the Aldis podcast is brought to you by Aldis International supplying your expert Ai and digital transformation staffing needs across the US and Europe today you are listening to our service now Series where we interview the best and brightest of the industry to share their story advice and views on the exciting world of service now and digital transformation [Music] hello everybody it is Mark Kelly I hope you're doing really really well wherever you are as part of our all this service now series we are talking still in the world of federal and I'm very very happy to welcome David hegerty David is director of impact delivery federal health care and finance David thank you very much for joining us on the show today thanks Mark so much for having me David let's jump into your journey to getting into the world of service now before we kind of talk a little bit more about your day-to-day role sure yeah so I was an accountant for 17 years I got into the world of service now through asset management and it quickly turned into from Asset Management to overseeing a service now platform for one of the states here in the United States um and I oversaw the platform for roughly two years during our uh even during coid times and uh was able to learn and scale the platform a great deal before joining Serv now about three years ago fantastic and your current role day to-day what does that involve so I oversee our impact product delivery so on the back end um with our federal Healthcare and finance customers making sure that they're using the platform to the best of their abilities for what they own and are licensed for but also understanding how they can do capabilities governance Road mapping strategy platform Health uh supporting understanding the best practices for upgrades accelerators in terms of leveraging virtual agents leveraging the ability to scale their Discovery abilities they're using iton for example so let's say some customers within the government for example or one of the different departments are utilizing service now are you helping them kind of make the most of of their purchase to ensure that people who are users kind of get the maximum from that yeah our our whole focus is value so we want to make sure that what the customer has purchased they're leveraging it do they know the best practices are they set up for Success do they have a team set up do they understand where and how the the the system can be configured versus customized versus how they may used to do it in a prior system a lot of organizations are seeing the out of the boox capabilities is the reasons they bought service now that was a value differentiator for them so we want to help them continue that path help them understand what they can use and leverage but also at the same time know what's coming next so we just recently released Vancouver about two weeks ago that released before a Washington DC release coming here in the spring 24 you want to make sure customers understand that they're seeing what's coming next help them save those development Cycles because they may try to be developing something that's coming in the future that they're already entitled to we want to work with them and help them understand that and a lot of the times uh in federal government state local government Global government a lot of the times it's just getting out of our own way I experienc this as a platform owner so those challenges still exist and how bureaucratic some things and at times are but how do we simplify that process ultimately get to what are the key outcomes what are those key metrics we're trying to measure our success by and then where are we trying to grow within the platform how are we trying to automate how are we trying to engineer things so they're so much simpler yeah because when you start to unravel the opportunities of leiting and utilizing the platform you might come with your own kind of perspectives about how to how to do that however the reality is is you don't want to reinvent the wheel you want to kind of look at best practice practices and probably learn from other people's experiences so you can start maximizing but then most importantly the organization can start to maximize it because you're doing this at scale it's not like just a couple of a couple of users you're you're going at a very very big uh scale there for sure in a lot of organizations uh they historically always stared with service now in just the it realm and now they're starting to see this in so many other areas as an Enterprise platform we're not trying to replace workday we're not trying to replace sap well let's combine and centralize that information into one space and when we do that in our government spaces it's really opened things up where now we're talking to the HR teams the finance teams the security teams all collectively together and getting them together to have what's our vision as an organization as an agency how do we want to have our Enterprise leveraging how do we want to onboard somebody so they have the best experience possible before they even come in to work for us but then that they have everything day one they can hit the ground running but when something happens they know where to go hey I can use employee Center I can use that to kind of do my break fix for an incident I can do it to order something I can use it as my central hub for I have questions about the agency and organization and then it gives everybody across the organization this clear picture a lot of challenges we've seen is data Integrity in this space is a is a major one but we're coming from Worlds of excels and SharePoint sites and internal knowledge and we're starting to leverage the platform now and that's really expanding our capabilities within the agencies to go wait a second I can simplify a whole lot more than I even thought of when I originally brought service now so let's look at some of the challenges you know people kind of find find with it because like everything life happens and you get pulled from Pillar To Post and and it's hard to kind of find the time to really invest in in certain things because you know life is a moving platform tell us a little bit about some of the common challenges that you experience and how do you kind of go about working with those leaders to systematically go on a journey with them and and I appreciate everyone is going to be different but if there's some common Trends yeah for sure um some some bigger common Trends are analysis paralysis I want it to be perfect I need to launch I can't do versioning people forget that there's versions in everything you see that with our iPhones and we get a new software update every Tuesday the same thing happens with service now where what is our plan when we do an sdlc what is that going to look like for us moving forward another common one is I just want to keep it for just my part of the organization because then I have quote unquote control of missing the bigger picture because a lot of organizations are now finally multiple years into this saying wait a second I can really impact everybody to help everybody through this Common Thread and also a lot of organizations when they look at these Cycles they always want to say who's doing this better who's doing this the best and you always want to have kind of those benchmarks which are good in some ways but you can't let you stop you from innovating it can't let you hold it you know behind yourself you need to do what's best for your organization your agency it's okay to say I'm going to take this thing systematically because that's all I have time for I may have a smaller development team I may have multiple partners in here working through different uh platform modules and applications being built simultaneously there's a lot going on we could have turnover at the top of an organization I went through that I had multiple cios in a short period so you're constantly trying to say what are my metrics what am I measuring who am I measuring this for so what the impact teams really come in and help do is Baseline with them what did we Chang in terms of give me your top four or five outcomes what are the objectives of these outcomes and then how do we actually put metrics to measure this and then how do we tie the platform into what you own today where are you trying to go potentially in the future so that you Baseline and you're building appropriately no one likes to build Legos and just throws them on the floor and say let me put the pieces together we' like to try to follow like the pages and or a plan I love that where you're you're building for now but also you're building for the future so what type of challenges do G you think we're going to have as we scale or grow or what's coming down the track that we're not necessarily seeing now people listening in or thinking you know I just want to get to cover what we need to cover for for these challenges but then you need to have that strategic head out yeah so that's where we we have different pillars like a team that I support you know we've got a success architect helping you with that vision and value governance Road mapping a platform architect who's doing a deep dive into your platform Health what's going on in the system what how are you configuring things what does your Tech debt look like how are we thinking about Integrations you have a support account manager who's coming in and making sure we're doing upgrades what's our data stack look like how much data is being processed through the environment and then there's also the ability for the customer success manager putting it all together hey I know you need help in itam when we need to do somebody to bring in let me bring in an expert from the product team to help you over the shoulder do this we're an advisory organization with an impact so we're not the hands- on keys but when we do these advisory sessions we work with Partners we work with agencies work with individuals but it's also there's a training component too how do we help them see where they're at today and what do they want to do showing people a training path had been a huge Advantage for organizations who've really taken advantage it something I used to do as a platform owner as well was really harp on training was really critical and it's not just one time it's a continuous thing we see that in the world we live in today AI is coming AI doesn't stop learning we as people can't stop learning either and it's really important with two versions coming out every year how do we keep up on the and greatest but what can I consume of that I can't consume every single change that comes out in release but what's going to really impact my organization that's what we help agencies understand yeah because you don't want to be working on something that even if you do it well it has very little impact because that's a fast way to get very low morality better off what not trying to solve that problem whatsoever so organizations need to look at what are the dials that need to be moved that's actually going to positively impact performance and figuring that out and defining that problem is very very important and those those challenges change all the time so it's important just to make sure that you are set in terms of those key deliverables that are going to impact the business the best best possible way any particular return on investment or projects come to mind that you know kind of fills you with energy thinking you know that that really had good impact yeah for sure so I worked with one agency in the healthcare space and they were really having a struggle with their software Asset Management licenses so he said let's do a pilot and we talked and talked and talked for probably about four months and then we got Buy in from the executives okay we're going to do this here's the team you're going to work with here's our partner we're going to work with and we sat down in 135 day cycle we were able to reclaim almost $19 million in software licenses and we we showed that to the executive think go this is why service now is here this is the return on investment I'm expecting and then not only blew them away in terms of what they called ease now the people on the back end a little different view from the complexity in terms of hey we have to get all these people to walk and talk together but when we were on that same page this thing flew and so quickly so you think about that in less than half a year you say almost over $18 million of your spend and then when you go through an audit you're like yeah here you go and they just handed it over and the organization they handed it to was blown away they're like oh you've never come like this before we were not prepared for you to kind of give us this information up front so it was that one to me is a huge Roi we came in we were able to partner and help out we brought in resources we supported them through this we said hold on what you're thinking about it may be a short-term fix but longterm you're going have this big tech tech debt with this let's not go that route let's Baseline this appropriately let's build it appropriately and then we can scale it yeah for any that's kind of conf from that technical debt maintenance of technical debt is so so challenging and I remember recently reading an article about 47% of applications in financial space are done by kobal can you believe that Koba and the challenges with that is they're highly susceptible to you know cyber attacks and you know also that population is is aging out so you know it it it becomes a very very challenging area you do not want to get into that technical discussion or and then trying to work around that so building at that Baseline and being very very conscious and purposeful about bringing that into play Vancouver has come I had the pleasure of speaking about VCT Victor Chan which will be sharing his episode in the in the coming weeks and Victor was working in some of the really exciting areas generative Ai and he been kind of talk me through some of the things that are happening in Vancouver such as the the ability for now assist and customization and summarization for people to use which is really really amazing how do you kind of help people kind of not get overwhelmed but tell them you know this is what's coming down the track as well and kind of get ready for it yeah for sure um when I think generative AI so in our space because of fed ramps and atos we can't use this right away like we can in our commercial space so we have to wait we have to wait for our normal guidelines and practices and that's going to be more of a a q324 q424 kind of release for our public sector and government customers and the government Cloud but when I think about that customers and agencies need to understand generative AI is not here to replace everybody generative AI here is to help augment our developers augment our admin so they go faster so they spend more time on those bigger build and allow the platform to workflow I did a test pilot uh last week in office just kind of walking through of hey can you please create this workflow and here's the three subcategories that need to be created for this incident and here's where they need to be routed to and it was in seconds here's my workflow in front of me and I could dot walk through the platform and see it and you know either make an adjustment or Andor like yeah this is accurate here's how I go to me that augmentation of a developer if you're in a small group not every single public organization has 50 developers or 20 developers like we do sometimes in our commercial space I know I ran a team of between five and eight people at a time that's a small group and you're trying to get a lot done this is an augmentation but that next gen is so critical to that user experience too for the people who are consuming it our citizens around the world people within the organizations trying to leverage it when you think about that AI being built in of how we do search results or how we use Virtual agent we want those great experiences and mat just going to be a huge augmentation for us in the future so when we think about these things how are we building them today or how would we if we're just getting into service now how do I want to think about this where do I want to layer in my best foundation and so when this is available to me how do I hit the ground running and take advantage of it how do I get trained on it how do I understand there's so much training that's coming for this next geni and we're super excited about it here especially in the public sector yeah and you you're asking leaders in that area you say okay what's my digital transformation strategy what what are we looking to try to achieve and I think everyone everyone understands this this is the kind of Baseline we need to work through but then that next question is is how am I utilizing the AI how am I utilizing generative AI to be more successful to be more efficient to give a better customer experience and people need to get on the page of that and actually introduce this across the organization because as you said there's the augmentation and and and sometimes there's the narrative about Job losses and things like this the reality is is a lot of the times that there isn't the people to do the jobs so it's not like necessarily like you're losing jobs there isn't the the people to be actually there ready accessible trained up to do the role so you need to have that human in the loop and working with that technology to give a really really good experience for our customers it's a huge time to Value when we think about that those are those backlogs that have been sitting there for two months because we don't have enough Hands-On resources to do something or it's the I the requirements keep shifting and changing and trying to get everybody together you can use the AI to take in those new inputs and here's what it's going to look like and it just speeds things up it gets rid of that analysis paralysis I talked about earlier where we get out of our own way now that it's here do we want to deploy this at what level do we want to deploy is it a small pilot is it a major go live where does this things fit and sit but I also think about how do I get prepared for this how am I if I'm running an organization how am I going to take advantage of I know I own it I know it's coming I've got time to train I got time to level set what's most important to me is it remove the tech debt that's in my environments today is it expand my relationships across the sea Suite to say hey did you know that we have all this at our fingertips and we can leverage it or is it the ability to sit down and look at my agency and go how can I retrain some of these resources who may say hey old technology you talk about Cobalt it's going away it's you know been a challenge those things are moving and they're more Legacy how do I take those resources and train them here and leverage that ability impact helps out with that where we come up with like training plans by Agency for your organization hey here's a standard but what do you have let's come in and talk to you hey you got 200 people potentially available for this where do you want to deploy them are they citizen developers developing apps to help the citizens are they going to actually work on the platform on the back end are they going to be more of a user experience type of individual so there's so many options that we're helping organizations and agencies with and I look at this that I'm doing across the finance space especially because I'm looking at my calendar today and it's just boom boom boom boom boom of meeting with Executives and cios and team leaders to go through what's next now Vancouver's done how can I Leverage What I have now such an exciting time such an exciting time David I cannot wait to see what's coming down the track for Washington and early 2024 but you know the case studies are coming true now which is so good we can see the return on investment and the great thing is for any of those leaders they can look around and say okay what's happening inspire me take me on the journey you know so you'll come and you'll see how different people are utilizing it I also think too is people don't talk enough to each other you're not the first ones to go through this I know when I was a platform owner I said said I want all the states to talk to each other let's all share information of someh some form so those user groups are really powerful and I'm trying to do that in our federal Healthcare and finance Bas having groups talk to each other and it's not just Healthcare and Healthcare it's Healthcare and finance and then when they want to appear I'm reaching out to my commercial partners and my teams to say hey who can this person talk to similar size similar scale similar what they're trying to do because those relationships I think really drive people to innovate on the platform so much because you can see and hear oh this wasn't this huge thing or this was a huge thing but you plan for it so therefore it went really really well in that deployment where someone may have been struggling with something or just a thought of what can I do here here's my thoughts is it okay sometimes you want to have that talk with service now which is great that's why we're here but also on the other end who's my peers I can talk to who are living it as well so I can have that organization and have that support David hegy director of impact delivery Federal Healthcare and finance thank you very much for joining us on the show today thank you so much Mark for having me I'm thrilled to be here [Music] here thanks for listening to this episode of the AL this podcast if you enjoyed today's episode don't forget to 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