welcome to another episode of glide chat my name is michael lombardo today i'm sitting with adam mason vp of strategy at glidefast adam how are you doing great mike how are you man we go way back huh way way back way way back people sell it back they don't know a what a cello back away on the acela baby oh the isella that's the trade the amtrak train from boston new york man we were like traveling every week to new york yes kings of new york kings of new york we really took over we really took that over so adam and i for those who don't know adam and i used to work together another partner and this partner would just just getting going we were like probably like employee number seven or eight something like that and we did like the first implementation together which i always tell people about that implementation when i talk about it's like looking back on it we should have had it was just me and you so developer junior developer and bad project manager he did you weren't the best junior architect junior i was a good bpc but yeah i wasn't yeah product management i mean it's tough but um yeah it was just us too but looking back like we we could have had like an architect a developer a bbc an engagement manager and you and i just did it ourselves that's right we just did it we just walked in like third largest hospital in the world by the orc probably the world but the country for sure yeah yeah that was super successful and i remember you remember the go live i do remember you had real life it was a good time yeah a lot of balloons we had those balloons and remember how uneventful it was it was they were they were ready for everything just burned down yeah yeah yeah and then nothing what was the only problem they had with the emails they were like no too many phone numbers or something like that right remedy went down they were doing side by side they were doing side by side they did you know they're like all right for the first week we'll we'll do we'll close out all the remedy tickets and and we'll open new ones in service now and uh yeah the most exciting thing they were like nothing's happening we're like yeah that's that's what it's supposed to like we're just operating you know he's gonna use it yeah that was that was a fun that was a fun uh we had a good customer get a good prank with that what did we do with that uh we called one of our our colleagues that was at a given a presentation and we said the system was down no yeah and remember we had we had the customer actually call and say i don't know what's going on no it's not working no who did they call who was it you know who no i don't know the h the big h cooper hooper oh my god shout out hoover yeah hey hoover is a good dude yeah that's right we called the sales rep and we're like yeah it's not working you guys screwed up yeah but man i learned so much on that implementation because we both had came from the customer side right were you helped us manager yeah i was yeah so you helped us manager i was a help desk like team lead doer guy and i did a service now implementation you did a service now implementation and like that was our first consulting gig and we were just kind of learning on the job but uh that was just so much fun i mean another thing is like how much travel we did there like we were there a lot were there a lot like no we don't do that anymore like i don't know why was it just because it was well i mean now we're in cove at post coven now but i think some of it was you know we were really trying to build a strong relationship with the client yeah and they you know some clients don't like to do things unless you're actually there with them to do it and yeah we had a ton of workshops i don't know if you remember that but i think we had to like schedule like 15 workshops all of a sudden yeah and uh that took up a lot of time so we were down there a lot but it was good you know we got all the feedback and we really built something that was honestly pretty cool it was cool still kicking it's doing great i actually have a video we made a video for the innovation of the year award do they still do that at servicenow knowledge innovation similar things a lot of them yeah but we put together a little video just on some of the stuff we we solutions we put together for you know i i health care is like my passion i love supporting doctors and nurses and and using servicenow getting more and more into the business was like something i always wanted to do and and they they took some steps in that direction and um now they're a glad fast customer yeah legally we didn't break any contracts or anything but yeah so so uh so you've joined glidefast your vp of strategy and you know what what are some of the reasons why you're excited to join gladfest the the quickest thing is it felt like unfinished business yeah with you and i in a lot of ways yeah like i am so grateful for the path that i was on and i'm also i was so jazzed to see what you guys were doing and and how well everybody was doing it's like i never felt bad about anything like that yeah it was just great so it was positive it was like some unfinished business right it did yeah that's how i felt too and it was always like a a friendly com competition like it was never like dirty tricks it was in like we we were a big part of building that company you know i was there two years another partner and you know it was something special right like we had great talent best talent in the industry and like you know when i started glide fast that's so much of who we are is from what that company was and you know so it is a lot of the same vision right you got to give it like a fulfillment of the vision got to give a shout out to sven except i don't know if you remember what he still always says like you just have to hire quality people yeah oh yeah you know he got me there yeah he used to reason i wasn't even sure if it was a real it wasn't a real company really it was like i was like is this a real company here like it was one press release that was like we're gonna hire a bunch of people but yeah sven was a great leader but yeah like that's how i feel about like glad fast was like it's a fulfillment of that vision of truly just dominating the space like that's always been our mission we always wanted to just dominate the space and be the number one starting glide fast was like i wanted to be in control of my own destiny you know not that i always like wanted to be a leader but like i just felt like i have everyone's best interest at heart in mind and like everyone's in a better place if i'm kind of staring the ship a little bit you know and uh so much of our success is just we just have such great dedicated talent you know yeah you got great people over here i'm really excited to keep meeting more and more of them as i'm here so you and i would always talk about the servicenow space we'd always like make wild predictions of where the space is going to be where are you seeing the market go now and like maybe how it's evolved over the years and is it are we really are we going to get service now in the revenue generating space because we always talk about that like we wanted to support businesses revenue yeah and how they make money yeah i guess what do you see the market at these days i see the industry plays really coming in there and as those become more real yeah for more of the areas i think that's i think that's where the revenue turns on but i also think that they they've really done a good job in some of the other areas especially the employee workflow space yeah there are some huge gaps there that almost every company needs to fill i know and so i think that's been just a really big thing for them do you think the better together story will last forever well there's always going to be another together to be with yeah you know the togethers that they're with today may not be there tomorrow right yeah so i would just always fall back on what we've always fallen back on which is hey it's easy to integrate with it just works yeah database doesn't break you're not gonna have problems you can build whatever you want it's like it doesn't have to be he doesn't want to work with that yeah and like i think mcdermott would always say or you know some things he said was like other other platforms don't have to lose for us to win but it's like how long until we don't need work day until an erp i remember you used to say that like the one huge play for servicenow or you know open space is is erp you know it's like how long until and and the big s right salesforce right how long till they i think it's like going to be they need to right like when they've dominated this market what they have today and they're running out of runway it's like all right we got to go after crm business they could the other thing i look at is i mean i don't know you and i both know that they're investing in us but the rpa yeah positioning is big because like what does servicenow do better than anybody else it's workflow so how do you make workflows better when do you have them work with fewer people having to do things in the world right yeah so i i think that there's there's still a lot of ramp there for them to to really transform things with with the automation uh and they've always been pretty good at that because of the integration piece but i think that can just go on steroids in the next couple of years is it ever going to be no code is it ever going to be no code come on it is it's no code it's such a buzzword no but i i think it can be yeah and i think that you know this is if there's customers listening to this right there's there's people who are scared out there right yeah that are like okay we've got this we've invested in this but now i've got to do all these things like yeah you need a glide fast because there's definitely things you want to get right from the go and you may need extra hands because there's a lot less talent out there yeah to pick off as a customer but at the same time you know making some of the micro changes and doing some of the things to to build up especially in industry like we were talking about earlier i think there's just a wealth of opportunity there where people can do little things yeah to get off paper to get off spreadsheets to get out of access to get out of other crappy databases and really do real work together for the first time yeah it's like it's never gonna you know you don't just buy i don't know you don't buy the best thing in the world without some cost associated with that but obviously the value you get out of it outweighs every everything right but it's is it ever just going to be able to just plug in turn on and use as is no like you need expertise to set it up and i always say you know everyone always do the customization versus configuration my and i never said this to i kind of came over this last couple years personalization so we're personalizing your environment we're not customizing it which is a big four letter word now and it's not necessarily just a configuration like and i think the best way to do is stay away from those two words and just we're personalizing it and it's about following best practices following the best solution model and most importantly my team always tells me is avoiding the bad practices because we know there's 10 different ways to to complete every requirement that a customer has right but there's one best way most important it's avoiding the bad ways you know yeah i i like what you're saying with personalization that's a nice touch yeah and that what's funny is you know they had this big push the last three years for you know you heard all the customers like we want to go back to out of box especially the customers have been doing it for years yeah and but there is no real out of the box whether you're new or whether yeah because your process isn't out of the box your process is specific to what you're doing exactly i think you're 100 there with the personalization angle and i hate it because it's like it's so confusing to a non-technical person that doesn't understand it like a cio like use it out of the box or don't customize it's confusing you know and i think servicenow like as a community we gotta figure out how to communicate that better and say listen it's yes there's pre-built applications but they need to be personalized to your to the way you do business we need to build those workflows there's a lot of out of the box things we can leverage but and you need to make sure you have the experts touching your platform because you know it was like the wild wild west in the early days when did you start in servicenow uh 2011. wow yeah i think i was i think it was right around that 2010 2011 and it was a wild west like some of the even the things i did was like embarrassing to look back on you know like it's just like why would you do we got rid of the checkout cart but that's one thing even it took me a while to realize like okay there's a difference between a product catalog which which is gonna need a cart like amazon when you go add products to your cart and you go check it out right that makes sense but then there's the service catalog which is i'm filling out a form for a service like it's like a record producer click submit and it's it goes yeah but yeah it's just awesome to see how much service now has evolved and i mean it's like i mean i'm kind of separated from the technical solutions like i used to be embedded in it and i used to love building stuff but but sometimes when i just see some of the architects like diving into it i'm like damn well that has that now you know yeah i mean there's there's you can get lost in the platform so quickly these days but that's i mean that's just the speed that servicenow is moving and it's great it's great to see all the different spaces see what they're doing and all the new products and all the new angles as it's it's a good ride yeah it's a great ride all right well i think that was a great episode thanks for joining me adam and welcome to life love it thank you [Music] you