foreign Trails countless emails manual follow-up and headaches that's what people often think about when they think about HR Human Resources but today I have someone on the stream today that's going to flip that narrative on his head the person I have today his knowledge is both deep and wide when it comes to HR Service delivery he has an easy smile and a raucous laugh and I am so excited to have him here today I'm Kylie Alexander this is day 25 on 100 days of service now and without further Ado I want to Welcome to the stream Muhammad umwala Mohammed welcome to the Stream hi Kelly thank you good to have you here good to have you here I'm so excited to have you here and there's lots of things that I want to get into it with you about today so I appreciate you taking out your time so what are some of the biggest challenges that organizations face when it comes to HR Service delivery right so service time HR Service delivery really helps eliminate uh four pin or addresses four pin points that we see uh across different customers across different industry first one being it really helps eliminate insufficient uh inefficient manual HR workflows and processes so time and again oftentimes we have seen that organizations still have tons of mailboxes they use mailboxes to support different inquiries that the employees may have and also some of them work out of spreadsheets to manage their queue service how with it with its platform Automation and Workforce capabilities really helps eliminate and automate some of those processes for the HR customers the second it helps provide a single access point for employees to access all the HR services and I think this is a big one especially in the hybrid work environment that we are living in we want a single point of access so if I'm an employee I don't need to remember that I need to send an email to payroll abc.com if I have a payroll inquiry versus if I have a benefit inquiry I have to send an email to another mailbox because the employee Center portal that comes with the platform gives that One-Stop shop experience for all your employee needs be it a benefits inquiry or a PTO request they need to just come into that photo submit a request and service now takes care of the rest the third point that I wanna that service now helps address is securely manages employee records through their life cycle so it's with the onboarding and off-boarding capabilities that it has right from pre-hire to pre-boarding to like day one there's a seamless experience that it provides the new hired becoming an employee into the system and with its employee employee document management uh functionality of feature it helps store all the employee documents in one space so like they could have a repository a folder for each employee where you can store all their documents right from the higher till the time they leave the company and fourth number of my favorite it helps integrate seamlessly with existing HR related systems like payroll talent management background screening Etc I'm glad you mentioned the the piece about having that one place where an employee can go I think about at a previous employer where I was trying to do some information about my benefits and I sent an email it seemed to have taken forever to get a response but hey who knows me I've been called I haven't it wouldn't be the first time I've been called impatient but it seemed like that to get a response in that email only for that response to say oh you need to contact X Y and Z in this other department it was like ah and so you know by the time I contact that other person the other department now we're talking about a week you know and and time is money and time is also frustration when you're talking about these questions that are hanging out there and not being intended to the other thing you mentioned is being able to integrate with other tools that a company may already be using oftentimes you'll know that here that companies are using workday so is it common that you will see an organization that you're doing an implementation for using things other tools like work data those two work side by side are they in competition talk to me a little bit about that yeah so I think service now has gone on record and saying that you know we are not here in in to compete with uh the existing workday HR Solutions like workday if a customer is using workday as the source of record yes service now can easily integrate with it and bring in some key employee data uh such as date of birth uh employment type uh the date of joining Etc into service now so that that data can reside into service now and then can help facilitate uh the HR processes or help within the automation of some of those processes and if the customer allows we can also build a bi-directional integration within workday because again servicenow is here to provide that user experience to that employee that you know some of the tasks that can they can do in workday they don't have to remember doing it in two places with service now giving the form like updating their marital status for example or changing the legal name for example that's something that you know are some quick use case is that we can Define or give a form in service now the customer the employee can fill out that form submit it and based on the integration that we have in the backend we can seamlessly integrate and update workday profile for that user so again service house model is to give them that seamless user experience or enhanced user experience that some of the systems like workday doesn't have right you talked early at the very beginning of our conversation about the employee Center portal talk to me a little bit about that because that is what the end user is going to be interacting with you know most often so talk to me a little bit about that what does the user experience walk me through that user experience right so if I'm an employee and I need to know about my benefits or like my PTO accuro I just need to go to the employee Center and based on the knowledge base like service now has a case and knowledge uh functionality so the HR agents have the ability to create knowledge bases or knowledge articles highlighting their benefits the different benefits that they have the different PTO policies for different employee types and then publish those knowledge articles into the employee Center and with the search uh AI search functionality the employee can type in keywords like benefits or inquiry or PTO and that can give them a comeback with the search results any of the knowledge articles that are already existing that match with that term or if not then they could also be presented with an intake form or an inquiry form that they can submit to get further information uh regarding their dental plan or their Vision plan Etc love that there are two things two things that there is a dashboard or a workspace and then the other part that the end user will see is having access to knowledge articles that can answer some of those questions that maybe lingering or they'll answer those questions that typically would have been dealt with by way of email did I understand that correctly yes yeah so you can definitely use Knowledge Management in in conjunction with employee Center to deflect some of the cases and you know bring that cases down because obviously if you do not have a an up portal out there with your Knowledge Management it's really hard because if I if I as an employee have a question regarding my dental plan I just need to know what my dental plan coverage is I have to send an email to my benefits mailbox but now with Knowledge Management in servicenow and employee Center I can just go to the employee Center search for that key terms and it will present me with like related articles that obviously I can browse through myself so a lot of self-service is what drives employee centered and employees So that obviously a it helps Drive self-service and B it helps reduce his case count so it acts as a case deflection uh system as well so having that self-service functionality you're definitely going to be making a friend with an organization's employees base for sure uh self-service is where it's at apps absolutely 100 of the time tell me about the learning curve so we're going through an implementation someone has brought on you're with glide fast Consulting someone's brought Glide fast Consulting on for hrsd implementation human resource Service delivery implementation then what what are the first steps what can what can a potential customer organization expect with an implementation right to perfect as soon as the deal is closed by a sales team uh it goes to the resourcing team and we have a really great resourcing team and we as a client fast use service now internally for all our employees to store our employee profiles and have skill sets Associated to our profile also at like first Consulting we are all categorized into what we call as pods so our area of special expertise like I myself am part of the HR pods and with me there are 40 other HR professionals that have the same more relevant or more experience than me uh that are you know tasked to be working on HRS if there's an hrsd implementation the resourcing team looks at the HR pod and based on the availability it stops the resources uh right from like a business process consultant to an architect and to a TCS that range from two to three based on the scope of the engagement but yeah when you hire Glide fast we make sure that we get you the X experts best experts right on staffed onto the project from GetGo and having said that there's always whenever we say this very proudly that you know whenever a customer hires quite fast it hires flight fast as a whole so all 500 of us and not just the team that's working on it so like if there's any question we have the the full guide for us team supporting us for any questions or any help that we may need so that's that's definitely a differentiator when customer brings in blackfos versus any other partners there yeah you you mentioned that God and then you also have the entire company but you said that and I want to just make sure I heard you correctly because you said yeah you'll have people you know like me or or even more experienced than me and I just kind of point that out because I'm looking at your title your credentials and your service now architect So when you say like yeah we have people that are more experienced in me that's going to also be working on your project not just me you know that that's pretty impressive tell me a little bit more about what's so great about the folks you work with within your pod yeah I think we've got the best uh Talent uh really out there and you know you always tend to learn on new things and I like with being with glide fast for just over a year I I cannot say that you know I've always been humbled when I you know work with one of my other colleagues as I mentioned like uh I am part of an architect team so I like I have different Architects that again focuses on hrsd as their implementation and we always share our knowledges we always you know are on different projects but again based on relevant experiences we always bounce ideas back and forth we have a Dev Hub community internally that you know whenever we are stuck we can ask a question and there would be like 10 20 people trying to answer that question and help you out so that we have built that sense of community and family here that you know really helps deliver quality to our customers when I think about servicenow especially the beginnings of servicenow we often think of itsm I.T service management but servicenow has grown far beyond that with itsm still being at the core Foundation I bring this up because when you're talking about HR you're dealing with folks who do not have that I.T background so there's a little bit of a different kind of a language there so talk to me a little bit more about the learning curve the experience of kind of you know overcoming the learning curve when you're dealing with folks within an organization who don't come from an I.T background necessarily right yeah so I think this is uh definitely one of the uh challenges and learning opportunity that you have to go through uh when you're working on hrsd implementation because you're dealing with HR folks which are uh not uh as tax Savvy as uh I.T folks they may have never used the service now instance so you cannot use like servicenow uh lingo with them like record producers and assignment groups and things like that you have to really break it down into like you know a natural English language that you know an intake form is similar to a record producer but you have to use intake form and not record producer instead of assignment group you have to use like a group uh that would be queued a queue group or something like that right so yeah that's definitely one of the challenges but also learning opportunity that helps you think out of the box and again with you being a developer a tech based developer it's really refreshing when you work with these people and as with with time and you're experience you sort of like grow naturally into it and then you're used to uh you're just one of them so I love hearing that I I think that when you talk about you know you're dealing with people who don't have that I.T background and you start talking about record producers and all these different things that are kind of you know really servicenow very very much grounded in I.T language it takes sort of a gentle hand to be able to guide folks through you also offer additional support with training correct yes that is correct because uh we realize that when we sort of like implement this uh phase one uh for case and Knowledge Management employee Center for our customers there's definitely some ramping or learning curve even for our HR agents because as I mentioned they're not used they're so used to working with spreadsheets and mailboxes that it's a big transition from them and we definitely understand that so we are here to like support them after every Sprint two-week Sprint that we have we have like showback sessions that we do a demo to our customers to let them know what we worked on and sort of like give them that how their requirements that we gathered is now being implemented and in a tool so they can you know visually they can see how it will function so that definitely helps and then obviously we support them during user acceptance testing where they're really like into the system and you know trying to navigate themselves before the production uh go live and training as you mentioned we have a great uh training team in in-house that we always support so like for all for all our implementations or for most of them that I've worked on training has always been included as part of our implementation so our trainers come in uh and they build their training materials and then train the users right before they go live and after user acceptance testing when they are a bit familiar with the platform so yeah that's definitely some of some things that we do you have companies Apex for example right uh the parent company to Glide fast in different locations you know you have Portugal Spain us you know Caribbean Africa all these different places so how are you able to manage that when you have kind of different scope and different laws and regulations tell me a little bit about how you're able to accommodate that right so this is a great question because we work with a lot of customers that are globally based uh and we typically tend to take an MVP approach based on their operations if they're based out of U.S United States then their biggest operation is in the United States region or one of their operations is in UK uh London based right so we try to take one or two use cases because obviously we know how difficult uh or how long the process is if you want to implement or try to tackle the global uh scope we always try to break it down into you know MVP products so let's hey you have operations in in America let's get that as part of the scope let's build out some Services uh for your American users and you can you can see the potential of the two and then gradually once your agents are used to working uh with the platform we can definitely expand onto like other regions because obviously Word of Mouth like if you have your American which are agents using the system they can definitely also help influence the other uh region-based HR folks to tell them how great the platform is and you know it just makes that process easier because we're here for a longer time right uh so we usually typically go the MVP approach where we take a one or two regions tackle that implement it fullest and then we sort of like proceed to the next region as per the customer's request yes continue yeah but just to finish off like yeah uh we have capabilities uh internal to hrsd where we use like uh features like HR criteria and audiences to restrict visibility of different forms and different knowledge articles based on the region that they come from so that is supported by platform which gives the platform the endless opportunity to have Global uh regions also logged into the same portal and you can have the portal completely look different for customers coming from like emia versus Amer versus APAC and the content can also be separated out based on that specific criteria right so sure sure I love what you said when you talked about getting that mvp get that minimal viable product where you're like okay we're just going to be able to focus on this and we're going to focus on this and this region get that whole thing nice and shiny polished up work out all of the Kinks and then be able to expand it into other regions you know kind of once you you know I come from an education background and one of the things that we talk about all the time is go slow to go fast so it's like you really like get those multiplication tables down get them things down and then I can take you to calculator I can take you to trigonometry so same thing here it's like you want to get that really shiny object and just get it really nailed out chiseled working perfectly in this one region this one scope and then you can start to expand it into other areas and then perhaps that virtual agent perhaps that knowledge basis am I understanding you correctly yes that's absolutely right yep you put it perfectly right on there right on the strategy office right you've been here so let's switch gears a little bit you've been here here meaning the servicenow ecosystem since Dublin tell me about a little bit about your servicenow story how did you get to service now uh yeah I started my career uh back in 2014 right about uh Dublin I started my journey at a customer who had an in-house service now Dev QA test team I was part of that team uh started as a system administrator as I was completely fresh out of University uh trying to learn service now uh never heard of the tool before I actually got into the job but yeah learned everything uh on the job started with Texas admin activities uh quickly transitioned into development roles but working with like catalog items incidents uh things like that also assisting the architect for the integration path that we had at the time with BMC remedy and then I worked on itsm and custom apps for a few years and then obviously I was at a point in my career where I was looking to expand my skill set and I saw service now growing as well so that Beyond it so it was trying to explore in the in the region of HR HR Service delivery customer service management things like that that and I wanted to expand my skills I wanted to try something new that's when HR Service delivery caught my eye and iPad I thought you know why not try it out and as I said uh it was very different coming from itsm just based on the data structure that it has the the stakeholders that you deal with are not it focused so I took that as a challenge as a learning opportunity got into hrsd really fell in love with the with the tools saw it Grow from like a non-scope app to a scope app and then just how secure service how made it out of the box with all the different features until date it just keeps adding features to it and yeah it's been like four and a half years that I've been focused on solely on hrsd implementations I may have done like one or two itsm implementations here and there but mainly uh at Glide fast before Glide fast even prior to that uh all I've been like focus is on hrsd so my past couple of employers talked about being at a customer and using Legacy tools and then really saying hey I know that servicenow is going to be the way tell me more specifically however what is it about hrsd that attracted you again just the way uh it's structured in the back end and the stakeholders I think I really like working with HR stakeholders because they are easy going you know uh they're new so like you know you love to like deal with them they're always very warm uh whenever you work with them respectful uh so just like yeah it's a breeze like you don't feel like you're working on a project or their customers you know you can uh that's something definitely that I love about hrst but apart from that just the platform like how powerful the platform is right from like case and Knowledge Management employee Center all the different add-ons like employee document management and the Integrations that you can build uh to keep them current uh and this helps solve I think it's always given me pleasure to like help solve business problems trying to bring them from like manual processes and or to like Automation and just to break that taboo that you know HR cannot be automated or you know they they're not tech savvy or you know they can and work so really helping them and bring a smile to their to their faces at the end of it on how they feel accomplished that you know how they can do their jobs quicker now without having to worry and giving like flexibilities visibility to the employees as well so yeah I love what you said because when you can't share a tool and make the customer feel empowered by that that is priceless isn't it yup exactly Empire is the word that I missed thank you you didn't miss a thing you just inspired it in me I mean and I I met you through Glide fast and you know part of my attraction to Glide fast was this palpable enthusiasm and I think that you are such representative of that because when I hear you talk about hrsd it's like my eyes have seen the light for sure yeah if you were entering the servicenow ecosystem so we're going to kind of delve into this a little bit more because we have lots of folks that are entering the servicenow ecosystem part of the reason why I do these streams is because it was I've said this before and I'll say it again it was October 2022 well where servicenow CEO Bill McDermott made the ambitious announcement to scale up one million people in the ecosystem by the end of 2024 and it is my ambition to see these one million people gainfully employed in this ecosystem so there with the service now being so wide I had to ask you about why hrsd and I'm sure you know with your testimonial we're going to have a lot of people you know running to to get hrsd certified and looking to get hrsd projects but what I want to ask you is if you were entering the ecosystem today right now what would you be doing right now to skill up to land your first roll talk to us a little bit about that right so uh for any newcomer who's just entering the ecosystem I definitely recommend going through uh the service of fundamental course because for you to scale up uh in any of the non-it modules like hrsd CSM secops CRC itom you still need to have a good foundation of the platform you need to understand how the platform works all the different core components of the platform so you have to definitely slap there start as a system system administrator is the great way to get into the two and obviously if you have development skills if you know the coding languages then it'll be just quicker for you to sort of like transition into a developer row and as I said itsm is a great Gateway uh into servicenow because you can work on light things like catalog items service request incident sort of like and then from there you really need to like find your mojo like I found my mojo with hrsd but if you're good with like operations if you come from an operations background then Icom may be the way for you if you've come from like an Erp system or an Erp background then customer service management might be the way you want to pick up but yeah once you have sort of like some experience under your belt you know the system you have a good foundation then you can sort of like start thinking of pivoting into a specialization uh and just based on your interest and your expertise you can choose to proceed like you know you can always Shadow like we have that approximity here we have our own uh University uh we have a lot of grads uh that graduate every year from the University and then they always have the passion for a lot of the scope tab uh some of the specialized area right like we have a lot of grads who are interested in HR Service delivery so we in-house we definitely add them to our pod uh and then we make sure that we stop one uh at least one GCU grad on our hrsd project so they have like real uh experience so that's where they can you know Shadow our experience Theses on how things are done because things are done a little differently especially if you have done it on the itsm side the way we do the configuration is a little bit different but again if you know the platform it's easy for you to sort of like gain that skill set but then with a lot of like shadowing sessions and uh making them part of our team and also giving them some stories uh to work on really helps boost that uh confidence and then obviously once you have uh one or two uh projects under your belt and you can feel free to go ahead and take the certification as well because now with servicenow they're really pushing more on certifications and we have our own Glide fast plus where you can you know uh get your courses register for courses and get your certifications as well so that's a great Avenue for me yeah in an all in all I think resources have expanded or have come a long way since the time I started uh because I think it took me like two two and a half three years to get my sysadmin certification break because it was not that easy or accessible to get your cert like you had to really prove yourself to even being qualified uh to for your company for your employer to pay for your certification right but these days learning is definitely right at top and even service now has the fundamental cost available the self-service one available at free of cost because they wanna the one the point that you mentioned that they want to have one million people under the ecosystem so yeah uh there's a lot of access to resources these days that I wish I had when I did but yeah so I'm just gonna recap what you said so and I'm a big Note Taker and so the first thing you said was understand the platform that's the number one thing you said was to understand the platform and then you said you know going for the CSA you know certified system admin putting in the time the work to understand the platform in that way and then you said you want to start down you want to start getting understanding of itsm processes Within servicenow and then from there that is when you can start to specialize and say oh it's going to be CSM or it's going to be hrsd or secops or what have you then you you would move on from there then you said and when you land that first role you're looking to start doing some shadowing sessions so you can start to see you know this product this application Suite in action and then get the certification so I wanted to point that out because you were like yeah do some shadowing first and then get the certification certainly you can do one before the other but I like that you said that there's an opportunity to do both because that way you can get that real experience you know hands in the product getting the hands dirty and then getting the certification you know uh you know after that so so thank you for that but before we before we get out of here tell me a little bit about yourself you know we all have these LinkedIn profiles where I I know your credentials I've been stalking you a little bit I've been checking out your experience your your expertise but tell me something about you that's not on your LinkedIn profile so I think some something that's already on uh my LinkedIn profile is that you know like my career has been uh all in service now right right from like University I was fortunate enough to land a job uh within service now and I haven't looked back ever since and I don't intend to do so so in that term you can say it it's a it's an advantage or a disadvantage uh but I look at it for Advantage for now uh but apart from that um I am uh a sports Enthusiast as well uh I love a cricket as the sport uh sorry I didn't hear what you said I think uh I was supposed to enthusiasts and then Cricket is the sport that I follow uh the most I'm also uh very big on community uh Services just giving back so whenever I have my free time I offer my services uh to community be it by time or be it by you know money I always feel like especially the era that we just came out of from it I think uh we are blessed to have uh food on our table so I just tried to give it back to the community based on like whatever I can in the time that I have so I think that defines me uh as a person and I'm just like a people person right so wherever there's any networking events or like you know I always look for opportunity to meet new people grow my network because you get to learn so much when you meet people with different perspective uh different backgrounds things like that so yeah always learning from real life experiences testify to that because that's how you me you and I met you just said hey let's meet and I really appreciate it really appreciate you for doing that well listen servicenow architect at Glide fast Consulting hrsd Pro application Suite expert I want to thank you so much for joining me on the stream today um I will see you in the next one take good care yeah thank you it was a pleasure thank you indeed indeed whoa right didn't I tell you like there's something about Moe's energy that is just infectious and what's so cool about it is that it carries over into his work in a former life I was a yoga teacher and one of the things that I often told my students is that the way you do one thing is the way that you do everything or at least most things and with Muhammad you really can see how the way his disposition is how it translates into his work and his customers are really really fortunate to have him well listen this has been episode 25 of 100 days of service now I'm Kylie Alexander if you're joining me live this is Wednesday and on Friday we're going to be doing Day 26 we're going to be doing a kickback what I call a servicenow kickback with Rob fedoric I hope to see you there and until next time stay curious bye foreign [Music]