 Live from Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE. Covering Knowledge 15, brought to you by ServiceNow. Okay, welcome back everyone. You're watching SiliconANG, the Wiggy Bonds, theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the sizzling noise. We are live in Las Vegas for ServiceNow, Knowledge 15, or hashtag No15, and I'm John Furrier by Coach Dave Vellante. And our next guest is Lance Nelson, the director of Service Management at Career Education Corp. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. So first tell us what your company does, and then we'll talk about why you're here and some of the things that you're working on. Great, so Career Education is a online, actually it's not even online, it's a ground brick and mortar for-profit education company. So we have approximately 50 schools across the country, and we provide online education for people like us. Just regular working folks, not the traditional 18 year old, but more of the 30 year old, 35 year old working professional. Retraining, yeah. Yeah, just getting a new degree, another opportunity, or they're already doing the work, they just want the degree. So that's what we specialize in. So it's cloud and DevOps and Node.js, some of the most downloaded course, whereas data science must be booming. Yeah, we have an awesome program, so come to one of our classes, you'll really enjoy it. Online, I'm just a huge fan of online learning, because I just think it's a game changer. I think the MOOC's trend's going to be, going to change education. Probably be disrupted as much as healthcare and others, I mean, I'm so excited. I mean, at Stanford University, when they offered the computer science course online, they had such an amazing amount of people taking the classes. They kind of scratched their head and said, man, what do we do with our other business model? That's work that we make money from. So what are some of the dynamics in education, and why service now, and why? Sure. What's the service management challenges that you faced? For education, it's no different than any other business. You have departments that have processes, they have ticketing, they have work that they do, they use email, and then IT is no different as well. We have a big, strong development team, and service desk, and we have infrastructure, network, server, so like any other company and any other industry, we're no different. So service now, for us, provides us a robust application case management for our ticketing for our service desk. That's fundamentally what it does, but it also does a lot for our business areas. So for HR, facilities, and we're bringing service now to all of the non-IT groups. So wherever we can retire a tool, wherever we can get away from email, wherever we can just provide a better service delivery. So talk about the numbers, students, how many campuses, is it remote, is it all online? Do you go out to universities? Is the geography involved, is it centralized? Give us the quick topology of the schools. So the day in the life. So our corporate headquarters is actually in the Chicago suburbs of Chomberg, and we have about, oh, few thousand employees that are based out of there, and then the rest of us are in all the schools and you name the state, we probably have a school there. We have culinary, we have health, we have even education, IT, and all the other standard career courses. And our makeup is primarily 50-50 split between ground and online. So we have two really large divisions that are focused only on online. So that's about 25,000 students just for that. And then the other 25,000 students are the brick and mortar, you know, going to a culinary school or they're going to a health school. So it's pretty much like a normal work environment these days, pretty much virtual workforces in some cases. That's right. People are out in the field, outside the firewall, if you will, mobile. What are some of the things that you guys were doing before ServiceNow? And what did ServiceNow do with you guys and what was the outcome that you saw with ServiceNow? We implemented back in 2009, so it's been a while for us. And we were using an internal tool and we were just looking to save a little cost and provide some flexibility and do something for HR group. That was probably the driving force for us to even look at ServiceNow or even some other tool. So we implemented actually HR first and then our IT side. And then we quickly realized the benefit of the workflow and all the opportunities that ServiceNow has. So we were looking to expand it. That's pretty much my mantra is to retire tools and to get rid of email, make things more transparent and just empower our business to actually, because they're doing the same things IT does. They have the same needs. They provide service, they provide workflow, they got it. But they usually use email or they buy some other tool. So if I can replace the tool, I can improve the service then ServiceNow is where I turn to go. So a big part of the education business, if I can call it that, is scaling up now and reaching people that maybe can't afford it or don't have access or just new ways to be educated. How has this sort of process management changed, supported the scale that you're trying to achieve in your business? Presumably you're trying to scale every business, but how, maybe talk about that a little bit. Yeah, well, one of the things we did do, this is not quite directly related, but we originally had our own ticketing tool for our students and this year, we actually transitioned that to ServiceNow as well and the students don't even know it. So we took the same interface, made very little changes to it and now it's actually bringing the tickets to the tool. So now we have better visibility onto what's going on in our actual core business. Before it was a separated item, we had no idea what was going on in our student environment when we started talking about problems or change management or any of those other factors, but from a cost perspective, we were just looking to add efficiencies, mostly for our faculty. So they're at home users and they're not in a traditional work environment. So supporting an at home user that's really not really connected to your corporation, so to speak, it was a big factor. But again, our students are now using ServiceNow, they just don't know it. We haven't branded it to them, it's just a ticket and a receipt and a notification. So we've done some improvements for that environment. How about AppDev? You use an app creator, what are you doing, what's going on in your application development environment? You're laughing here. Yeah, that's a great question. I could spend all day on that one. So for us, we do a lot of custom apps. So we spend a great deal of time developing something to improve our, whether it's the service desk, or whether it's our tech support, whether it's our ground IT groups. You know, we want to make sure they are aware of what's going on in their environments. We build them apps to be more specific to their area. So they're not going to those standard work areas like the incident tickets or the request tickets. They have an application now for just their stuff. So that way they know what's going on, they can create tickets for their areas and they can address it. So we build other apps for business areas too. So they have their own, like our bookstore operations. We provide a lot of course materials for our students. So they have a really big process for databaseing books, data warehouse, they got to store them, chip them. So we built them an app to manage all of their workflow and processes. So, and they even have their own ticket prefix. So an INC ticket for incident. I don't know how deep you guys want to go in this. No, let's go deep. But the INC for a ticket. We're talking about asynchronous before. Sockets. We have sockets. So a wild ticket actually has a wild number to it. So we have a way to create a wild ticket. They handle it internally. We do the same for our tech support tickets. So those have TS ticket numbers. So those route only to tech support. And if we want to go to the IT side within a TS ticket, I'm going really into the weeds, they will convert that to an INC ticket. So anyway, it's just a. So I got to ask the question. You can micro-target the request. So I got to ask the question. We've been following SIRS now for many years, but they always say, oh, it's easy. And that's easy, easy. Tell me what that means to you. Because you're in the, you're a customer. Right. What's easy about it? Or is it not easy? You know, that's not easy. Of course, it's easy. They say it's easy, so it's easy. What's the truth? Tell us. I should have my developer with me to tell you how easy it is. I mean, I mean, everything's there. Nothing's really, it's all relative. Well, I mean, each of you has a good response to that. So my, again, another mantra is that we don't train anybody. So we don't train our, we don't train our end users. No manuals. We don't train our IT friends. We don't train our business people. We want it to be so intuitive that it's that easy from a customer perspective. So whether you're the end user, whether you're an IT professional, there's no training required. So it doesn't matter what application you're talking about. It should be that, it should be that easy. So the other part of that question is from how easy is it? I am, I spent a lot of time kind of dreaming up things that we can do with it. What can we do to improve the end result? And when you do that, the more stuff you do, the more you have to support. So the other side of the easy is, we're building this castle and at some point, you're going to spend a lot of time keeping your castle painted and making sure that the windows are open. So on one hand, you got goodness in the ease of use, enablement. You get creative, create some stuff. And then it's like. I'm creating a lot of work for my admins. So we are getting busier. So, but that brings us in. But it's still easy, it's just busy, right? Well, I mean, hopefully people are in the castle doing business, having fun, learning in your case. So, but that brings up the next level of cloud agility, seeing more and more stuff hit in the market in terms of innovation. They have to build more goodness in the platform. That's right. So what do you see for tooling? Is automation a big deal? I mean, what are some of the things that naturally come after the, oh well, happiness. So let's go build Lego blocks. You build the castle. In this case. We're always building new wings to our castle. So what about, what's the tooling? What helps you manage it better? Cause then that, your opportunity becomes your challenge. Right, right. So what's some of the things that they offer? Well, we go, you know, the, I think where you're going with that is that tool replacement is a big one. So there's a lot of cost for tools. So we have every tool is like $100,000. So, so whether it's a telecom tool, whether it's an infrastructure, infrastructure tool. So if we can retire tools, you know, that's, that helps. But we just are constantly trying to, to just, just grow the application and just make it easier for the end users. I'm really all about service management. You saw it in my title and you know, I want a new employee to be onboarded and not have to know a guy. So in Chicago, you got to know a guy, right? So, so. I know this guy can get you there. Yeah, I don't want you to know a guy. You should be able to go into an organization, not know anybody and be able to get onboarded and get your things and know where to go or not even have to know where to go. You just go one place. One store to shop and it's just that easy. You want to make it painless and an easy transition. What about your skill sets? You talked about developing apps and increasingly you're developing apps and ServiceNow for the business. How has that shifted your skill sets within your application development team? And what are you looking for? What's the kind of profile of a person that you're looking for? That's a, that's also a good question. So, you know, ServiceNow admins are hard to come by. So most companies probably provide their own training. They build them within their own infrastructure teams or the app dev teams. And the, so we have, for us anyway, we have always had one, usually one hardcore developer type and then we have an infrastructure type. So I'm not quite answering your question directly. Well, okay, but you got a full stack developer, right? But you don't need a full stack developer to develop apps in ServiceNow. At least that's what we're told. And I presume it's true. That's right. So, it's a, you know, it's a three tier thing. So you got to have a, somebody that knows service management, you have to have somebody that knows infrastructure, kind of knows how IT works. And then, and then that's your infrastructure people. And then you need to have somebody that has the development chops. So there is some SQL, there's some, you know, you do have to know some type of programming because it's a discipline. You don't just like a cowboy build something and then expect it to work great. You got a QA, you got to test it. You have to know how to release products. So similar skill sets of your normal application. Absolutely. But with the infrastructure side. So you're connecting to other people's tools. You're, you're developing things. You're integrating with, I mean, everybody outsources these days. So you got to have, you got to be able to connect to other companies. Okay. So then what's different from an application development standpoint is that they're more productive. They can develop more. It's, it's better code. All of the above, none of the above, can you share any metrics or? Yeah, that one's a tough one. So I just, all I can tell you is those guys are really, really busy in there. And I annoy them to, to no end things I wanted to do. So, so yeah, from a, they, they're not hurting for work. So I don't really have metrics about what their productivity is or, or whatever. But it's, it's like the field of dreams. If you can dream it, they can come and you just, they're just, I've been talking to all kinds of folks around here in the conference and everybody has the same thing. There's a 500 things I want to do. But that, you know what? Realistically, they can only do 10 of those things this year. What's the vibe of the show? You mentioned you talked a lot of folks. We've been talking a lot of practitioners here. What are your peers out there alike? And what's the vibe here? For the people who aren't here, we're here in the cube. We're in the big stage here in the center of all the action. A lot of stuff going on. It's got a good kind of mellow, but really, really upbeat. Right. Seems like a happy conference. A lot of people in numbers. I mean, multiple people from multiple comp, same company. What's your, what's your take on the vibe? Explain to the folks out there, what's going on there? I think the biggest thing that I, this is my fourth conference. So I'm certainly not a veteran. There's people have been here for 10, you know, 10 of them, you know, I'm sure they have badges for it. But the thing that I appreciate about this is even if you're talking to a competitor, everybody is sharing. So you're talking to people in like industries or different industries. Everybody's not afraid to talk about what they're doing, their challenges they've had, and just the sharing and the willingness to talk about what their deep problems are and just provide insight to other companies or other groups. So I- Do you guys share security threats with other companies? Yeah, we know, we keep- That's the conversation I was just having in RSA. Yeah. No. So yeah. It's nice to have- Obama may make you when the president says, you know, openly have to share. You know, but sharing culture is here. It's a lot of open source DNA. Exactly, exactly. And there's lots to learn. I mean, there's just so much sharing and nobody knows everything. So it's really good to hear some of the things that other people are experiencing. How has service now changed your business? And if you can share some metrics around that, that'd be fantastic. Great. I don't know if I can give you some metrics, but I can tell you it's more of the water cooler metric. So what service now does is it actually kind of bonds IT into their business areas. So before we had our own applications, we were separate. The thing with service now is that, now people are coming to me that are not part of IT saying, hey, we've got this workflow. We want you to solve for us. Or can you, can it do that? And so we have conversations. So I think IT is becoming more of a partner. It is anyway in most companies- But you're on the proactive side. So you're actually in the business process improvement versus an afterthought. Hey, go provision this for me. Yeah, what would you say? Yes. So to me, that's one of the biggest benefits that service now gives us is it makes IT more a partner and less of an outsource function. Well, in your business, you've got the edge of the network as the human component. I mean, the internet of things is, humans are things in the eyes of computers, right? So you've got a mobile device. I'm traveling or mobile. I want to learn. You've got to manage that, right? Right. If it's down, it's not being serviced. It's lost business. So you could actually probably say direct revenue. I mean, it's key, right? Sure. Sure. So what advice would you give your peers out there? So share with folks who are watching or who are maybe putting a toe in the water with service management. Have the old ways, provisioning gear, old apps. They're getting a lot of pressure from the top line. More revenue, getting more integrated to the business units, which is the big trend. What would you say to them? In terms of advice, mindset, approach, training, education. I guess what I would say is just make sure that you have all your areas of business represented in the conversation. So I'm not one to go after a committee for every decision you got to make, but you should definitely make sure that you have all of the constituents in the room making these decisions. And some of the development coaching I would give is be careful of customizations. I don't follow my own advice. I'll tell you that right now. So I think I can do everything better than anybody else, just like most people. Just two one-offs. Yeah, just one more, one more, one more. But try to stay away from customizations. There's a reason it was built the way it was. And then the other thing is we're all doing the same thing. So it doesn't matter the organization, the company. We all have incident tickets. We all have service catalog. Everybody's doing the same thing. Don't reinvent the wheel. The wheel has been invented. Take what's already out there and leverage it. Don't think your catalog is the next big whiz. There's plenty out there to look at. Use those examples and mirror them as best you can. And I think you'll be golden. Lance, it's been a great pleasure having you on the queue. I'll give you the last word. Share with the folks out there. What's the most exciting thing at this conference that you've seen so far that you're jazzed up about? What's going on here? What do you like? What do you see that's looking good for you right now? Well, I came to the conference and I always go, it's just looking to see what's the next thing that's coming out there. There's a lot of applications that are becoming available so in Fuji and even beyond. So just learning more about what's out there and understanding what's possible. It just sets me for the next year on what I want to go after for the next big project. Set the agenda? Yeah, exactly. All right, Lance Nelson, Director of Service Management at Career Education Corporation. Great mission, congratulations on your success. Education online, physical, virtual, it's all converging. Great stuff, thanks for joining us. It's the queue bringing you the data here from Service Now Live in Las Vegas. We'll be right back after this short break.