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] hello everybody it's Mark Kelly here Chief customer officer and co-founder of all this part of our oldest servicenow series I'm very very happy to welcome Canal Kapoor Canal is a global director of partnership sales and strategy at Microsoft thank you very much for joining us on the show tonight canal thank you Mark great to have be here girl I want to get a little bit of an overview about your background and then I'm going to ask you for some additional details so Canal is a winner of multiple prestigious Awards during his five years at Microsoft at class Global partnership director overseeing the global investment sales and partnership strategies for growth for two of the largest tech companies on our planet Microsoft and servicenow is also leading a global team of partner development managers steering and influencing millions in ecosystem revenues to Microsoft's fast growing servicenow business unit during his 18 years of experience of leadership in digital and Cloud transformation sales roles he's been driving strategy and execution spanning all aspects of business model and product development launch Marketing sales and partner development he owns an MBA for Columbia business school a masters in computer science from NY Tech and a bachelor's in computer engineering from Lego Pro University in India dedicated to giving back to our community Canal as a member of the board for leukemia and limbova society and in New Jersey's chapter and a board advisor for LLC a cyber security advisory firm in addition he dedicates his philanthropy in terms of time and fundraising to grow child bycry.org and Kyle thank you again for for joining us tell us a little about your role at Microsoft and what your role's responsibility uh encompass yeah absolutely thanks Mark again for the opportunity so my role today I'm overseeing the global partnership strategy and sales for servicenow in Microsoft business unit at Microsoft and also hyper Focus to make servicenow the dog um partner amongst the top three strategic Global ISP Partnerships at Microsoft so what it means is responsibility is to drive sales and top-line growth between the two businesses between servicenow and Microsoft and look at the partnership 360 holistically and how did you get first introduced to servicenow yeah and that's a funny story Mark um you know I knew servicenow back when there were 200 plus people company and I'm not going to date Myself by telling you the ear that it was but I was a Management Consultant at the time and my engagements were recommending itsm products as part of ID optimization engagements fast forward to early January 2022 I was offered an opportunity to help establish the service now business unit at Microsoft I was super excited and what helped me make the decision was that I had already seen from the sidelines the amazing impact service now has been driving with customers and while I regret not buying their stocks at the IPO time when I knew of them at a small company I was not going to make the same mistake again by missing this opportunity of working with them and rarely in our field of work you get a opportunity to to come at the foundation layer or the ground floor of the partnership and be able to run this like a startup from ground up to turn this single engine Cessna into a rocket ship where I feel we are today with the now partnership yeah when I when I think about the opportunity at that stage you know you you could be thinking uh what if but you are part of the journey now which which is great when we look at the some of the macro Trends driving digitalization and obviously companies are feeling some of the headwinds that were involved in at the moment what what are you noticing currently in your sector area specialization yeah when I look at it from the lens of the partnership I'll summon and keep it very short in three words and happy to double click into it if you'd like Mark the three words Azure open AI cyber security and process automation those are the three areas where we can peel layers after layers of growth and what is triggering the digital transformation with customers yeah and each of those three areas I think we could actually have a separate podcast on or multiple separate podcasts on them because they're such exciting times when we look at the servicenow platform why do you think it's the platform of choice in your sector and specialization yeah so so it's not as a cloud-based platform right it offers a wide range of solutions for managing ID HR customer service security and other business functions it also provides a centralized automated approach to managing workflows and processes enabling organizations to increase efficiency improve service quality and reduce costs now seriousness preferred in my opinion because of the flexibility and scalability more than anything else it can be customized to meet the specific needs of different Industries and different business types from small businesses to large Enterprises they also offer a wide range of Integrations selfishly with Microsoft solutions to business applications and platforms which further enhances the Versa versatility of the solution um another advantage of servicenow is the user-friendly interface and the intuitive design which makes it easy and very simple for users to navigate and utilize the platform right service now provides extensive support and resources for users including trading and you may have heard about the Riser program work uh that's their trade million users by 2024 essentially and as part of it they're building the strong Community which can help users quickly learn and master that platform so overall from my perspective there's no combination of flexibility scalability usability and support to make a popular choice for organizations enables it to streamline the business processes and therefore increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the platform for users and that makes it Top Choice for their for the listeners it feels like the last six months have just been like a juggernaut of all the new introductions of how technology is really acting as a labor for for Success so many possibilities as I mentioned before we could be speaking about is there a chatting between servicenow just a wealth of opportunities what in the business what's it what's exciting you most about the about that within the platform and your sector I mean as you said Mark there's been amazing amount of growth service now as a company itself is writing this uh platform of innovation right there I should say wave of innovation essentially and one of the key strands of service now is platform is the ability to streamline and automate workflows across different departments and functions within an organization that would include your ID service management your traditional ID service management product portfolio but also extends into HR Service delivery customer service management security operations and so much more so by providing the single system of record for all the processes servicenow can help organizations to break down silos and Achieve greater visibility and efficiency now combine that to Microsoft Azure capabilities you have an amazing solution between the two organizations thereby helping customers break down that cloud Silo as they're adapting that digital transformation and accelerate their Cloud adoption Journey combining the power of Microsoft and servicenow another exciting aspect of the servicenow platform is the ability to integrate with a wide range of third-party tools and systems so as an example we have an integration board servicenow with Dynamic CRM with power bi with teams so these Integrations make it easier for customers to adapt both sites between Microsoft and service now this makes it also possible to extend the capabilities of the platform and build custom solutions that meet specific business needs for our customers joint customers the platform also provides a wide range of tools and developers including a low code application development environment enables faster more Agile development of customer applications and workflows so there's a lot more to double click into it right in addition service now is commitment to Innovation and continuous Improvement as I was talking about they do these two family releases per year and several smaller releases throughout it helps customers constantly be adding new capabilities and receiving new capabilities abilities this includes the integration of emerging Technologies like AI talked a little bit about it earlier artificial intelligence and machine learning can help further automate and optimize these workflows improve the user experience for both employees and customers so overall servicenows platform is highly valued by organizations for the ability to drive that digital transformation improve operational efficiency and enhance the customer and employee experience if we delve into a little bit of detail where we've got examples that have you know run partnership from from a project perspective for people listening in can we could any come to mind how kind of have values being added the added that people can now feel like oh actually you know I didn't necessarily think a value like that could be added within the platform and Ms yeah I think one of the Marquee Solutions um is actually our team's virtual agent with service now and you know you have teams and you have servicenow interfaces now you provide the same functionality for a user within team's virtual agent so they are able to use the teams interface as a single system of record for requesting their uh approval tickets or their new devices or they needed to be onboarded and uh manager can put a request for onboarding that user so all that could be done within that single uh pin of glass making it easier for customers and users to not jump between different systems so that flexibility that we talked about Mark earlier right that comes into play again here right and it scales the ability for a user to not be able to managing two different interfaces but stay within that single interface have the functionality ER and the power of service now by using the regular teams uh interface that they're used to if we look at opportunities we're what's kind of coming down the track as well tell us about some of the key opportunities from Microsoft and the now partnership from the Global Systems integrators yeah I think the server is not Microsoft of partnership offers several benefits to our system integrators right we always talk about servicenow has a great partner ecosystem Microsoft has a huge partner ecosystem so bringing the two powerhouses together what is the benefit to the end system integrators that are part of this partner to partner Network between us right so therefore essentially in my view and I'll double click into each of them but the four are expanded customer base access to comprehensive setup tools reducing development time and cost and improving customer satisfaction so when you talk about expanding customer base with the partnership between Microsoft and servicenow it brings system integrators an opportunity to offer the services to a broader customer base that use both servicenow and Microsoft Technologies this can help them Reach more customers and grow their businesses in new markets that where we are going and taking our off joint offerings too right so the second one is access to a comprehensive set of tools the partnership offers system integrators tools that they can use to develop and Implement solutions for their customers this includes servicenows platform for Microsoft Azure as well as Integrations between the two platforms the third one Mark is reduce development diamond cost leveraging pre-built Integrations and solutions that combine servicenow in Microsoft Technologies system integrators can now deliver solutions to customers more quickly at a lower cost right truly what we call these days do more with less so that is what it is improved customer satisfaction is the fourth one in my opinion so leveraging capabilities of the platform and Technologies between the two companies system integrators can take that help and provide customers and improved operation and workflow leading to increased efficiency productivity and customer satisfaction so overall the servicenow and Microsoft partnership can provide system integrators with the access to powerful set of tools technologies that can help the business grow and deliver value to their customers I'm slightly moving on to a different subject but I think it's just as important key advice for building and maintaining a winning servicenow team and it may be any success stories or challenges that come to mind yeah I think um so as I was saying earlier I started this journey last year early last year of a service now and we've been on this rocket ship for the last one plus year now so the one key advice or a couple key advices I would say is be ready for continuous change and the ability to drive transformation at warp speed in order to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation which is being driven between both companies which is where the power of azure and service now comes together so combining the power of azure open AI as an example with servicenows robust workflow automation capabilities we are planning to take organizations to new level of efficiencies we will run the now platform on the secure reliable compliant Azure cloud and that's the Catalyst for accelerating Innovation worldwide so as you're thinking about how do you take advantage of working with servicenow in Microsoft be ready for that matching that pace and bringing your very best to drive and write on this layer in wave of innovation what's next for the platform uh as a loaded question so there's a lot more opportunity and upside coming up as we gear up for having now platform running on Azure and U.S commercial and US gov markets we recently made those announcements publicly it also enables us for faster integration and adaption of azure open AI capabilities as you have may as you may have heard all the buzzword around chat gbd 3.5 for right so there's a lot more coming from an AI machine and learning aspect to this partnership now I will not be able to reveal much more just yet because I want to keep something in reserve so you can call me back for the next podcast to mark you've been listening to see all this podcast part of our servicenow series I've had the pleasure to be speaking to Canal Kapoor Canal is global director of Partnerships and sales and strategy at Microsoft Canal thank you very much for your time today thank you Mark I appreciate it [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 podcast 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]