you're listening to accelerate a service Now podcast series about achieving your business outcomes where we talk about how to get the most value from the now platform hey everyone this is Crystal cger and this is Dri we're your hosts and excited to talk to you about service now value acceleration solutions that include expert Services training and impact so I'm back with John St talking about the National Hockey League and the project that he's been involved with and John we had so much to talk about in our previous episode and I want to go back and talk about the team that you are working with at service now you you went into in the first part of the of the episode you talked about the different projects specifically the um game day operations project that you worked on and how it affects uh how the games are managed before you know each of Arena around the country let's talk now about um your role as the master coordinator in these implementation projects obviously you are not a team of one there are a lot of folks at service now that have helped you talk to me about who that team is and what they've done with you sure yeah so in our expert Service as organization um generally a team is comprised of an engagement manager like myself um a business process consultant so the traditional uh business analyst that writes requirements and defines processyoutube project you know in February of 2022 and while we've grown I think you know at our at our Max we've had maybe six or seven total resources we've kept it to a pretty small and lean group of individuals uh which has been great number one it's it's easier you know selfishly it's easier for me to manage um but at the same time you know we've had the opportunity to bring in individuals that have very similar mindsets to who we are and what the customer what the the NHL needs from a support um you know not everybody is as comfortable operating in in what we like to call you know the gray area um we we don't always have all the answers things aren't always clearly defined there's there's a lot of times where there situations where you know we don't know everything but we can't let that be an impediment to be Begin work um so i' I've had a great expert Services team we all kind of have a little bit of a consultative nature to our conversations to how we interact and how we approach you know a lot of the work that we do with the NHL and I say that you know consultative our our developers our technical consultants you know are providing that guidance and advisory to their developers um our our business process Consultants is teaching the best ways to write a user story and capture stakeholder requirements you know I'm I'm shaping different mentalities and and Direction on where we can go with some of their leadership team and their project managers and more importantly how to run service now and agile projects they they weren't an agile organization before uh and we like to think we're you know over the past Year we're getting them to that mentality you know using agile methodologies and meetings and standups and even just the language that we have now that that they didn't have before um so we've got a very impactful team just from our expert Services side of the house and and no pun intended but we also uh Leverage The NHL's impact Squad too so we recognize these are two different organizations within service now um but we kind of knew from the very beginning we need to all fit in the sandbox together and we all had that approach understanding long-term objectives uh with this type of customer um the good news is some of the folks on the impact team are also hockey fans so uh we we usually spend a good five or 10 minutes on on every one of our internal calls with them rehashing the last night's games or um the latest news within the league that's cool but we've yeah we've we've we've built this great partnership between expert Services impact and you know I kind of look at us as one team we know there's different swim lanes and roles and responsibilities um and you know sometimes we overlap but it's really my job to make sure we don't but I think more importantly what we're doing is just ensuring that everybody knows all the activities that are going on conversations that are occurring um things we're both hearing because impact is not on all of our calls and we're not on all of impact's calls but I don't ever want to you know enter a situation with a customer where they tell me hey I said this to to one team you know they didn't communicate that to you yet so it's a it's a very close working relationship with that team um you know we working with their platform architect on the impact their customer um success manager it's right it's a great partnership that we've built uh once again in in in just a year so I equate that to a a short amount of time that's fantastic um you know as you were talking I was thinking about um what what the NHL has done to be suc successful for for this project with export Services right I mean you were talking about the fact that they didn't really know agile uh at all before but what are some of the things that you've observed they did really well um that contributed to the success of the project and I say this you know um because I I'm curious you know obviously this is not a two this is a two-way street right we're not doing all the work expert services and service now um the NHL has a lot to do with the success of the project as well but can you talk specifically about some of the things that you've observed from the customers perspective things that we've observed that they're doing very well yeah yeah yeah oh yeah I mean number one they I mean truth be told they're probably I hope my other customers aren't listening to this um they're probably one of the best customers I've ever had the opport to work with and the reason behind that is um not because it's everything that we say you know they immediately adopt I think if anything they push us to come up with creative and thoughtful Solutions but they are not hesitant to give us grandiose ideas listen to us to say hey you you are the experts of this we recognize we purchase this software but you know Chad our developer has been with service now for the last 11 years the the immense amount of knowledge that he has that where we've come from where we're going capabilities within our platform to say yes asset service now us is our expert Services team we hear what you're saying we're going to take that take a moment to understand it but then also come back and say hey here's the pros and cons that to move forward with this type of solution or this type of approach and at the end of the day from a scalability a long-term usability and I think a long-term maintenance approach we're always going to recommend using as much out of the box as possible there there's always going to be time where a level of customization is is needed and that's fine that's you know our platform is designed around that but using out of the box will ensure that they are set up for Success longterm maintaining the platform and I think they've always appreciated that level of transparency with us and they do a really good job of honestly reeling themselves back in to say these are the experts telling me that I need to you know we can still have this solu ution maybe it meets 95% of what I need but you know I'm not going to go down kicking and screaming about the other 5% um the other big thing from my perspective is we've really approached kind of I think as I've discussed in in some of our our previous questions and topics we've really approached this as a great opportunity to ask some of those tough questions you know why are you doing it this way way so you've challenged them right absolutely absolutely we challenged because we don't want to just do this lift and shift of Technology um you know taking what you used on a previous uh system and and throwing that into service now and we've kind of challenged them to think okay how are we going to improve our internal processes how how are we going to measure ourselves so a year from now we can now we have a baseline of data and we can set a target of where we want to be um and and I think we've we've come across very supportive in that nature because we haven't approached any one of our projects as just the the quote unquote Yes Men yes we can do this all right cool we're going to do it we're not going to ask any tough questions or challenging questions or probing questions we we kind of want to know the the root of their problems or their challenges because we can design a better solution or a more elegant solution um so I think they've always they've always had a great understanding that when we're we're challenging them and asking those types of questions and really digging deep into it there's a reason behind it um it's not to critique it's not to judge um it's really to say we can we can help you be more efficient with our technology and change some of your processes at the same time yeah it sounds like a great partnership I mean that's really how every project should work right in the in an Ideal World um so last but not least is there anything you can share about what's in the future for the NHL and its relationship with with us what service now oh wow um a lot we we are just scratching the surface at this point um we are getting ready to deploy uh an updated mobile app for their game day operations teams um so once again based on all the feedback that we captured and the listening posts and we even had an opportunity to go on site to uh a game in New York and walk around with theam team that sets up Madison Square Garden and we were side by side yeah watching watching them use what we just deployed but at the same time every single one of us we were thinking like hey they use this but we can make it easier or we can remove One Clip or they really need to see this so we're taking a lot of that feedback from the first half of the season and pushing that out to to production when they go into uh it's called their All-Star break at the beginning of February so it's a couple day break for the whole league um but that's just really scratching the surface um you know we have several different initiatives right now that are in Flight um I would say you know some are a little bit more sensitive than others um we're just starting the development and and the discussions around them what's been very cool and very amazing for me to see personally as um not only an engagement manager supporting the NHL but just an employee of service now um is hearing the term thrown out in other departments other other offices within the league you know their HR teams their legal teams their asset management and procurement teams um you know they're hearing about service now and they're actually coming to the pmo and the the technical Ops Team and saying hey I have this problem I don't know a lot about service now but I keep hearing it or I keep hearing the great things that it did for advertising or game day operations or service desk can this problem be solved with service now and more often than not we're coming back and saying yes like this is a this is a perfect solution or a perfect fit Let's help you um so it's it's seeing that organic growth within a customer that unfortunately as a typical engagement manager you finish a project and you're you're immediately on to your next one and that's that's just a lot of how our our business operates where this is a scenario where we're driving growth and organic growth within their office the more and more we do um so so it's it's truly a chance that I get to see the idea of digital transformation uh within a customer you know connecting technology uh having different it systems integrate and and start talking to each other uh removing certain human elements or thinking about how we can use AI functionality you know into the future um you know and at the end of the day it's all driving new insights and new data that they never had before um and giving us an opportunity to make datadriven decisions on what our priorities are going to be with the NHL um so we're using data to say hey this can this should be your next initiative and guess what we can also do that with you which um which is amazing it's we've got a lot of work uh it's a long-term partnership that they signed my goal is that this is not just a fiveyear partnership but a 20 25 year partnership between service now and the league and I think what we're also seeing is this can be you know a lot of the work that we've done can be transferable to other professional sports leagues as well I was just gonna say that there's a lot of basketball playing in in my house so I'm just thinking that it's a great use case to see yes what other um professional or amateur or you know even anything that uses that type of setting exactly yeah um that that we can support down the road so it's been it's been amazing and so we've got some big plans in 2024 that is so awesome John I thank you so much for sharing this story it's such a great story of a of a fantastic partnership with the National Hockey League it gives me a brand new perspective you know next time I have the TV on and I see a game I'll be I'll be thinking about you and so service now and what we've done for them so thank you again I hope you'll come back to the show if there are some other big projects that uh the NHL is is um is doing with you and that you can talk about publicly I would love that I'd love to and yeah thank you for uh for speaking with me and and letting me talk through my uh my experience as a engagement manager and uh you know the last year with the NHL it's been great thank you I'm Crystal Clevenger and I'm dri and this is the service now accelerate podcast series you can find us in other service now podcasts in the 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