 Live from Las Vegas, Nevada, it's The Cube. Covering Knowledge 15, brought to you by ServiceNow. We're here at ServiceNow Knowledge 15. It's the third year we've done The Cube at Knowledge, and we're watching the evolution of ServiceNow and its customer base. The core of ServiceNow's business really has started with IT, IT service management, and help desk, et cetera. But really, we're seeing the evolution into the lines of business. And Michael Lutz is here along with Justin Bean. They're with Accenture. And we're going to talk about that. These gentlemen specialize in the line of business side. Folks, welcome to The Cube. It's great to see you. Great to see you, Dave. Thanks. Yeah, so we're talking about the legacy of ServiceNow being in IT. You guys spend most of your time in the business. So Michael, let's start with you. So what do you bring that's different? You know, Dave, the one thing that we've really started to see is that ServiceNow as a platform brings a great opportunity for organizations to improve the way their company works. And we've heard a lot about that today and even yesterday during the keynotes. But what we have found is that as we've brought ServiceNow to the organizations, the demand that's coming from the business side has grown exponentially. And I think we've seen that even with the attendance here at Knowledge over the past number of years. And so we're seeing solutions that are running core mission parts, whether it's HR, logistics, supply chain management, legal, marketing. We're seeing that whole concept of everything as a service. And we've actually developed solutions that we've already taken out to our clients. We even heard that earlier today with one of our clients around supply chain management where we developed a supply chain management solution for a client that has more locations across the US than Walmart, McDonald's, and Starbucks combined. And we're running supply chain and logistics office ServiceNow. Now, Justin, you guys are specifically within a ServiceNow line of business inside of Accenture. Can you talk about that business a little bit? Sure, it's a global business. It's part of our emerging technology practice. It's definitely an area of what we would say is hyper growth right now. As we see cloud being adopted, again, across the business and mission space. When we look at where we were four or five years ago at the Knowledge events, right, a lot of the conversation was heavily into IT. Today, the excitement that we're seeing from the audience is really focused on the business and the mission space. A lot of the use cases and the stories that we're talking about out in the Expo Center, again, it's enabling things around HR, around finance, and then even getting into things like mobile case management. So that's where we're really seeing a lot of growth and opportunity in the way that we're partnering with our clients to deliver new cloud solutions, help reduce cost, drive new efficiencies, as well as improve that overall customer user experience. I think that's a huge area where ServiceNow is making major strides. It's improving the way that we're seeing customers adopt the technology and have a user experience that's more similar with what we see in our everyday lives. And Justin, your role is really developing the business, expanding the business, helping clients directly. And Michael, you are a practitioner? Or is that right? Correct. So what we refer to as a solution architect. So someone that's helping to develop those solutions with our clients. So when we talk about, as Justin mentioned, identifying ways to take legacy applications, including ones that may have been built on the mainframe, for example, or areas of the business that are still very manual in nature, and identifying how can we help improve the business for the company that we're working with, and then defining that solution on ServiceNow, and working through with our teams across the globe to implement it. We're creating solutions that we're delivering in as quickly as four days. Major legacy replacements in five, five and a half weeks. And that just shows the speed and agility that the ServiceNow platform brings, as well as the power that we're able to bring with Accenture. So you spend a lot of time in process? Process, technology, and then certainly the organizational piece too. Anytime we're making major shifts within a company, including even just the technology, we can't forget about the people factors as well and helping them to adapt to the new and more efficient ways of using the tools. People say people process technology, people in process are always the hardest, technology's the easiest. I mean, that's been sort of a bromide in this business for a number of years, but it's true, isn't it? It is, absolutely. People process and technology, and you're right, the technology supports what the people and the process are doing, but really you have to make sure the process is there, whether it's an IT process, or whether it's a business and mission process, you have to have that process laid out, the people have to be trained and understand how to do it, and then you use the tool like ServiceNow to help enable it and automate it and make the efficiency of those processes even better. This is a global sort of operation for you guys, obviously Accenture doesn't do anything that's not global. And so, is your responsibility global as well, or are you more focused on North America? So we're absolutely working with customers around the world. We had a great breakout session earlier this week where we talked about a customer that's rolling out to 280 plus locations around the world. If you think about the complexity of a solution like that, you have different service providers at each of those locations, you have different languages, you have different business services that are offered at each location, and so how do you make that user experience more personalized? How do you make it intuitive and easy to use such that you don't have to send your user community through a major session of training and get the adoption as you move from some of these legacy tools to something that's new and might be a little bit scary. ServiceNow is very much a disruptive technology, but it's disrupting in a good way, and that's where we're seeing a lot of the benefits and the business value by moving to ServiceNow. So I wonder if we could stand that global sort of deployments for a minute because they're complicated, there's language involved, there's cultures, people in process and people in process are different overseas. So how does Accenture address that and maybe you can give us some examples in success stories? Sure, well I think to tap on the one that Justin just referred to as one small example or one major example rather of how we made a deployment global was that we had unique processes at those 285 sites across the globe. So if you think each one of those had their own slightly different way of doing everything. On top of it you had language barriers, cultural barriers, things that needed to be factored for as we did the rollout. So using ServiceNow we were able to create a unique user experience for each and every one of those locations. Based on whether the user logged in what location they were assigned to gave them an experience that was unique to that location. So the workflows and the processes and the support that they had was all specialized for that. But at the end of the day it all rolled back into the core system so we truly had an enterprise vision of the performance of the organization across the globe. And if I could just add to that, I think one of the things that is unique and is really delivered on the promises this concept of agile delivery. With ServiceNow we're really able to embrace agile delivery. We're able to bring the business users into the same room with the technical team and actually build out a solution together. It allows us in real time to identify things like process improvement areas, understand what are the skill sets of those people that are on the ground that are gonna be delivering the service. And in real time build out incremental solutions and deliver value, but continuously improve into the future. So when we think about doing a large global delivery it's critical that at the early stages we're able to show progress and deliver value to gain that user adoption and then continue to roll out and improve over time. I think that's a critical part of Accenture's delivery methodology, but also with ServiceNow is a tool set. Again, it's delivered on this promise of real agile delivery. So Accenture thought leaders, you guys write a lot of stuff, you know. And you talk about the digital economy, the digitization of business. And customers are driving, you're helping customers at the board level drive into that digital economy. So what are you seeing in the customer base specifically as it relates to that transformation and how does service management support that? You know, that's a great question, Dave. When we look at the digital age and the digital economy day in and day out whether it's at work or at home we live in a digital world, a global digital world. So when we talk to the board rooms and the leaders within organizations we are helping them to define what their part of the digital market is and how to exploit it. But also reminding that in this digital age people expect things on demand, they expect it quickly and they expect levels of service that have been unprecedented. And that's really where we get into service management and applying the key core concepts of service management the entire service life cycle to all parts of the business. And that's both from handling demand to handling support and then also thinking about innovation for the future. It's an interesting topic because the companies have to figure out who's my competitor. It might not be the folks that I've competed with all these years. I mean, every retail company has an Amazon war room of course and they're trying to transform their businesses but we hear about Uber, biggest taxi company doesn't own any cabs. Facebook's the biggest media company doesn't produce any media. It's all user generated content. You know, YouTube on and on and on and on. So part of it is okay, I've got to figure out who my competition is but the other part which is maybe even harder is figuring out what business am I in? How can I actually participate in some of these new businesses? Do you see that as a new sort of mission of these companies? Are they driving you to help them with that mission? Maybe you could talk about that. Absolutely. And I think this is where we're seeing a shift in the way that IT used to be kind of a back office support function and now IT is helping to enable and drive the business. Every business out there is competing in this digital marketplace and they need to have technical solutions that can help them interact with their customer base. How do you manage the internet of things? How do I understand all the different pieces and products and people that I'm interacting with that might be part of a business service that I didn't know I was gonna deliver today than now I'm delivering tomorrow? A great example of that is what we just heard about with the United States Postal Service talking about six months ago they didn't think they'd be in the business of delivering groceries but now they're rolling out a new program where they're gonna be delivering groceries between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. in the mornings. So it's a very different and scary shift for a lot of these organizations but they need to figure out how does IT come back as an enabler of the business as opposed to hey my blackberry's not working can you help me with this? So now again we started the segment you guys your specialty is really going beyond IT. Maybe you could talk about what's happening there where are you seeing the demand for service management outside of IT? You know when we look at the best practices that we implemented within IT back in the day we quickly realized that they are needed across the business and even throughout the conference you've seen everything as a service we found that organizations not only what they're competing on the outside with whether it's they're delivering goods or services or services that are direct to consumer whatever it may be they have just as much responsibility to deliver services internally in order to meet those core mission areas. So we're looking at taking those same core concepts and applying whether it's keeping the business up and running front office or back office and taking it out to the business areas. It's things like legal, marketing, supply chain management. We talk a lot about case management I think that's one of the areas that we've developed a lot of the solutions on service now especially in conjunction with mobility because of the mobile workforce whether it's people out in the field or people working from home or bring your own device approach that whether they're doing contact centers whether they're just doing workflow, et cetera that whole concept of case management and being able to do it anywhere those are all core components of what we see out in the business and mission area. Let's go ahead and if I can just add to that I mean I think what's beautiful about this concept of everything as a service when you think about mobility and mobile case management the way that we are doing work today is changing. We want to be able to do work anytime, anywhere from a mobile device or whatever we have that's available to us and so being able to get the operational transparency or the insight into how our business is running in real time regardless of where our resources are working or how our customers are interacting that's able to produce those analytical insights that we've all been asking for and as data continues to explode I think this is a critical area where service now is that everything is a service I'll call it an agility layer is instrumental in providing that insight to executives. Well it was interesting Fred Lawdy's keynote this morning the emphasis on real time, the green light there's a person there, they're typing and of course we see that in Twitter Facebook's really not actually there yet interestingly enough but you see it in a lot of different applications Uber is another one and leveraging the unique characteristics of mobile beyond what you thought HTML5 was going to bring you so your clients got to be driving you in that direction in a big way. Oh absolutely, I think when we look at just the way that as you mentioned earlier in this digital economy how do we define a digital business that responds to the needs for mobility? How do we respond to a digital business that is operational 24 by seven and across the globe because it's a global economy and so to your point with things like Uber and with things like Twitter customers are demanding from their businesses and their suppliers on demand service and if they're not getting it there they're going to go somewhere else and given the marketplace we see innovations like Uber that are erupting overnight and they're disruptive technologies like ServiceNow and that's what we really look to help our customers go out and exploit these technologies so that they can be just as responsive in the marketplace. So the interesting thing about ServiceNow of course it's a platform platforms are beating products these days everywhere we look you talked about a couple of applications you mentioned supply chain management logistics we talked about a disaster management app that you guys have developed can we talk about those in a little bit more detail take us through those. Sure, do you want to? Sure and I'll add one to that right so one of the I think more interesting ways that we were able to apply ServiceNow and it gets back into the speed that we can support a business challenge was what we did as part of an onboarding process for a large criminal investigation organization they needed to send their new hires through a set of physical fitness tests the same things that we went through in middle school and high school running a mile jumping jacks, push-ups, pull-ups, things like that but it was part of their evaluation criteria to determine the readiness of that individual to go support their mission and so as we see in a lot of businesses it was a manual process that was done with clipboards and paper and those results were faxed in and then somebody had to re-type those into a system of records. 40-yard dash, Humber plus, somebody who got it. Oh, how do you think we tested the application? So it was a great use case for ServiceNow where we were able to quickly say don't trust us, let us go prove it to you let us put this application in your hands on a mobile device, on a tablet and show you that it's something that's extremely intuitive that anybody can use and now it's rolled out globally. Okay, so that's a third one so logistics, disaster management, the sort of onboarding app? So with disaster management we had a chance to chat about it briefly last night with some folks but when we think about disaster and when disaster strikes some people think of catastrophic events like a hurricane or a tsunami, major geographical disasters how do companies prepare, manage and respond to that but it's not just those major disasters that may be a bit more natural in nature we also look at disasters that occur with business unfortunately daily almost we look at a lot of companies in recent past couple months have experienced major data breaches security breaches a major disaster for a company that's brand integrity at stake it's data at stake it's consumer confidence at stake so we developed for one of our customers a solution run entirely on ServiceNow that allowed them to manage the entire disaster management life cycle so preparing for disaster planning for managing through it responding to it and then closing out and doing the follow up and it involved things like financial management what's the budget for this how are we managing spend integration with social media we talked a lot about Twitter and Facebook well those are things environmental monitors that you want to be monitoring in the event of a disaster to both be able to pull information in to see what's being said as well as to push information out we're using ServiceNow for that integration with other key databases or data sources that we're able to provide information around supplies and responsiveness managing people you know one thing we talk about a disaster is cast hits and everyone is off running on their own how do you have a single unified voice how do you make sure people within the organization are on the same page and have a single source of truth to speak from and to speak to and then certainly from the C-suite how do they manage it how do they have a single dashboard into what is going on how the organization is responding and then certainly to an audit trail investigations pop up what did we do to respond how do we go back and prove all of that wow that's awesome because it's disaster hits it's like where's the book yeah got lost in the flood it's true the red binder is gone where's Fred yep he knows what to do yeah and so it's funny we talk about the red binder from days gone yonder we've replaced that red binder with ServiceNow and ServiceNow is helping to really manage the people aspects the media, the communications, the knowledge and the overall disaster life cycle and so these are in the store, these apps? they will be yeah they're actually not in the store but folks are certainly welcome to stop by the center booth while they're here to reach out because we've got a no one disaster is the same we also recognize no organization is the same so instead of a one size fits all we've got a solution that can be yeah okay because you guys you're not trying to become a software company you're a solutions company correct you live on services so in every situation it's a little different in your world right it is is that why it's not in the store because it's just not a I think as the store continues to evolve we'll look at what the opportunities are okay we'll just leave that right there we'll talk to you next year about the store yeah sometimes great but I mean the concept of this platform and the evolution of that platform it's got to be appealing to guys like you oh yeah it's something again I mean the speed, the fact that we can get in we can prove and we can demonstrate a business outcome as opposed to talking about you know a waterfall delivery methodology it's a different conversation it's even changing the way that we interact with our customers because again we're focusing more on what is the value, what is the outcome they're looking to achieve and not so much on you know how are we going to roll this out over 9, 12, 18 months it's again we can prove it let us show you, let us work with you let's bring your business people and sit in the room together and talk about how we're going to deliver this and I think that the speed is one of the biggest things I remember recently having a conversation with one of our clients and said Mike I love you guys you do great work but it always seems like you know these are major implementations you're going to be here for a year, a year and a half and I said well no I think we're talking about weeks I hope you don't get too attached to me and the team because we're going to be out of here and I said I'll believe it when I see it and we wrapped up in that case in just over five weeks and jaw dropped couldn't believe it and they said well actually I want you to stay because you've got more to do now we want to keep doing more and you know we're not having the party yet you guys got to hang up for a while he's like hey I get what you're talking about now we're seeing the power of the platform so the ability to deliver quickly our clients you know we've shifted our methodology to be able to deliver very quickly and then they get results quick which is important for them all right Michael Justin we have to leave it there thanks very much for coming to theCUBE it was great to meet you guys Dave thanks so much appreciate it keep right there buddy we'll be back with our next guest we're live from ServiceNow Knowledge 15 this is theCUBE we'll be right back