can they check off a series of events that are occurring with them yeah and if they have a problem can they reach out to get some help yep and one of the concepts that david benicci created was the command center and the command center was able to go real time and talk to those guys and they're updating these work notes in a task and and one command center agent can manage 10 to 20 resources in 20 different locations so ensuring that we were supporting people out in the field ensuring that they are able to you know look at their instructions know the location and use you know google maps i know that was that takes it to a whole different level yeah that was amazing and why is it underused or underutilized i think it's a lot about imagination yeah and people just don't want to solve the problems with new innovative ideas they reserve going back to their spreadsheet they're safe safe places they love seeing thousands of emails and and they like to update some whiz-bang spreadsheet even if it's online it's still a spreadsheet it's not a centralized repository yep it's not real time no it's not i run into a trouble with a field tech i could turn it red yeah i could turn it green yellow that was some of the things yeah that you guys helped implement in our system yeah that kind of helped our team really make money yeah yeah you turn a project yellow you got people saying whoa what's going on here yeah and he's got senior leadership helping us i know i still love where i'm about the money harry used to say i'm about the money man we're here to make money you know we're not losing it we're not losing money here you know that's what i liked like that was music to my ears too you and benicci was like wait listen we're here to make money this is how we make money and uh i think a lot of times customers because i think we're br you know a lot of uh servicenow owners or the it background they forget about that money aspect of cost savings and and and especially brand services that's a revenue generating i was just talking on the last podcast like i want servicenow to be part of the revenue generating aspects of the business period like that's absolutely that's where the future of servicenow is and that's one example of that and what's your advice to maybe other leaders because i look at what you and benici did was very brave right you know you gotta you that's one of my core core values is be brave right and a lot of the times with new servicenow customers and choosing a partner and choosing servicenow i find myself really trying to talk them off the ledge and just telling them just be brave take the leap of faith so what's some advice you can have for people to maybe that maybe calm them down because a lot of people are nervous and just believe you know that this is going to make your life better and you know get out of email i would say my big advice besides being brave yeah is understand your processes and how people do work and and figure out efficiencies in improving their work like you said it's about money and i didn't grow up rich i was very poor same you either you're getting money coming in and you're getting money coming out and and what i learned is you want more in and then going out right yeah at the end of the day it's very simple as that and and i know we're all cost conscious and we want to cut costs we want to do this but we can't cut costs despite of making more money yep and you got to bring in the revenue yeah you need more professional services right versus i.t it kind of looks at things in a way of defense and it's a cost to the budget yeah you got to do x y and z yeah when you have an offensive mindset yeah it's different yeah you got to really look at hey here's here's money coming in for a project to deliver x and it's and it's fixed right yeah there's not too many variables but the project manager can pull some levers to bring in more cash and to reduce costs yeah and pop the gp and when i look at gross profit yes gross profit so they know i look at that every day don't worry yes sir and for for the right reasons you should look at ways that how i can increase my revenue by providing exceptional service and and increase the margin and then also when you're looking at losing yeah money or spending money how do i ensure we're not doing rework workarounds or you know if i can make it easy and simple and i could do more with less you're going to make more money you're going to have happier customers so if you look at it just from an offensive perspective and what i can make some money that's the way i look at the business that's how i run my life yeah me too me too i'm a big offensive guy not offensive offense offense offense versus touchdown yeah because you know it's funny and i we're kind of i feel like we're kind of getting into like you know finance talk but i look at like my mother's generation and my my grandparents generation and they're always thing was save a penny you know save it save it save it save it defense right defense defense defense you know my mother literally my mother has a tv that's i'm like mom we've had this tv since i was 10. get a new tv she's like it's fine blah blah blah i just bought the tv you know but because they're just bred that way to save save save and i'm like the new generation is we we need to bring in money you got to bring in money and it's you know you're going to spend it you know you're going to it's about cash flow it's about generating revenue and and i never really it's funny i never really kind of put that two together with servicenow and in our world is like yeah we need to be offensive we need to be brave take risks and innovate on ways to generate new revenue and also save it you know and cut down the cost we got to figure out a way to incorporate that into the title uh that's a that's of this podcast that's awesome but that's what servicenow did for us yeah and we did that for four years that's really well yeah um i wish i could talk to management um i would i would be directly telling them right now yeah you have the best tool on the planet you already have it it's right there you're already paying for it too and i and i always describe it as the corvette sitting in the garage it's in there it's it's it's fast but let me put a tuner on it yeah and if i tune it just right yeah that bad boy is gonna hit 300 [Laughter] miles per hour harry man we go way back i i appreciate everything uh all you know all the way back when when i was just a scared little technical consultant in your office and thank you for joining glidefast and uh what do you want to leave our audience with today i'll just say glide fast is the real deal and if you want to save some money and make some money you got to spend some money on glidefast i love it i love it thank you that's another episode of glidechat follow us on spotify linkedin and uh subscribe to us on youtube [Music] you