welcome to another episode of Glide chat my name is Mike Lombardo CEO of Glide fast today with me I have uh David Self and Matt Jerry Matt Damon what's going on going well how are you doing guys thanks for having us yeah let's go I'm excited why don't you guys introduce yourselves and uh and tell us a little bit about what you do here at Clyde Fest awesome I'll go first uh yeah Dave self um a technical architect I'm also a service delivery director so I helped head up the HR pod here at Glide fast been doing been working in the platform for I think 12 years now so see a lot over the years awesome Matt yeah my name is Matt Gary AKA Matt Jerry I always get that wrong I always I always think about it I always get it wrong everyone always gets wrong no worries no uh no offense taken um uh but yeah I'm a service delivery manager and an architect here at Glide pass um and just like Dave I I operate in the in our hrsd pod uh and I've been around the servicenow tool for oh man since 2011 uh in some form or fashion um and then been on the the technical development side probably since about 2014 or so that's crazy and that's uh man we so that means combined I I started about 2010 2011 too so combined that we have over 30 years three decades of uh service now experience that's uh right let's talk about um HR so tell me like in your opinion what is the biggest difference from servicenows HR platform or application versus the next leading HR System let's say workday like what's the difference between servicenow HR and workday yeah I mean from my perspective um I just think the the platform that service now provides and the flexibility and functionality at the end of the day so you know servicenow is a workflow platform so we can leverage all of the power of the workflow for our HR processes obviously you know servicenow started out in itsm but they were able to leverage all of that functionality within HR um so being able to automate you know these manual tasks that HR typically has to do um being able to uh you know automate notifications to to bring the user experience portion which is from an HR perspective it's just massive you know I think user experience is Big everywhere but especially for HR when you're talking onboarding you know bringing in new employees that's your your first glimpse into an organization so being able to have that flexibility to create that wonderful user experience from an onboarding perspective um you know from from the you know a new higher perspective of but then having the power on the back end to be able to automate these tasks that you need to do and notify people of uh you know certain events that are happening and being able to schedule meetings and even with the new Journey designer and journey management stuff it's just unbelievable the the amount of power and flexibility you have to accommodate essentially every use case that you can think of within HR yeah it's just it's crazy how you know just a few years ago we didn't we didn't even have an HR application in service now right and uh and we've seen all the Frankensteins people creating their own things and and and then and then to see it get rolled out then then the scoped app and then you know some of these new features that are coming up not now it's just like off to them races now that the foundation's been laid it seems like you know every new release just like a game changer these are obviously probably pretty challenging implementations right or um what are what are maybe some of the the pitfalls to watch out for or um you know if a customer's looking to implement HR what's something they should they should keep in mind yeah so I mean the number one thing that we see and we've done we've done like what 18 of these I think in the last two or three years um big ones anyway I mean we do phase projects too but the thing we see the most in like a normal implementation is you know it is sort of the people that run the platform and then HR is like an afterthought and HR kind of limps in and says hey we kind of want to see if we can put HR into servicenow and then the it departments they're sort of on the hook for maintaining it so they're kind of like nervous or maybe have some anxiety about it and they want to be involved but they don't want to be involved and then they and then there's sort of a push and pull between who's going to be responsible for it and yeah who should you know what I mean that that all that happens all the time so my advice to everyone if they're looking at getting into getting HR in service now is get your product owners the people that own HR at least from a technical perspective it doesn't necessarily have to be the leadership yeah because the leadership's going to decide they want to do this right they're either going to want to do it or not they've already looked at the numbers they've already figured out the money they've already figured out the math they're going to want to do it or not it's the I.T people you got to get the people that are actually going to be using it involved early and you want to have them talk to it and kind of work that out you know that's the number one thing we we see and yeah the sooner you get in front of it the better off you'll be yeah there always seems to be a challenge between it and HR right there's a you know I don't know I don't know what it is but they well it's like this I mean oil and water HR has a sort of a power that they don't wield on their sleeve right it's people are like oh I don't want to get involved with HR oh I'm scared you know people everybody has that and every company and everywhere in the world in police departments and you know medical industry they're like oh I don't want HR involved you know yeah yeah that's true that's true right yeah it is uh uh yeah I didn't think of that uh so they let them get away with stuff yeah like the the company will let HR kind of do things whether they whether it's right or wrong you know to a certain degree yeah if they're not involved with I.T it always it always struggles in the beginning but eventually we work it out and we're used to that here I mean we've seen it we know how to deal with it we know how to get in front of it you know but and that's my biggest advice that's great and Matt like from when you when you're working with different organization HR organizations are they kind of victim to some of the same challenges we're seeing with other uh business units out there that you know like lack of automation like what do you think like the current state of the HR departments yeah that's an interesting one so uh you know in my experience I think Dave can attest to this as well is I I think we've come across a lot of organizations where HR um is I'll say still kind of still in the past in that they're still utilizing spreadsheets emails really manual processes to do a lot of their HR work um and it's and I don't think that's just for smaller organizations I think it is you know some of the large organizations too it's just that there hasn't really been something as powerful as you know the hrsd application within HR or within servicenow to be able to handle all of these different things that HR does because there's a lot of you know just HR is a bit sensitive by Nature right um and there are certain hand-holding and certain things that you have to do with HR um so I I think having that ability for these organizations to move from spreadsheets and emails in these very long complicated and manual processes to be able to automate it um into you know into our workflows and being able to you know create our different services and and kind of break things out as needed um you know I think that's huge so I I think there's a lot of organizations that are moving to that but I also think with that that also poses um some challenges and kind of what Dave talked about uh as well having HR communicate with it because typically it is going to be your platform owners right yeah there's always got to be that communication so the communication is absolutely key for an HR implementation in general yeah yeah because you know if you think about HR it'll it's similar to I.T HR is that one business unit that touches every aspect of the organization right like um and you know I I think a lot of times uh we're seeing some of the you know I I see some of the conflicts with what I T and HR it's because you know HR is like you know this is what we need we need it and I you know it's always been and I think it's for every Department right it's like no you're going to use this system and you're going to do this and so I I think that's a lot of times you see that kind of differentiation and I'm not an HR expert and and I'm definitely I've lost my technical chops that you know you guys don't let me have the admin role anymore but uh like what I noticed right off the bat like when the first version of the HR app came out or you know or even the scoped app it was like it almost looked like like different developers built it right like it has different security model it has like you know right rightfully so right but it just it's uh I'm curious what you guys think of like what your favorite features are in in the in the HR app more than a new or just or just like what's different with the rest of the platform by the way just the reason that I got I went all in on HR was because of that skilled up like I started tearing that thing apart and I saw what they had done and I was like this is going to be a game changer I always I always I always talk about this like 10 years ago 15 years ago when all three of us were getting into service now do you guys remember what it was like like all these companies were were doing what HR does they were sending these spreadsheets they didn't have any processes they didn't even know what ITIL was yeah like half these people so now servicenow has become like the bar if you don't have service now and you don't have ITIL people are like what are you doing you know it's a service now what they're doing right now is they're they're they're they're gonna like build a framework for HR that's what they're doing and that's what I thought was fantastic because it's like it's like a rinse wash repeat it's happening for HR now they're trying to digitize they're trying to get all that that messy murky grayness of HR into something and have a place that they get so they can do their work and leave and go home and then come back and it's still sitting there you know it's not this like where's the SharePoint where is this and so what I would say my favorite thing in there there's two things that I really like one is the way that the document management and the the way you can like show a PDI and have someone sign it and have it have them fill out all this stuff yeah I just think that is so cool like when I first saw that where I couldn't believe what I was seeing and it it's you know I'm gonna get a little nerdy real quick but behind the scenes it takes the document and it takes and breaks it all out into these objects right and once you have these objects you can do whatever you want with it with the JavaScript so you can get kind of really Nerdy with it you know and it and whoever thought that up is brilliant as far as I'm concerned the second thing that I really like is this new EC portal I'm I'm in love with it I think it's the coolest thing I've ever seen and and when you talk to people about why I don't why would they use workday versus servicenow the number one thing that I hear people saying like there may be other things but it's it's not easy to make the portal do things in workday it's not easy to make it look cool or like change things around and make things work dynamically that's what I hear a lot service now with the zc it's so cool like it's so simple to set it up and like you don't have to be a hardcore programmer or UI person to make it do really cool things whereas you you really do have to be that way and work day yeah that's cool that's those are my thoughts yeah I I'm with Dave too I I love the employee Center portal um I think there's just so much flexibility and it kind of I think it does a very good job of Bridging the Gap between your typical developer and your kind of Citizen developer in a way um even though you're not really as a you're not really developing you're you know configuring there's a lot of options in the background where you can configure what you want to show yep you see which makes it very Dynamic and and to me you know from uh thinking through the lens or perspective of an administrator who might not be that technical I mean that's got to be a game changer that hey we can add these links we can add these banners and what's important to this section of employees right so you know we can make it we can have banners displayed to you with relevant information yeah the context right yeah so all the content experience all of that it's it you know and being able to just configure that on the back end and you can run through approvals you can do all sorts of cool stuff but being able to to be able to configure that on the back end by just you know filling out some forms and having it display um I mean it's huge compared to having to go into you know build your own widget and you know write all your angular and all your code that you need to have this widget run it's already here it's Dynamic and you're just kind of in the back end plugging stuff in um so yeah that's that part's awesome but I also on top of that very excited about the new Journey designer function yeah talk to you about that what what is that yeah so Journey designer is a new functionality that that service now is rolling out or rolled out with Tokyo I think they they actually had it prior I think they called it um Journey accelerator I believe it was um rebranded it so it's Journey designer um but it allows you the flexibility to to create these Journeys for employees whether it's onboarding whether it's uh you know career growth whether it's you know manager transitioning anything that you need to do to kind of create these Journeys um but the so it plays into both the employee Center because it's you know it's on employee Center and there's a whole cool user interface for it but it also plays into life cycle events um into life cycle events uh you know being what what servicenow had priority Journey designer you could you know schedule our activities for a new hire what what do you need to do for pre-boarding day one 30 days out Etc um so with journey designer it actually gives us another layer so we can have our life cycle event run and basically have and handle all of the tasks and activities that need to happen for more of a broader organization or broader audience in the organization but then the journey designer can sit on top of that and we can then make it very Dynamic and very um specific and targeted to who we want to go through these particular tasks so you know if we have somebody coming on in sales obviously they don't need to do any tasks that need to get ramped up on development practices that we're doing exactly right um awesome exactly so it's and it gives the I think the coolest part about that is not only is it I think it leverages the existing lifecycle events and then adds to it but it also gives the hiring or I'll say hiring manager but really the the owner of this journey the ability the or the flexibility to add any number of tasks that they want to so as your journey goes you can say yeah you can specify mentors and even mentors can have some uh you can set it up for the mentors can create meetings they can create tasks you can have the owner create tasks you can you know build templates uh reusable templates and apply those to each of your Journeys but it just gives you it gives you the ability to tie that life cycle event of all your core activities that you need to be to do to get onboarded to to the organization but then the owner the hiring manager that we're really the owner of that Journey they have so much flexibility to create tasks and meetings and whatever they need to do that's very specific to not only their Department maybe even just their team right so it's just being able to marry that all together and adding the flexibility I think is the biggest piece that that I'm very excited about well that's awesome I mean uh wow I could just like as you're describing it I can visualize this right and and I'm like thinking to how you know how Glide fast and the different personas and different roles and the different um you know personalization uh you know that I love to see uh for for each for each Persona I mean that's wow that that's pretty cool and I know I run out of time here but I'd love to hear maybe one thing that you'd love to either see in in the HR app in the future or that is coming um what like I always like this the Wayne Gretzky quote right where the Puck's gonna be you know so where's play you know play where the Puck's gonna be so where is the puck going to be like what's the what's next uh with servicenow HR I I have an idea if Matt I'll let you go you know after me but um I think that this is just a total guess but I really feel like servicenows earned a lot of trust this you know this last three or four years with this new version and I think that a lot of organizations are going to start really looking hard at it and the one thing that it can't do is cut checks right it can't do ADP it can't do and there's like four or five of those I don't know them off the top of my head but I know ADP yeah I'm pretty sure everyone knows what that is paychecks yep paychecks you know uh 401K tying into Fidelity all that stuff taxes and all that yeah um I really feel like they're probably gonna acquire something like that and I mean I don't know why they have to acquire though or did I don't know or maybe yeah maybe make an integration a dedicated integration something like that or builds right I don't like that's the part that's what I love so much about service now is just like and I know they've obviously done many Acquisitions right right yeah but it's never been something that really like you know changes the core platform right like you look at like Salesforce they're doing Integra integration they they have to buy stuff because they can't build it they can't fight and that's a great point because I I was talking to somebody about that before of like why doesn't service why can't we do payroll through service I know I pay the taxes if you took six of us Architects I know we can build it right yeah I think there's some other challenge well you know what I think it is I think it's they that's the reason I think they're gonna buy it's because they want the name recognition right you see what I'm saying they may it's you know how it is you're you're at the higher higher level you're looking at the whole field yeah yeah there's there's like politics and there's like well I mean if we could do it in service I mean you know we we love drinking our own champagne right yeah if we could and I'd love to I'd love to be able to eliminate another system because that's like the one one system that you know I'm not gonna say what we use but uh you know that that's like an that's like a one system that we have to not use servicenow for right we use service now for everything recruiting sales you know time cards everything right resourcing but but like payroll is just that has to be done outside of service now and I yeah Matt do you have any thoughts on that as to like maybe why they don't or honestly I don't know about why I think it I agree though I think it'd be awesome I mean anything I'm I think we're all on the same page right if we could build all of these separates the applications within service now I'd be all for it yeah um so I mean it's always tough uh you know there's there could you know potentially I don't know like you know policies or regulations or things that you also have to yeah that's not necessarily the development portion of it yeah but along the same lines I would love to see servicenow have a true like ATS system or be able to be your system of record for HR for employee data right because I think that's uh Erp right right yeah be your Erp because I think that one of the big things um you know that we deal with quite a bit is that we're always integrating between you know taleo or PeopleSoft or some other system of record uh and it just adds another layer right you just have to keep data in track and make sure that everything's in sync and an extra layer but imagine if you have that data in service now already you don't have to worry about any of these Integrations it's all there for you you can just leverage it however you need to and really just to me I think it would just really beef up what is already in servicenow um so selfish I think you know being a service now consultant and developer and working with this I'd love to see that uh be in place and just have one less you know system that you have to worry about integrating with oh yeah 100 100 and that's that's like such a huge market for service now to go after yeah it's almost like that the Erp and and CRM and there's nothing left you know what I mean yeah so all right guys thank you for for joining us uh for another episode of Glide chat I think this is gonna go viral make sure you like subscribe share and uh check us out on Spotify as well if you're not oh [Music] foreign [Music]