foreign the oldest podcast is brought to you by all this International supplying your expert Ai and digital transformation staffing needs across the U.S and Europe today you are listening to our servicenow Series where we interview the best and brightest of the industry to share their story advice and views on the exciting world of servicenow and digital transformation [Music] hi everybody it's Mark Kelly here we've got John Barber John is running his own consultancy firm and he's helping companies small and big maximize the value of service now John thank you very much for for being on the podcast today it's a pleasure to be here mark thank you for having me so John you've been into world of service now uh for a while now so so you've actually worked in the company in the past and you've actually had a good very good understanding of the platform and some of the pitfalls that people can can fall down and if they're not actually given the right advice and how to maximize the platform can you tell us a little bit of an overview about your work as an architect and kind of the blueprint that you work with to help customers right and yeah so um I'm kind of in a unique situation where uh I worked Frontline I.T service management um I was there for the first implementation of uh at Expedia uh and then from there I went to servicenow and helped them uh with their problem management and get getting that program off the ground and some of that from there I saw the need in the industry to uh to have smaller medium-sized companies uh have the same sort of Enterprise um service improvement service design service transition work and so I branched out on my own and took it from there and uh found a lot of success in helping those companies now seeing that I still get approached by several enterprise-sized companies and I do take the honest clients and help them as well everyone needs this level of help in in rethinking about how they approach process and then how servicenow helps enable that process instead of uh the idea of servicenow being the One-Stop everything process and tooling can you tell us a little bit about the desire to go out on your own was it something that you'd you know it's always good to share with listeners can you tell us a little bit more about what kind of motivates you to go on that Journey yeah I am I I really had the desire to help I really am an enemy of waste I don't like uh waste and my wife runs this really small company and uh I would have several friends in the industry that were you know more medium-sized businesses and they would just tell me about the struggles that they were encountering uh trying to just operate and you know they couldn't hire more staff they couldn't um do anything more but the the demands on their operations teams were just getting out of control so that really sparked me to want to go and help them and remove some of that copy and paste waste that uh they're in and help them you know really think about their processes and what they really needed at a minimum viable product level and then bring that um into a real operational process so that they could get the most out of their time and productivity and we talk about kind of small and medium-sized companies that are kind of suffering from lack of service design what what are you kind of seeing why does this happen I'm sure people when people wake up in the morning they don't actually go to work to wanna you know not to do things well or effectively what are some of the reasons do you see I think the main reason that I see when I'm out there is um people just get themselves into a rut where they're just in constant firefighting mode and they put out the fire and then they go and try to get their productivity done and the next fire happens and they just do it so they're encountering the same problems over and over again and you know they're not taking the time to stop and think okay how can I prevent this from happening again you know in the classic problem management respect so there's that and then people just get used to how they're doing things um and you know we've always done this done it this way is the the the the words I hate the most right um because that just it usually doesn't scale you know you're just handling everything over email and that sort of stuff and you just get used to it and that just becomes your norm and you need someone to come in and kind of uh shake you out of your apathy right yeah which clients would you say are the best fifths for you um you know I really I really uh cater to all levels um I I have more interest in the the real medium-sized companies you know they're big enough to invest in service now but they're not you know the Enterprise level where they're going to get every Bell and whistle so they need to get the most out of uh their instance that they can right um and I'm not exclusive to servicenow I just happen to know it so well that that happens to be always my clients but um but that sort of medium moving towards Enterprise wanting to scale towards Enterprises where it can be the most effective because I can help them avoid the pitfalls that a lot of companies fall into um just trying to open this box and uh and have it work with them right out the bat without thinking about their process and that sort of stuff so you're kind of a bit of a part detective kind of part and obvious very much so yes uh so where I found a unique mid um uh Niche for myself is um I can go in and I can speak to every level of sponsor stakeholder developer use their operations team and I can help them explain from their perspective with a lot of empathy empathy for their roles um why this process change is going to be important and how servicenow is going to help them be more efficient and effective at executing that process than than they ever have in the past or maybe they've never used that process before and they don't really understand it but um I can help in that transition and adoption and speaking to all levels so people understand the real business value they're going to get by not only utilizing this tool but rethinking about their processes and the outcomes that they want to get using that tool right because service now is just a means to an end it's not the end in itself and a lot of people don't think about that end when they're getting serviced now they just know they need it service management or case management that sort of stuff they don't really think about what they're trying to achieve and if and the best way to do it for them and that's where I help so being able to build relationships and really understand that and customer is important so you're not as guessing just relying email as a communication tool right uh yeah I hate email uh I do my best to get my clients Audi email uh Letty himself when he made service now he just he had a big disdain for email it's in it's ineffective you can't report on it you can't do any trend on it you can't see which customers are bothering you the most uh where you're having the most issues and that sort of stuff and that's the whole purpose of servicenow right so um going back to that topic of this is the way we've always done it people are just very comfortable with email and that's what they know that's what they're familiar with that's what they're comfortable with but it comes with a lot of negatives and helping people to understand that and then use dashboards or agent workspace or all these fantastic tools and service now to really um remove themselves from the unproductive context switching world of email and help them really focus on their work and get the most out of their time in their day can really save companies huge amounts of dollars and just lost productivity in that context switching and help them get more productivity with the staff doing more interesting things uh that really engages them uh than they've ever seen before so they don't have to necessarily hire that extra staff to handle the the load as they scale they can just simply get it out of productivity and that's the that's the big goal right why why are people slow to move away from me but you know kind of mentioned you know the benefits having really effective dashboards as an example but you know people do love email it seems more and more people are kind of avoiding phone calls meeting in person uh engaging you know I recently went to Starbucks and a person who's walked in used their app walk back over pick up their coffee rather than just just walk up to the cashier I I just I just couldn't get my head around why they did that but but you know there's a section in Starbucks for doing that in the section of Starbucks for for welcome engaging I thought it'd be quicker just to go up and collect the coffee but but again that's that's me and what are you this party could be a separate podcast by itself the world of coffee well part of it might be people haven't had their coffee yet before and they don't really want to engage with people until they've had their coffee on that note but um you know uh to some extent is is maybe is they just uh they feel so overwhelmed so overloaded that that just seems the faster method right um I can just ping them in email and and the problem's done right I I don't have to engage with them uh and I can move on to the 50 other things that are on my backlog uh to get done um so I think maybe people probably get themselves into this uh anxiety of all the work that they have behind them and they don't stop to really have that engagement with people which is so critical to the success of business right I mean we're people doing business with people and um and you don't have that and that's where dashboards and in things like agent workspace can really pay off because um that work queue is right there it's very focused on my work and it's prioritized and if I can figure those dashboards well so that they are very specific to what I need to get done uh or the decisions I need to make for the business then I can remove some of that anxiety that is the 100 emails that I haven't read yet I'm very focused on what needs to happen now in a very prioritized way that is very focused on the needs of the business and my clients and customers so I think it is very important to manage expectations with customers knowing that when they do opt in for service now it's not as straightforward as just you know opening up the box and you you're you just jump in and kind of crack on across the organization you do need proper advice and implementation tips and tricks along the way from a trusted advisor to really make sure that you don't fall down the rabbit holes that can just make the journey not as pleasant as it could be right right and you know a big part of that too is is reevaluating your process you're buying this great new tool um the way you have operated up to this point may not work so well in servicenow right uh and trying to make service now do the way you've always worked may actually be shooting yourself in the food foot um to to get what you really want so at Big times have changed like that or even realizing that maybe you configured servicenow poorly when you first started and now it's not giving you what you wanted and your users are saying service Now sucks and stuff like that servicenow never sucks servicenow is a fantastic tool it's how you get configured right so you really need a process expert someone who's been on that front line who's been the incident manager who's been the problem manager the change manager and then evolve into improving those processes like I have to help you either get on on the right foot and get that business value out of service now right out the door if it's a fresh implementation or to reevaluate your processes bringing it closer to out of the box to make your upgrades to new versions simple and more effective with a lot less testing um by helping you understand where you fell into those pitfalls and help you figure a way to to pull that out I like to think of myself as a ladder to get you out of the hole on some of those more uh where I'm trying to help my clients mature their processes and improve their servicenow experience and so we understand the importance of getting customizations right and following it following a process and just not trying to you know rethink the wheel and how we approach things governance is a word that we're hearing more and more and managing these different aspects of that has become very very important how effective can a good dashboard be for organizations to drive through certain deliverables uh it's critical uh I think the key word there though is good dashboard right I can't tell you how many awful dashboards I've seen that tell nobody anything because uh the way the widgets weren't well thought out it's just like a list of raw data or um it's not really focused on any sort of story what's this widget trying to tell me or I've seen dashboards that have a hundred different widgets on it on one tab you know and people don't realize that those widgets actually take um process their power in the background and they can quickly uh affect the performance of your instance if you've got 100 people using a dashboard that has 100 widgets on it uh it can really wreck your system performance so I don't think a lot of people realize that but the main point uh that people need to understand who are listening to this podcast is you want to keep the dashboard simple and for the most part other than I would say agent workspace where you're trying to manage a work queue in a prioritized way you really want to ask yourself what are the decisions I need to make with this dashboard um on the Innovation Lab at the last knowledge I went to last year uh there was a really great dashboard that they brought out that the CIO of servicenow himself wanted called the CIO dashboard so it's in the Innovation lab and that's a really good foundational thing that shows what I'm talking about that I really liked is the dashboard to help you make a decision and the widgets actually are labeled with the decision I'm making with this data are we doing better this month than we were last month at um getting an agent assigned within two hours that sort of stuff um taking the time to really think okay what am I trying to govern here and let's build the simplest dashboard we can that tells us that information with as few widgets as possible yeah it's it's crucial because before you embark on servicenow you've done things in a certain way and you've used you know maybe a different platform maybe you haven't had a platform and the chance that is blind spots and then the first thing you think about is what we've done it this way so let's carry on and let's add all these different aspects but maybe those things weren't serving you and chances are they probably weren't serving you so it's a really great opportunity to do a recess and actually think okay what's what's the most important thing what do we really need what's important in our business let's get some perspective on this from people who've been in the field and get some other thoughts and let's stand on the shoulders the Giants here rather than try to reinvent revent the wheel and get it right and it's funny even on my my smart watch I love playing right around with the dashboards on this which is which is the what watch basis because it's telling me different things different insights and I was thinking actually yeah that's more important this isn't important and there's three icons here that I never pay attention to so why do I even have them exactly on the real estate right and so it's kind of bringing that back to those decision makers because everybody is you know it's got less time than than ever everybody we're easily distracted so many different things happening at any one time so we just need to keep that simple world but I love to hear where you're working with stakeholders and you say okay this is what we're driving this is what we're delivering and then you're looking at that dashboard and you're saying actually can that clearly articulate to our stakeholders what what our vision is how we're doing on that vision and this is what we've done because now more than ever what have you done me lately it's becoming the key question right yeah so how do I improve with data that that uh I've provided that a return on the investment that you gave us to build out servicenow or change that uh problem management process absolutely but also as a as a good point to say okay this is where we're at from a status update perspective these are our kind of key goals are these still important to you you know keep keep reminding people right AC important because if they're not let's let's change it because we are we're all we're all part of the same team here and this is a clear golden thread because we know when things start to go away is because mismanaged expectations uh clearly your ill-defined objectives or goals and the business is moving so fast because we're dealing with so many different types of headlines this has changed their their goals every year it's not faster right and you've got bonus goals I mean how great is it for employees to know uh mid-year how well they're tracking towards their their goals and maybe they need to reevaluate what they're doing so that they can achieve those goals for the business because it's all about business value right yeah until we're kind of closing up uh what what kind of summary would you provide to to listeners you want to kind of take action um really understand what outcomes you're trying to achieve before you jump in right um get those experts in there and really have them help you ask the questions you might not know you need to ask for yourselves uh what am I trying to achieve here have I thought about this um another big key element is you really want people who can come in who can uh bring that user empathy back right we're so stuck in our jobs we're so in the weeds with our development our operations that sort of stuff even as stakeholders and running the business or sponsors and finding the funding and making sure budgets are well spent that we stop we we I always find that people forget that there's users using these forms the service catalog these incidents that sort of stuff and they have jobs they're busy too and you don't want to affect their productivity by asking them a bunch of questions that they don't need to answer or giving them a dashboard with a bunch of data that isn't really relevant to what they do you know you've really got to Target to the user and have empathy for the user and and enable them to be the most productive best uh employees clients what have you that they can be thank you very much for your time John barper you've been listening to the oldest servicenow podcast series and I've been speaking to John Barber and John is working for Streamliner if you're interested to find out a little bit more about John there'll be more details on our show notes John thanks again for your time it's been a pleasure great conversation thank you [Music] thanks for listening to this episode of the oldest podcast if you enjoyed today's episode don't forget to subscribe rate and review we are available on Apple podcasts Spotify and any Android podcast of choice you can also head over to our website www.aldis.com to listen to more podcasts view our open roles and stay up to date with industry news thanks for listening and stay tuned for more great episodes coming very soon foreign [Music]