welcome to another episode of Glide chat my name is Michael Lombardo I'm sitting here with David Caldwell the ap of solution Consulting East how are you Dave good to be here man thank you yeah finally we've been uh hyping this up for a little while man yeah where are you based out of so I'm based out of Michigan Michigan just outside of Detroit yeah I've watched actually a little documentary on uh some of the changes coming it's looks pretty exciting yeah for sure Dan Gilbert who owns rock rock Central yeah he's doing a ton of great stuff there yeah a lot of like uh stimulus coming into the economy and some new businesses so yeah um sports teams going downtown yeah we talked a little bit before about your journey to service now um I don't know if maybe want to talk a little bit about your background just just how you got to service now well so i' I'd been in this the like the service management space for a while uh I spent a few years at BMC and before that I was at a number of other software companies focused more on like application life cycle management software development I had an opportunity to go over to a company called APO and learned a lot about financial service costing and uh we were actually doing a joint presentation with service now and ndl and uh kind of magic that kind of led to someone who was hiring came up to me and said hey you're interested in coming over to service now and I was like absolutely that's awesome when you mentioned BMC and then we went down a little rabbit hole with uh paragan and stuff but how long were were you at PMC for it was about 3 years yeah yeah what's uh your perspective on on remedy as and I know it's like now it's kind of Legacy but it was the king at one point right of the space and so what was like what's your opinion on on that maybe like back then or like I'm curious to see I I've never really dove in on like remedy verse service now differences kind of thing yeah well I'll say as a company they were really strong at going to Market and the go to market execution piece so they invested a lot in training I learned a ton on how to just get really good at account planning and thinking more strategically and and really how do you assemble big multiproduct deals but you're talking about Legacy technology and it's really good technology but it it just it wasn't on one platform right one architecture not one data model yeah so for us to sell it we had to do a lot of like configurate configuring Integrations it was just a heavy heavy LIF and that's because they did Acquisitions over the years of other products and try to bolt them together yeah like blade logic they had a cloud cycle management solution yep it worked really well when you got set up but it was Heavy lift and that's and I was we were talking a little bit before and I was a service center which is was paragen then HP customer and now was like kind of the similar challenges we had like I liked using service center before I got my hands on service now but like the integration with the asset management app that was tough you know it was like it was all spread out I think that's what was exciting when when we when I got my hands on service now I was like whoa wait a minute this is one system for all these different applications one platform in a shared data model right like which is was just unheard of and then the ease of development on top of that and like a cool UI and then it was built to be scalable that that's what I always like kind of you know talk about even with Salesforce it's like Salesforce I think was just like five years too soon where wasn't necessarily didn't have the technology to skill kind of had maybe that same concept of one data model but it the the ease of development wasn't quite there like service now is yeah yeah for sure you know what was really interesting for me my first like eye openening moment was service now yeah and I only wish I had the opportunity to go right from BMC to service now but it just wasn't there yeah I was literally in a head-to-head Bake Off POV with um I was at BMC yeah and it was against service now yeah with a large healthcare provider M and they literally had us in the room going through the same use cases and they were timing us and wow I I mean I almost had to like throw in the towel that it was just the the response time the performance you know and even like uh helping customers Envision what they could do with it required a lot of pre-work to figure out how do I cash this this environment yeah when I go in there so it performs well so you had to do a really good Discovery so that you knew what the customer wanted to see so that you didn't go off script because if you went off script then you know trouble yeah yeah performance performance is big really yeah that's so funny cuz I remember and I yeah and I remember like they went to the cloud and they were and they still like somehow they're still around God bless them they're still around they have like every once in a while I check their employee count because that's that's a good indicator for me I can't I don't think they're not publicly traded right I don't think so so yeah I know they went private I think they thought they were owned by B capital or something but but um so I can't like see how they're performed but it's like w they still have like a couple thousand employees they're still somehow ticking but you know we were just kind of talking about some of the the changes coming at at service now with industry specific Solutions and I think the big buzz obviously is is Genai and um hopefully not putting any on the spot here but like I would wouldn't mind taking a step back on AI with you for a second and maybe going through like what are the major solutions that service now's coming to Market with because I think a lot of companies just say yeah we want AI but it's like like okay in service now what are the AI solutions that are coming out from service now and maybe like what are the couple problems that that they're trying to solve yeah yeah sure so I've had a number of conversations with uh cios actually on this topic and a big thing they're looking for is just like Workforce productivity um yeah you know and upskilling so that their employees can work on more high value activities and kind of automate a lot of the mundane drudgery work yep and which is service now's goal from like the beginning exactly right and this is like just it's like supercharging it yeah and so the big things are I think a lot of things that you hear a lot of other companies doing around like summarizing data yeah now so you think about agents working at a service desk and they're picking up uh an incident and they're trying to read through all the notes imagine if you went there now and it summarizes it for you so that agent can be more efficient provide better employee or customer experience right at a lower cost so there's case summarization and then when you're closing out these cases you need to capture the the the resolution and there's oftentimes a lot of work in how do I how do I uh capture the resolution a consistent way yeah so that if anyone's looking at resolution across any incident or any case right could be HR could be customer now they have a more consistent way of uh summarizing the resolution that makes it easier for people to triage and troubleshoot problems in the future right that's that's awesome so is a case summarization which is a big thing across the platform and then uh there's also the case resolution so it's like now summarizing the resolution notes and just which then can feed into uh like content creation through knowledge articles exactly and generating that's already there all those hooks are already there it's just the input from the from the AG sometimes isn't isn't enough to like add value to create those knowledge articles and and reuse that data so wow okay exactly yeah yeah so there's that then there's content creation y taking things like those case resolutions and then turn it into like knowledge articles yeah a lot of our customers are like trying to figure out how do we shift left how do we get our employees to do more self-service for example exactly everybody wants that yeah yeah so this is going to help that I think by creating higher quality content that's going to help uh you know employees for example solve some of their own problems wow so this is really like just leveling up our agents we're not talking about replacing we're talking about summarizing we're talking about improving the the resolution notes and then we're talking about taking that data and and and actually creating content to increase case deflection right right and then I've heard a lot about AI Serv sech so improving search uh on the portal right and there's got to be better virtual agent coming up right now assist yeah now assist so can we talk about now assist a little bit because that's that's what I think everyone's like really buzzing about yeah what's interesting about now is it's it's using our own large language model yeah instead of you know the uh open AI language model and we're using that for one of our apps yeah yeah yeah so I think that is going to be the appealing part and I think that's where you know this gen AI uh industry is going to be really interesting is these you know these domain specific models and you know C now is in a great position because we have when customers opt in we have so much data you know mountains of data that we can now use to better serve them them yeah yeah yeah and to me that's that's super exciting it's it is because and that's the power of again having one platform that that has all these proc processes but the challenge has always been what do you do with that datah MH you know like what do you do with these mountains of of incidents and mountains of of knowledge articles and and how do we connect the dots to when a user is coming to the portal to solve a problem how do we leverage that and and this is really it I mean this is so I think this the whole world is going to change but like specifically with service now it's just like a it's like we've laid so much of the foundation for the last 10 years I feel like now we're able to cash in on it essentially yeah yeah I think it's I think it's bill mcder says like data is a new digital currency oh yeah you know oh yeah and uh you know the companies that have a lot of that data are going to be able to do some pretty powerful things with it but we're also doing things like text to code yeah text to flow right so you think about um I was out with a customer yesterday a big Bank yeah and they're like trying to figure out how do we do citizens citizen development and and um so they call it like their Federated approach well the text to code is going to accelerate that because they're saying you know we're having a hard time training people up and how do we manage it more like a program and so I think the Tex code is going to make it easier for companies to really big time build to on top of the building blocks that service now offers yeah and even even like support from partners and and internal people who who are already experts at these companies it's going to allow them to move fast F right if we don't have to if we're if we don't have to sit there I used to quote a little bit more than I do now people like Glide fast don't let me have the admin roll anymore so but but you know even things I knew I'd still have to go back and double check and Google a couple things to make sure I'm doing it right and now it's like even the experts so I know there's a lot of citiz and develop people are excited about that but so much of this is about saving time and getting more things done yeah right you just I think the way just the way you kicked off the conversation about AI it's going to help the development in the in the app roll out and that's what that's what I people are like oh you know you still G to need is it going still need Partners out there if AI it's like sure absolutely and it's going to allow us to add more value to our customers which is going to bring their cost down which is going to allow them to continue to invest in more into the platform more into the partner system and and I just think it's going to add so much more efficiency you know a lot of the challenges we Face mistakes maybe that other partners made or you know Miss solutioning or even the customer sometimes you know uh architect in the wrong way I think this is just going to add more Integrity into the environments that have been roadblocks historically you know when I was a customer we didn't have you know the bet this was a dozen years ago you know we didn't have the best implementation you know part of it was our own fault cuz we we wanted to customize we wanted it to be like just like our old system well it's our fault too it's our fault I it's again like is with great power comes great responsibility that's that's like you can't have this amazing platform with all this opportunity to personalize and and configure to how you you know your company needs to use it and roll out these powerful applications if also you can use that power for for for evil right and that's why I like the impact offering that service now came out with which is helping customers I think keep them on track keep the guard rails um and not not making you know maybe bad architecture decisions you know yeah yeah there's some really interesting things that that you know I think are very related to that when I think back like service now I've been here 10 years this January wow 10 years yeah wow yeah so when I came in it was basically it M and PPM at the time and then and PPM was like tasks yeah it was like but then but then we bought uh nebula and then we had service watchat and then eventually turned into itom and uh but we we also had like these I think you remember service watchat yeah and then we had uh we had like these Scout apps I think is what we called them so it would be I think HR was even one facilities Y and what had happened is customers would realize he I love itsm like I had this horrible Legacy experience that I'm trying to move away from and now I want to build out HR now I want to build out facilities so I remember a large insurance company uh when we rolled out Facilities Management they're like well we built our own app you know how are we going to cut over so it was a question of like now kind of killing that app and then using out of the box so there been a that Journey right so Partners have had to like take these these Scout apps if you will and then extend them and over time we just started building stuff out yeah and that that that's the amazing part of service now too it's like you know and and this why this is what sometimes I say to customers this is not your fault I know I know we're in this situation you know some of these features that you had to build and they're like we customize but I'm like these features you build were not yet available and service now kudos to them for all their Innovation two new releases every year they've seen what you've done yeah and they've now added those features natively into the system and unfortunately we have a little bit of rub here where we have to cut over to the new system to to the new you know application HR is I think the best example of that where it started out as you know in the system just like another table and then now it's like this whole new still in service now not an acquisition not a bolt-on native to the system but there's a lot different like the security models a little bit more tighter because this is sensitive data right it's a sectioned off sculpt app in um and all the features that added I mean it's like it's exciting to to see that but a lot of the customers you know especially the early adopters that's why I say to new customers now I'm like you don't know how lucky you are yeah you're getting the benefit of you know years of other customers innovating and not just service now innovating the customers innovating right and more mature apps you know the other thing that uh I think we can't what I noticed happened quite a bit was customers moving from let's say BMC to service now they were of the mindset let's just LIF sh same thing no and and I think where know it's a challenge for us too and where we need Partners to and I think you guys do a great job at this is like have an opinion challenge the customer and say look you don't want to do that anymore um and here's why y you know and uh so in many ways our uh Partners even probably service now to extent allowed the customers kind of dictate you know to kind of customizing the application ex where you know they probably could have they would have more speed and velocity if they stayed more out of the box so two things on this I always say it's an art form in how you deliver that message and how you say no like hey that's a great idea but if we did it this way we're not not going to have upgrade issues you're staying more in line with with the architecture of service now and a lot of times there's a lot of fair in these projects this is a a big investment for these organizations for sure there's usually you know a few people that you know are you know butts are on the line here if it doesn't go well right um it's a new application to them they're a little nervous right they they don't necessarily know it they know they don't know like obviously like you and and I right it's important to like it's okay we're we're you know like that's a lot of our job as a partner is like we got to be brave here you got to trust us adoption will because especially when you're move into a new system you have your u i don't want not any users but you know power users I don't you know I I like the way we did it in remedy you know because they're used to that and they think they need it that way and it's like trust me once you start using this just like you know once you move to a new now every iPhone's the same but like when you when you upgrade you're like what is this I don't I I liked it when it was a square box but then you get used to it you forget about the old the old system yeah and then it's like wow this is 10 times better so a lot of times and that's where like ocm and training are so important on these projects to say listen I know this seems a little quirky but once you get in the rhythm of this using it Moby you know some of this automation it's going to make your life so much easier you're going to forget about and you're going be like how did we ever use that before you know yeah yeah it's it's it's Speed and Agility you know it's a huge thing and you know the the other thing like when you when you think about just like gen yeah I like to think about upleveling the message a bit you know service now has been doing AI for quite a quite a few years and uh it's funny now everyone's really paying attention to it right so there's a non-generative AI which is AI and then there a generative AI so um we've been doing the non-generative stuff for a while but if you think about it like anyone can buy service now yeah you know if all of our customers that use service now could do really the same thing if they wanted to um so where's the competitive Advantage yeah and I think the competitive Advantage is uh it's a few things right it's having a I think a a digital transformation road map and a blueprint for how you going to transform the Enterprise but also how you going to do that with AI yeah and at the end of the the day if if you can if you can really have the right um processes in place you can have the right talent and the talent's important that's where the customers haven't necessarily invested in the talent yes and the organizational design needed to really scale out the business so we talked to so many customers are like and and there these are you know platform owners and admins who are like they're doing their best effort and they want to do more you know and this is where Partners play a big role like you guys um but they can't they can't they're not NE getting the funding that they need right yeah I think so if it's staffed right we build out road maps we need to be thinking about building out Talent road maps too right organizational design the goal ultimately is to provide a better customer employee experience at a lower unit cost exactly you do that better than your competitor that's going to give you that competitive Advantage exactly because you you need it you need that top talent to because it's funny at some point these organizations get like so large you know and I almost like see it with glide fast in a way like you know starting from zero over 600 people I have to like keep on top of our leaders to like don't get comfortable you know this is not just a business that just runs itself like we have to be aggressive in our overs satisfaction of customers we have to be we have to work so hard to stay on top of Technology right some of these other companies were like 200,000 employees and so big and so massive it's like we need to keep our best employees here we need to attract the best talent and when an a new employee comes to a company and they see this like email onboarding process that's quirky clunky and things get missed they start to think well how's the rest of the business run right how does how are we going to stay you know a leader if we sell fidget Spinners How do we stay number one selling fidget spers if we can't even onboard an employee right and and they're like I'm going to go to to this competitor here that's 10 times more efficient right it's that's obviously their sales process is going to be more efficient their production process you know what I mean and it and that's where not to go on a tangent here but that's where I've always envisioned service now is not just like the employ in employee sat or customer sat space and all that workflow but like in the production World mhm in the sales world like I want service now to be part of generating Revenue you know what I mean like that's that's because it should be it's it's it's that powerful of a platform that it's you know obviously we're past the incident world now just help desk but when are we going to really be and I know there's great examples of that but like I cannot wait for like when this is a production supporting system yeah you know things like that yeah I I have a really example that um when I was leading our meds sled business which was our healthcare provider state and local and edu um clinicians when they're starting um a a job with a new healthc care provider onboarding experience often times is so bad that they just drop out yeah even you know nurses doctors and uh so we we did really well in that area and with the whole onboarding to provide that better experience emplo experience that gives you that competitive advantage doctors and nurses faster yep um they're more inclined to want to continue to work there because they're going to be more productive it's just going to be an overall better experience 100% I'll give and I'll give you I'll double down on that like we were a large retailer won't name them I think it took them 26 days to on board like a $15 an hour employee MH and we cut that down to like six days or something six to 10 or something crazy like that leveraging service now and I don't know the exact numbers on like the revenue increase the bottom line that had helped but employee satisfaction I mean getting getting employees to work faster imagine getting on board starting at a company is like oh you can't work for a month right and all all the all the costs that are incurred there and so it's really exciting so how many how many people roll up to you uh I think our about 120 roughly wow about 120 people yeah um solution Consultants y y what's the leadership like for for you know I know my world yeah you know and I have I probably have like 25 sc's and you know it's so much about supporting them and and making but in your world like what's what's that like leading uh because I mean you gotta be responsible for a ton of Revenue right ACV yeah yeah we're our our business is over a billion dollars man what we're responsible for but first of all it's an honor and I just feel I'm so I have so much gratitude for service now and the people that have supported me on my journey and it's an honor to serve the team and that's how I see it that's how our leadership team s sees it for us it's really about empowering the employees empowering the team um setting a vision and a strategy building buyin connecting the dots you know um being inclusive because I me you have to like how many people on my team I really think about the whole team and for us we really talk about like winning as a team in fact in the East what we say is one team one East yeah and um so our mindset is like how do we scale our business well we have to think like multipliers yeah and we have to put everyone to work by leveraging their strengths you know and uh so the team is just just a hardworking team you know I mean they're all all of us we we we talk about grit guts resilience initiative tenacity um there's a lot of grit you know and there's a lot of responsibility because not only do they have to know the technology space specifically in like service management but they also have to know the platform they have to know to a certain extent other workflows um oftentimes before we're bringing in more sees that are specialized in like customer employee risk yeah Creator so on so forth and I mean yeah now that now that you're saying that too it's like you're not you're not just responsible for your team and your team is not just responsible for their like so much of the sales team is like relying on them yeah you know the sales team is great but they're they can only go so far right they can set up these meetings they can you know build these relationships but you know at the end of the day they're turning to these sc's to to to Really you know solution and and explain to the customer hey this is the right solution to your problem yeah so I mean you guys almost have like uh a bigger responsibility than than than on paper right there's a lot there it's it's a very Dynamic multifaceted role um and and and our relationship with sales is like it's it's one of the best I've seen in the industry yeah oh definitely I know it's uh we're valued they're valued and our customers really look to a lot of solution Consultants as trusted advisers yeah and uh they established some really enduring relationships where the's really get to know the customers they get badged in their account and I see it I see it it's and yeah it's honestly I know it might sound a little corny but it's like it feels like a lot like Batman and Robin anytime anytime I've been involved like the the the sales in SC are like locked in yeah and yeah it's like a personal relationship with with customers it is and that's how it is with us like you know because listen we're going to war together like I said before like yeah these people's jobs are on the line they're nervous and there's nothing better than when they we're able to stay together we're gonna do this we're going to sett on this journey yeah we're going to be successful here and then when we are it's like that's why glad Fest is here for the next 20 years is because we have customers for life you know yeah and same thing with service now it's like customers took a risk on this thing they think was going to work out and then did and then it exceeded and it made everybody you know get promoted and move up right I mean that's for sure that's the key I was I was fortunate enough to be a part of that I know I know so did you start as just a SC yeah I actually came in as an sc wow see that's that's why you're you're successful too it's because you've done the job I've done the job quite a few years I just I was like all right I came in as an sc and I said want to get in leadership I'll do the work you know Frank slutman used to say we want drivers not passengers you know kind of like what you're so how do you keep people engaged challenged so you don't have complacency right for me I just I had that driver mindset like many do but part of it is also being very vulnerable yourself out there and uh not be afraid not be afraid even when you're uncomfortable but if you're in in culture where people Empower you to do that and it's safe to make mistakes yep that's the key that's the key it's okay like I try to say you know here at clad fast like it's okay to make mistakes let's try not to make them twice you know what I mean let's just please like just try try to you know learn from them because I'll tell you the mistakes we do make you know you see it you know the things that you need to improve on it's like we know this is a problem like let's just let's just fix it right now and that's where we've really gotten I think even even good the last couple years of like of just like being real honest with ourselves of where our weak areas are and where we we need to improve on and and that's what life's all about in all aspects of our life right is like you know we both have two girls right and so I know we're we're you know raising our kids that way like it's okay you make mistake it's like like let's just improve and and not do the same thing again yeah yeah for sure it's um you know I think another thing is like one of the things that we talked to our team about is like have that franchise mindset like be a co-owner in your business exactly looking at all of your customers and be creative you know and figure out how you can go and develop greater customer intimacy you know and uh and have that entrepreneurial mindset really exactly and uh I think when people get that that mindset is critical to an SE rooll because uh you should go out and and have meetings without the sales rep exactly don't be shy yeah don't wait for direction I love that don't be a passenger be a driver I am still in that one because that's ex like take initiative be brave go out there you know you're not sitting here just to scope out projects go build relationships with people at service now with your customers don't just say that's not my job that's a Sal you know and that's the key yeah um that's winning as a team that's winning as a team and that's how it's again like being that entrepreneurial mindset yeah is g to help everybody because especially in this world in this economy we all have to be if we're not all driving the business forward MH your company's going to be in trouble yeah you know you can't just rely on one one one PE person yeah and you know and then I think sometimes we need people to disrupt us we need to disrupt ourselves and um you know service now we get a lot of that because of the growth and the change you know but uh you are the dominating platform there's no there's nobody in the rear view I don't see anybody yeah it's exciting but I'll tell you what it's excting partnering with with glide fast 2o like you guys the customers love you your your your C set scores are great you know and it's evident in you know being an elite partner and the the awards that you've received at the EMS and Global level and and then just like your your mindset around customer success like you're invested in long game like we are and that you're also invested in service now 100% I mean we so many of us lived through you know we were customers we we we we took the chance ourselves on it and we fell in love with it but what what makes I think glat is really special is just it's I hate I kind of hate the buzzword culture because everybody uses it but it's like just everybody's here supporting each other like that's that it's a circle yeah like it's it's truly a circle and it levels everybody up you know cuz nobody's ever stranded you know nobody can know everything right you know so when you need help well CH GPT now exactly accuracy um what so I always like to leave our audience with uh some advice so if you have if if there's an sc out there trying that wants to break into leadership or get to the next level or be a better SC what's some advice you could give them well I would start with some core components to be a successful SE I think first know your product yep master that right and know the platform specifically the service now um be a technologist and and be adaptable so um I had I had a a early in career IC asked me what should I be focusing on like being an earlier doctor of gen like we're all figuring this out now yeah this is an opportunity for you to get into this early so you can start developing same level right now yeah yeah and then uh in many cases learn your industry right and then um be customer focus like one of our values is why we're customers so be customer focused like really get to know the customer be good at Discovery and uncovering problems so that you can then provide really good Solutions and then I think it's being like a really good communicator and that oftentimes is through storytelling and um and knowing the customer and focusing on the customer's outcomes instead of the features and functions and platform sometimes we make it harder on ourselves yeah yeah and then I would say the last thing is back to like what we're were talking about is mindset I think it all start with mindset like feel empowered to go and do things and that mindset can lead to other opportunities you know like it for me my mindset was I want to get into leadership what do I need to do well I'm going to master my role first yes but at the same time I'm gonna I'm I'm going to build out a board of directors that are going to support me along the way on my journey to bring opportunities to help me prove that I I can learn and grow and really want to committed to leadership you know so getting into leadership I think the biggest thing is like build those Board of directors out around you but don't let that distract you from mastering your role as well big time you know that's that's the that's like I think some of the best advice anyone can receive because I think a lot of people think getting into leadership is like less work and it's easy the opp good leadership yeah right the wrong type of leadership is that person that just sits behind the desk Parks orders and guess what they're not going to last yeah they won't y um at least at least not and your or my or right yeah um and but mastering your role in understanding that is just it gives you so much better perspective to help lead others and does and and it other people will follow other people will follow because Dave's done the job Dave knows he's gonna support me he has empathy like that's that's key and one of the things is just real quickly an analogy if you're in a leadership role right now um and some people listening to this podcast C here might uh you know may have heard me say use this analogy before it's not mine it really resonated with me and it the concept of snow melts from the edges and when you think about it when you're out there you know where we live we get snow and you got to shovel it and that snow when you pile it up it's tallest in the center well that Center if you think of that is leadership yep well when spring comes that snow melts at the edges first and the center of the pile is the last thing that's left wow all the changes happen at the edges so if you're in a leadership and you're not out there with your team or with your customers and listening and learning and asking questions you're going to miss all those changes and by the time you see those changes too late it might be too late yeah you know so stay close to the edges advice stay close to the edges love it yeah they thanks for joining us Dave and uh thank you for all you do for service now and our customers likewise likewise you guys are amazing man and looking forward to just continuing to grow the business together 24 baby let's go we're here I'm super excited I'm super excited thank you [Music] guys