Hello, and welcome to the Cask Distillery Podcast 
once again, where we unlock the full potential of   ServiceNow with expert insights and practical 
strategies, only here on the Cask Distillery   Podcast. I’m your host, Sean Dawson, client architect here at Cask. And with me I have Derek   Nohr, who I want to run and do a quick intro, 
and then we’ll get into our talk. But Derek   has been working in technology for over 23 years, 
basically at two large companies—30,000-employee   companies—to start his career and in the space of 
defense and aerospace industry and in healthcare.   And he has now joined Avalara, a financial 
technology company, as the director of ServiceNow.  First of all, thanks, Derek, for jumping on 
the podcast. I know we talked previously.   It’s been a pleasure getting to know you. 
And thanks for taking the time to come on   the podcast. And we really appreciate it.
Sean. Great. Thanks for the invite. Love   it. I love to talk about one of 
my favorite subjects: ServiceNow.  Yeah, you are passionate. I love talking 
to you, and I’ve loved getting to know you,   but I was hoping for—first of all, let me 
frame—you know, what we’re going to be talking   about is just the day in the life of a customer, 
what Derek’s running through, what he’s seen on   the platform. And we thought it would be a good 
story. Because, in talking to him, we’re like,   “This is really valuable to our listeners and 
watchers of the Distillery.” So I thought it might   be good to kind of go through your company, the 
background, and what’s going on there real quick.  Sure. Absolutely. Avalara is the biggest company 
you’ve probably never heard of. It is a financial   technology company that automates tax compliance. 
So we sit behind really big integrations like   Oracle’s NetSuite. And we also provide end-user 
tax compliance. So we have about 30,000 customers   across the globe. So, we do tax compliance 
for just not in the United States. We have,   like, we work with the big brands like Zillow, 
Converse, and even Netflix. So, things that you   probably use. And we are integrated with a bunch 
of partners. So, Stripe is one of them. So, if you   go out to eat and you see a Stripe point-of-sale 
machine, you just used an Avalara product.  So, it is pretty awesome. We have 5,000 employees 
across the globe. So, it’s a pretty small shop,   and it’s just a fantastic company to work 
for, and I’m really grateful that I get   to implement ServiceNow here at Avalara.
Yeah. Awesome. And I know we—Cask has had   the pleasure of working with you and the team 
there. And I thought what would be good to know,   as well for the audienc, is what in the 
platform are you using right now today?  Yeah, sure. We’re about only 18 months into our 
ServiceNow journey, Sean. And we started with Safe   Workplace and ITSM. So those are the first—our 
entry into that. And right now, we have HRSD,   SecOps. We had about half of the IRM, and we’re 
using Employee Center. And Sean, I’m going to   read your mind to see, like, what’s next. And, 
well, I got a couple of big things coming. So,   we’re getting after software asset management in 
the ITM space, and we’re going to be upgrading   our safe workplace module to the full workplace 
service delivery, which is, I’m really excited.  And I’m sure you’ve heard that I’m 
partnering with you guys, Cask,   to make that happen. So those are, like, the 
immediate things that are happening at Avalara.  Yep. Okay. And so you’ve obviously—you’ve 
expanded far beyond the foundation. Everybody   knows ServiceNow for ITSM. Can you give us an 
overview of that journey? And we already talked   about the products you’re in, but how did that 
come about? I mean, most people get on ITSM and,   quite honestly, sometimes people would just 
stay there, be happy and content. What made   you look at the full possibility in the scope 
of ServiceNow? What was that journey like?  Well, I mean, ServiceNow is a business platform, 
which, and it automates a bunch of business   processes. And if you’re just going to have one 
Lego brick, like ITSM, there’s not a whole lot of   things you can do with it. Yeah, you can optimize 
your IT—like help desk and things like that—but   when you’re talking about full automation 
crossing over businesses, business silos,   departments, organizational structures, 
like, ServiceNow is that sort of platform.  So, I mentioned Lego. ServiceNow is like 
Lego to me. The more bricks you have,   the cooler solutions that you can make. And we at 
Avalara are getting all the Legos. We are going to   use all of ServiceNow, with the exception of 
project management and DevOps. We have other   tools for that, but everything else is fair game.
So that’s how we kind of came around to what we’re   going to be doing with this amazing platform.
Yup. And I like how—you know, I imagine what   you’re looking at is the business services, 
not the technicality of it, that we can bring   in a ticket and make it more efficient. But 
you’re looking at the big picture of that.  So, when you were doing that, you know, 
how did you go about defining and sharing   the vision inside of that? Was it a challenge? 
Was it—what were you doing practically? Because   we’ve honestly talked about that in the podcast 
previously. It was actually one of our first,   where we’re talking about sharing a compelling 
vision with ServiceNow. But what was it you—what   did you see? How did you accomplish it?
Oh, sure. I mean, it’s—the vision is really   simple. Like, we want to be able to make things 
easy for people to request services. Okay? Like,   we want to go to one place. I want to, you know, 
log my HR ticket, request a leave of absence,   check my payroll. I want to correct. I need 
something. I need to request a new mouse.  All that kind of stuff should not be in fragmented 
systems. That’s a very compelling sort of end game   so that I can go one place and get all my needs 
taken care of. So, from that sort of perspective,   it was a really easy picture to paint from, 
like, an executive leadership to do buy-in   and things like that, because we can create 
that one point of entry, that one-start-shop   sort of thing with Employee Center Pro.
And then also—so, customer experience is   number one. Providing internal customers—you 
know, Avalarians—a good customer service that   we provide our external customers, but the other 
one is automation, you know. So, I mean, it does   route work to the right people at the right time 
and make sure that work is being done and tracked   by SLAS and all that kind of stuff. So, we want to 
use ServiceNow as an automation platform as well   to get things out of email, Post-it notes, phone 
calls, that sort of thing, into a very structured   way. So, those two tenants made the vision 
for adoption of—full adoption of—ServiceNow   very compelling. And I was able to successfully 
paint that picture. So I got by him. I love it.  That’s awesome. And so what did you do? Did you 
just schedule? And I know I’m asking because what   I think people do is they get wrapped in their 
own world. Like, how does it, like, they really   need the step by step. Walk me through. Did you 
just announce it? Or did you have relationships   with these people and you got the stakeholders in? 
And what did you find that worked and didn’t work?  Sure. I mean, I want to—I talk to people all the 
time, okay? So it’s just all about relationships,   okay? I’m out advocating for the 
platform, advocating for my team,   and talking to everyone about what we call the art 
of the possible, you know, like, what we can do   here and what sort of tools can we bring to you 
to make your job better, right? And approaching   it is to—I have options for you so that you can 
do more. You can keep your head count flat and   accomplish more. You can automate some of the easy 
stuff all the way and focus on the hard things.  Like, these are things that leaders 
of organizations, departments,   teams—that’s really interesting to them. I’m 
not bringing them work. I’m taking work away   through automation and through a consistent 
platform. So talking to the stakeholders.  So you’re truly partners.
Yep. That’s it.  Yeah, that’s awesome. I had another question that 
popped in my mind, but no, it just went away. So,   I’m gonna move on with that. I guess, 
what—did you find anything that didn’t work   with the stakeholders? Do you have any tips 
or tricks as people start approaching this?  Sean, I’m gonna talk about—to me, there’s two 
different types of stakeholders. Okay? There’s   the people who are in and, like, are using 
the platform, and then the people who are   new. Okay? So, like, how my approach to those are 
a little bit different. And so, existing platform,   existing stakeholders, people are working the 
platform, know it and love it. I do something   called stakeholder rounding with them every 
quarter. Okay, that keeps them engaged and   figure out how we can better support them and 
what their pain points are, stuff like that.  Now, where a lot of work comes into, 
and where I spend a lot of my time,   is with these new stakeholders. Okay. And I go 
through lots of demos, lots of design sessions,   a lot of pre-contract work in order to make that 
happen. And so, like, workplace service delivery,   I did mention at the beginning that we 
were working with Cask to deploy that. I   had you guys come in, show the stakeholders in the 
facilities of Avalara, like, all the capabilities   of the platform. So that was super critical.
Now, to answer your question about, like,   what hasn’t worked? I’m going to tell you that 
some of these existing study holders, when I said   quarterly rounding, like, it’s not enough. They 
want to meet with me every two weeks. My tech   ops teams, things change on a dime in that domain. 
So they want to meet with me all the time to make   sure they stay ahead of stuff. So, and then, 
Sean, every time I have a surrounding meeting,   I come out with about 20 action items for 
my team. That is also pretty challenging,   too. So, yeah. So, that’s how I handle 
stakeholders and also some of the challenges,   but I’m constantly talking to leaders in the space 
about what we can bring to the table to help them.  Yeah that’s great. Did you do, I don’t 
know, anything like an ROI, you know,   when you’re talking about stakeholders 
and the efficiencies and, you know,   MTTR? You talked about eliminating tasks. Do 
you get into ROI with them at all and showing   what the benefit and the cost savings could be?
Yes, we do. So—and also, I mean, Cask is really   helpful with all that stuff, too, about saving 
things. And I have to give it up to ServiceNow,   because, like, they are able to really 
articulate very clearly and quickly   what their anticipated ROI is for the modules 
that they’re seeing. So, that’s really good.  You know, key performance indices are also really 
important to make sure we understand and agree on   those and track out—track those things within 
the dashboard, and all that kind of stuff. So,   that’s the kind of stuff that the ROI things 
that these teams are really loving. And also,   Sean, like, anecdotally, like, they’re 
like, “We’ve kept our head count flat,”   and Avalara has grown as a company by 
nearly double in the last couple of years.  So, like, after using that platform, like, 
it’s been, it’s—we’ve been able to scale,   which is awesome. Yeah.
Yeah. So, in relation to   talking to stakeholders, you’re kind of creating 
demand because you’re proactively going out and   talking to people. Plus, I’m sure you get some 
demand, but when you think about governance,   how are you dealing with governance at 
Avalara right now? And how do you approach it?  Sure. And that’s a great question. And to me, 
governance has two components to it. Okay. So   the first is, like, what sort of standards 
processes practices do you want to have in   place to ensure that everything is kind of treated 
the same way? Okay. And the second one is who’s   the ultimate decision-maker? So, like, everyone 
wants to work for my team. So, where do I draw   that cut line and sort of stuff like that?
So, I will tell you from the first one. So,   like, here, like, getting standards and stuff. 
We at Avalara, we firmly believe in do using   out-of-the-box sort of functionality. And that’s 
what I’m talking with stakeholders that I want to   make sure you’re willing to blow up your existing 
practices, you know, and use the best practices   that ServiceNow has identified in this domain to 
redo the way that you might be doing work today.  So that’s—one of our tenants of governance 
is out of the box. But I will tell you,   we do smart customization as well. So, it’s 
not a hard and fast, absolutely not every time,   but we have—the team has a discussion 
about it, and if it makes sense,   we’ll do something that in a customized way.
So that’s one part of governance. I’ll talk   about the second one real quick. Like, who’s 
the ultimate decision-maker? Sean, with so many   modules out here, I have so many stakeholders. 
Okay. I think I have about 15 of them. Okay. So,   and of course, all of their work is number one on 
their list. But when they throw the list together,   that list of 1 through 1,000, we have to draw a 
cut line somewhere within our quarterly commits.   So that’s where my amazing TPMs and also my 
boss and my boss’s boss are able to advocate   for “This is our cut line for our capacity, and 
that’s what we’re going to deliver this quarter.”  So that, to me, governs the two things. 
The standards are going to follow,   and the best practices, and also 
who’s the ultimate decision-maker.  Okay. Okay. And we’re talking about governance. 
We’ve talked about what you’ve got going on. Let’s   skip over to, you know, team building. Like, how 
are you thinking about—you’re building your team,   and do you decide to bring it 
in versus working with a partner   like Cask? How do you approach that right now?
Well, yeah. So team building is super important   because you can deploy things. But if you don’t 
maintain it, okay, and you don’t enhance it,   you don’t upgrade it, the value that you’re 
getting on year one is going to be zero   by year two. So, to me, team building is the 
acknowledgement that one team cannot do it all.  Okay. So you—I have a core platform team that 
is super knowledgeable about everything in the   ServiceNow ecosystem. Okay, but they’re 
not knowledgeable about legal practices,   facilities maintenance practices, that sort of 
thing. So we need to grow and upskill ServiceNow   skills within those departments so that they’re 
able to do—have direct access to the platform to   be able to update the things that they need. So, 
we—I’ve been able to do that. I don’t know if I   made this up, but I call it a skilled resource. 
So they’re basically a dotted line member of our   team. They participate in our daily stand ups, 
you know, they’re in our, all of our rituals,   and all that kind of stuff. So they’re basically 
an extension of our team. So that’s pretty cool.  And then the second thing, Sean, is, 
like, about building a very strong team,   is just acknowledging that everyone’s 
strengths and just realizing that we are   better together than we are individually. So 
that’s something that I really love because,   like, Yuva, my BA, is different skill 
sets than Arbit and [ ], my devs,   and they all have different skill sets than I do. 
But together, we really put that puzzle together.  So now I want to ask—I’m going to go on to the 
next part of your question about, like, how do   we use partners? So, we use partners at Avalara a 
lot and, Sean, I’ll be very transparent with you:   Early in my career, I was very partner-adverse. 
Okay? They were expensive. The handoffs were   terrible. They come in, and then they leave, 
and then you’re holding this thing, and it’s   not a good thing. I have pulled a 180 on that, 
Sean. I’m actively seeking out partners in all of   our modules upon deployment because I need their 
expertise in the industry best practices, okay?  So, and I was telling you the third time during 
this recording, that talk that we’re using you   guys for workplace service delivery. And I am 
super excited to work with Kylie and Marnie   on your team. Because what they were able to 
do at 7-Eleven just blew me away. So, they,   if they can manage, I don’t know, 50,000 stores, 
I think we can, they can handle about 30 Avalara   buildings across the globe. So that’s where 
I’m pretty excited to work with them. Yeah.  Yeah. Good. Thanks for that feedback on that and 
for responding to that. Because, it’s something   that people need to think about: “Are we going 
to try to do it ourselves? And do we have the   experience?” And if you don’t, “Where do we go 
and how do you look at that?” So, thanks for that.  So, if you had infinite resources and 
you could press the go button yourself,   what do you think you’d do? Because I got 
to know you well enough. I know you’ve   got a lot of plans, but what would that be?
Well, can we suspend reality for a moment? And   can I, like, clone my team five times over? 
Because I would love all of that. So, but,   honestly, if I had infinite resources, there’s a 
couple things I would do. One is really ramp up   the scaling of my team. Okay? Like, when I said, 
“5x it,” I’m absolutely for real about that.  The second thing is that I would bring in partners 
to deploy everything within the ServiceNow   ecosystem that we had an appetite for, okay? Out 
of the box? Put it out there. Okay. Get it stood   up. How—do the stakeholdering. Get everyone’s 
practices to out-of-the-box functionality.   Okay. And everyone having a baseline use 
and understanding of the platform. And then,   well, and then drive all the traffic to 
Employee Center Pro for everything. Okay.   Everything. So, integrations with all of 
our systems—Concur, Workday, our learning   platform, everything like that—everything.
And then, finally, I would focus on doing,   like, big things like cross department workflows, 
okay, and automating that. Okay. And what I mean   by that is, think about employee onboarding, okay? 
That covers HRSD. That covers asset. It covers,   probably, security and account provisioning. 
It covers, and it’s probably payroll,   things like that. I would start using my 
newly cloned 5X team to implementing these   sort of cross-module sort of platform business 
problems and do an automated streamline thing.  That it would be if I had the go button, so I 
should probably play Powerball and make it happen.  So, that’s a lot. So the next question, actually, 
is a good feeder to that response or from that   response, right, is how many projects is too 
many projects at a given time for you right now?  Well, Sean, we’ve been talking for a while 
here, and I—and it’s very clear that I’m a   very aggressive person. So, I’m going to—so, 
for the people listening, take my answer with   a little bit of a grain of salt, because I’m very 
aggressive. I’m very optimistic. And I often live   in a state of suspended reality where everything 
works out wonderfully and everyone’s happy with   the end product. Okay. So knowing that, okay, 
I’m gonna have to say about five is probably   the most you can probably handle. But of those 
five, pick two of your most important, okay. So,   like, uf something’s gotta go, trim the bottom 
three, okay? You can work on some things, but,   like, you have to pick a top one and 
two and make those your top priority.  So, I like to grab little things and bring them 
along. So, that’s why I have a—cast a wide net,   but really, focus on two. Maybe my answer is 
two, Sean. I don’t know. What do you think?  I think your goal typically is more, but 
you might have to scale back to two. Yeah.  Okay. Yeah, that’s right. I have big 
eyes, okay? And I have a big appetite. So,   but I’ll settle on two, I don’t know.
Yeah. Regarding value, I wanted to ask   you—we talked about vision. How do you get your 
vision out? But once this all comes about and   you’re starting to get the business value, you’re 
realizing the ROI. I know you mentioned you have   regular meetings. Is that kind of where 
you do your business value from the given   solution back to them? Or do you do something 
bigger than that? Or well, more between that.  Well, it’s—I actually kind of flip it back on 
the—use the leaders in that space. Okay. Like,   I’ve got the platform, but they’ve got to drive 
on the road, you know, so they need to report   to their leaders about how they’re doing 
with this shiny new toy that they just got.  So, yes, I work with them to develop KPIs and, you 
know, make sure we have the tracking mechanisms in   place to enable all those sorts of things. So, I 
really, it’s like, it’s a—it’s me as the platform   owner is—I’m important, but I’m not the—their 
boss is not my boss. And so they want to make   sure that they’re having the right metrics 
and reporting for that value sort of thing.  But let me—Sean, let me show you a couple 
of cool things. I rattled off a ton of   things that we’re doing already that we 
already have deployed. And, like, I mean,   talking with the leader in the SecOps space, 
like, they’re through automation and they’ve   saved about five FTEs. So that’s incredible. 
Okay, like, that’s 1,000 hours a month.  So, I talked about the—our help desk has stayed 
relatively flat, even though we’ve grown as an   organization. Like, we’ve nearly doubled 
in about two years. I don’t know. We just   deployed HRSD. Hey, I’ll tell you, Sean, the way 
to get HR case management was a shared inbox. Now,   I go to Employee Center, and I have all these 
options to select, and it’s so awesome for direct   access to things. And so they’re loving their life 
because the work is structured, and it’s segmented   out based on, you know, the case managers of 
their areas of expertise. It’s payroll, leaves,   whatever, that’s super cool. And then I told 
you a little bit of IRM deployed, the leader in   that space. They love the audit once and provide 
evidence to many controls. So, they’ll be able to   audit more frequently. So, that’s very fun.
So, in addition to, like, hardcore numbers,   FTE, say, things like that, like, just the 
structure and the knowledge and reporting and the   sensibility of know what work is, has been really 
beneficial to all the teams that I’ve worked with.  That’s awesome. So for the—and I want to frame 
this to be, I guess, outside of Avalara for   you—is what would be your advice for those that 
are watching this and they’re going, “Gosh,   Derek, you’ve got all this stuff you’re excited. 
But what about those that have to think about,   you know, pace of change and how 
the culture might impact that?”  What would you advise those listening and 
have them consider when they’re thinking   about pace of change and how the culture 
impacts? You’ve done an awesome job at   Avalara and other places you’ve been.
What are your tips and tricks, and what   are your thoughts on that for those watching?
Well, you have to inspire excitement. Okay. And,   like, that’s the number one thing. And you have 
to be able to show them that, you know, life can   be better, okay, you know, by changing the way 
that you’re doing these things. And I always,   like—I always look around, and as I hear 
people saying, “This is the way we do it.   This is the only way that we’ve done it,” and 
I’m like, “That’s interesting, because I don’t   know anyone in your organization has written 
books about how to do these sorts of things,   so maybe they’re not the best, and there’s other 
things that are out there.” And this is where I   love Cask, and this is where I love ServiceNow, 
because they’re sourcing all the best practices   about how people are using their products and then 
giving it out in run books and things like that.  So, I’m very lucky that I work at Avalara because 
we are a very change-friendly organization. Okay.   Like, we are so fast because we have to be in this 
financial technology space that everyone’s willing   to embrace change. So that’s the one thing. So, 
you have to make sure you paint a really good   picture, talk about the art of the possible, show 
them how things are going to work, connecting with   other people that have done these sorts of things 
and to get them more comfortable in making this   sort of change. So, it’s pretty awesome that 
way, and you’ll have good success with that.  And if I’m reading between the lines here, too, 
is that you’re excited. You’re kind of saying   your excitement and being passionate about it 
can change the culture and get people thinking   versus “I’ve got to change this. I’ve got to 
do this.” And getting them excited about the   art of the possible, essentially, 
and then backing into it that way.  Yep. One hundred percent, Sean. I mean, you 
have to paint a perfect picture for them and   then decompose it into how we’re going to do it. 
And, I don’t know, that’s something that, like,   we might be talking to stakeholders and about what 
they want their future state to be. I just map it   to what we have—what, certain, what we have 
deployed, and what we’re going to deploy, and   what we may potentially deploy. So that’s the way 
that shows in the map of how to get to their good.  So, the last thing that I wanted to get 
your view on was, really, what are some   things that are exciting you? What are you 
keeping your eyes on regarding up-and-coming   ServiceNow features? I know you mentioned a 
couple of things you want to get into, but is   there anything you can call out, like things 
that you’re really excited to see come about?  Sean, I am so excited about this sort of thing, 
because Avalara was one of two companies of all   of ServiceNow’s customers—I think they have, what, 
7,000, 8,000 customers—to be part of a generative   AI, like, I’m going to call it prototype. It’s 
called Task Intelligence. It’s not available. You   can’t buy it. No, it’s going to—we’re refining 
it and stuff like that. But what it is it’s   generative AI in the ITSM space, which comes up 
with field recommendations based on your data.  So, like, we have our own LLM. That’s great. We’re 
tweaking it, getting really great success results,   and it’s going to really, like, supercharge 
our help desk because they no longer need to   think about which group this needs to, 
which assigned to this needs to go to,   what business services, what configuration 
item it is, because the model is sourcing   from our data and presenting that to them.
So that is one thing that I’m super excited about.   And that goes hand in hand with that—and I pretty 
much was falling out of my seat at Knowledge this   year—was the Now Assist stuff. Like, I gotta 
tell you, the text-to-code case summarization,   that is going to be absolutely amazing for 
adopters of this sort of thing. I’ll tell you,   like, when I was talking about it to my 
team, one of my amazing developers, Arpit,   said he might as well just quit because you 
don’t need him anymore. So, I’m like, “No,   we still need you.” But, so, the text-to-code 
stuff was super great for scripting. And,   you know, Sean, all that stuff makes the platform 
even more accessible. Okay. Because, like, all of   the work that ServiceNow has done over the last 
couple of years for the low-code/no-code tools,   combine that with Now Assist. Like, you don’t need 
a computer science degree to do this. You just   need to be an expert in your practice and know 
how to use the tools to set up really powerful   workflows in a short period of time.
So, Sean, those are the, like,   so AI and maybe just AI I’m excited about. 
How about that? So, nut yeah, our entry with   Task Intelligence is going to be great. And 
hopefully we can just see it maybe in Xanadu.   I don’t know. We’ll see. So we’ll see. Yeah.
Yeah. That was all we have time for today,   but thank you, Derek, so much for coming on 
and taking time out of your schedule. Like   I said earlier, it’s a pleasure to have you 
on. It’s been a pleasure to get to know you.  And for those of you listening, if you could 
do me a favor, do us a favor, and rate,   share, like these conversations that we 
have on however you’re watching these,   it helps the algorithm push this to other people 
that are interested in the material. Also, let us   know if there’s something that you want to see.
But for now, that’s it for this episode of the   distillery. And thanks so 
much. Take care of bye bye.