 Hi everybody, we're back after that break and we're here at the Service Now Knowledge Conference in Las Vegas, we're at the Aria Hotel. I'm here with my co-host and colleague, Jeff Frick. As you know, we've been broadcasting also live from SAP Sapphire now in Orlando. We're also at Google I.O. today, Mark Risen Hopkins and Kenny Bowen are out there. So we've got it all covered for you. Check out siliconangle.com for all the blogs and all the news. Check out wikibond.org for all the research. YouTube.com Silicon Angle, YouTube.com slash Silicon Angle for all the videos that we're doing here. And we are going to continue to unpack the Service Now messaging, the marketing messaging and test the alignment with the customers. Craig Wishard is here. He's the CIO of Service Stream, an Australian company and customer of Service Now. Craig, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you very much, Mark Risen. Yeah, so we've been talking to a number of practitioners this morning about the show, sort of how they're using Service Now. But before we get into that, tell us more about Service Stream and tell us about your role there as a CIO. Sure, so Service Stream is a strain-listed business and we really have three unique business divisions. So we have a telecommunications business which specializes in rolling out and managing fiber across the country nationally. We have a mobile communications business which specializes in building mobile communications towers. In fact, this year we'll do around about 1,500 of those towers and upgrading them to the new LTE standards. And we have an energy and water business which in itself is quite diverse, but everything from in-home services from solar, installations on roofs and hot water service through to we do around 40 million meter reads a year and this year coming with over 400,000 smart meter replacements. We have a field force of about 4,000 plus people which makes us one of the largest in the country for field force. And of course, you know, Service Stream by nature grew up through acquisition and one of the challenges that we found when I first joined 12 months ago was that by default you end up with very different cultures, very different platforms, very bespoke architectures and that sort of led us down the path in many ways to looking for a platform that could start to consolidate the business but start to give us some leverage through commonality of process and also some synergies through the way in which the businesses work together. You spoke as a good description of the way that a lot of IT operations are run. So you guys are seriously into infrastructure obviously. Well, that's true, you know, in terms of what we do as a technology team, we saw our objectives as being very closely aligned with the business unit in terms of being able to build commonality and drive cost out. You know, one of the key premises that we offer to our clients is that we manage your customer's customer and we do it very well and we do it on the basis of delivering to the expectations of our clients. And you know, to do that, you really need a platform that can get you from the back of house, if you like, from the data center right out to parts of Australia which are still going through connectivity issues with telecommunications. So we have a very mobile workforce, you know, with people working from right up the North end to right down into the metros. So you were at the CIO Decisions Conference that was taking place here, I guess I call it a conference, but it's like a sub-event. Yeah. Sort of a breakout, if you will, at this event. Before we get into sort of your implementation of service now, talk a little bit about what was shared at that little side event. What kind of themes were struck and what was on the minds of the CIOs that were in that? Yeah, look, that's a good question. And it was, firstly, it was a terrific event to be a part of and around people who are like-minded in a sense of, you know, one thing you find when you start talking to people, regardless of where you work, you often face the same challenges. You know, you're under increasing cost pressures to not only take cost out but to deliver value. The other challenges you're facing too often are, how do you compete very quickly? You know, the market is moving so quickly and your competitors are moving quickly that often what you're trying to do is not only keep pace but innovate at the same time. So innovation was a key theme. I think the other thing that came out is, you know, how do we start to leverage what each of us are doing and how do we start to learn more from one another? And I found that quite refreshing because in most instances, when you attend these sorts of conferences, people are very guarded. And one thing I've really taken out of this one in particular is that people are very open and want to share. So, you know, the three key themes I took out here is, you know, how do CIOs lead and how do you get business connectedness? Second piece is around, how do you drive innovation often when you're competing against taking cost out? And I think the third thing that, you know, became quite obvious too is, how can we start to work together to leverage the capabilities of this platform which seem to be developing, you know, week by week? So let's talk about some of those themes. I want to start with leadership. What has changed in the last 10 years as far as CIO leadership? Well, that's, you know, that's something too that is being discussed quite openly in Australia too, the role of the CIO. And in many ways, I think the title itself will change over time. But, you know, I think if we go back 15, 20 years, you know, CIOs typically evolved from being infrastructure applications people. And they grew up with specific knowledge around how to build stuff. And, you know, over the last five years, I think what we've seen is a transition of, you know, the CIO role being very much the person in the business who has accountability for information systems and technologies, but really they're there to provide coaching and leadership to our business units on how they can best leverage new technologies, you know, to increase their profitability, drive revenue, take cost out, but also increasingly how do you manage your workforce? It's a very diverse role. And I think one of the challenges, and I'm talking about this later today in my presentation, the CIO role by default can also lock you into a paradigm that restricts you from being innovative. And, you know, one of the things I'm talking about today is that, you know, be careful in a sense, if you define yourself as a CIO role, in fact, you may define yourself as being out of the business. I see the role of the CIO now really being another business executive at the table who really just has accountability for systems and process. So that leads me to the next, you know, piece that you mentioned, which is innovation. I want to talk about the role of the CIO and innovation, Jeff's from Silicon Valley, where there's a lot of innovation going on. And one of the, the mantra of Silicon Valley, right, Jeff is if you're going to fail, fail fast. You know, failure is oftentimes not something that's part of the CIO's DNA. In fact, oftentimes they're trying to avoid failure. So talk about that dissonance. How, in your view, can the CIO both lead and drive innovation in a climate that is frequently thought of as, you know, de-risking themselves? Yeah. Well, you know, when we talk about the themes and what's obvious, and I'll put into this context, you know, there's three things that have really come up over the last six months, which continue to resonate no matter where you are. And they are, you know, how do we solve for mobility? How do we solve for, you know, what is effectively going to be big data? And how effectively, you know, do we solve for what is going to become predominantly these cloud-based services? So if I talk about de-risking, you know, I think one of the challenges here is where we run at either end at times. We run from right at legislation end, which is what can you do? And of course in Australia, we often face into the context of, you know, data sovereignty. It's always a big issue in terms when you speak to, you know, the legal team. Where's it hosted? Who's got the data? How can we protect the data and the IP? Right through to, I think, the role that the CIO plays in terms of, you know, taking investments and turning them into things that, you know, make sense for the business. I think the challenge around de-risking is often about relationships. And, you know, I think there's a lot of things that you can read about it, but at the end of the day, the position you take as a Chief Information Officer is a big, you know, business executive. How do we take an investment strategy and how do we translate into something that's going to mean something for the business? Either in adding value to the share price or taking costs out of the business so that we can do more with the money that we save? You know, I think by many default, you know, we are constrained sometimes by legislation, but I think often it's just the questions we ask that helps us solve for those problems. Now, of course we, the third area we want to talk is the collaboration. We do a lot of these events, and a lot of them are, you know, at a big vendor, you know, shops like IBM or HP or EMC, and by the very nature of their heft, they're running into, you know, partners and they're, you know, the whole co-opetition thing. What's the CIO's attitude on collaboration in terms of, I mean, you know, the peer-to-peer thing is very strong. You guys culturally are very strong with your peers, but how do you collaborate with competitors? Is that whole co-opetition thing hit your world and talk about it specifically in terms of collaboration within the ServiceNow community? Yeah, I think we're very much on the start of our ServiceNow journey. We've been going now really for about six months, and like most, we started with an ITSM instance. From what I've been able to see, we're very well-progressed on what we do, and obviously we'll talk about that as well, but, you know, we, you know, I don't think there's anything that we're doing that hasn't been done elsewhere, and I think the challenge is, how do you apply that in your own context? We've been very open with a lot of our people in terms of, you know, even some of our competitors are watching what we do, and of course, we watch what they do. At the end of the day, I think the measures of success are very simple for our clients, and that is deliver the services that we ask you to do, deliver them very well. The technologies that you use regardless, well, you know what, that's up to you. So, Craig, talk a little bit about mobile, and, you know, you mentioned that you've got 4,000 field guys out there, and Australia, for those who don't know, still doesn't have a road that goes all the way across, right? I mean, there's some desolate areas still in Australia. There's a bumpy one at one point, yes, that's right. There's a bumpy one if you have a Range Rover, hopefully. But anyway, so talk about, you know, one, the challenges of having this field force, and then two, how the current trends in mobility are impacting your ability to help them do their jobs. Perhaps a couple of things on this one, that, you know, and I'll start at the telecommunications and the public internet level. You know, we do run into challenges around the size of our country, and we do run into coverage issues, but, you know, if you put that aside where that seems to be growing, and some people may be familiar with what the federal government's doing around their national broadband network program, which is, you know, a $36 billion program to provide connectedness around the country. That aside, you know, from our perspective, we want our people in the field and we want them working, and the way to do that is to provide them with in-field devices. A lot of our people for so long have been working off paper. They'll literally print paper out, they'll take it with them, they'll fill it out, and in some cases, they'll roll it over. The bonnet of a four-wheel drive in Western Australia, they'll mark it up with a texter. They'll probably spill some coffee on it at the same time. That'll then be post-packed back into the main office, where we'll render that back into AutoCAD, and then we'll figure out six weeks later that actually we really don't understand what you've done and we'll send them back out again. It's probably not the best way to do things. So, you know, if I think about what we're doing there, very shortly our people will take out a tablet, they'll mark it up on the fly, we'll be using Surface now to drive the service order management side of that, and as immediately as they submit that, we'll render that in AutoCAD and have an infield collaboration, which is just going to take out six weeks of a cycle time just at the front end. And, you know, it'll reduce our error rate by at least 80%. The second piece, which I think is really interesting in terms of how we're using the product, within the next six months, we'll have nearly $250 million of revenue flowing through service now. Whilst it's being used for ITSM, we're standing it up as a business platform. $250 million in revenue. I'd say within the eight months, the target will be half a billion. So, our revenue base will be flowing through the platform. Now, to give you an example of what we're doing there, we will do in-home services for one of the utility companies in Australia, and we'll drive about 70 to 80 million dollars worth of revenues through it this year. And we are putting all of our service orders in there. We're running asset management through the platform, serialization of stock integrated into the vision, Microsoft's vision asset. We then take that information and we push that out to a tablet for our infield people who accept or reject the job. Now, one great example of where service now has given us power that we didn't have is if you think for every hundred jobs that we do, our technicians have to fill out 2,000 pages of A4. It's a compliance issue that we've had to face in turn. With service now, we're driving it from form-based. They mark it up on the tablet. They then ask the customer to sign it. They physically draw the house and mark up where the panels will go on the roof and they submit it. For every job we do, we take 20 pages of A4 out and we take out back a house FTE who had to read that. It's a remarkable thing to be able to do. I think this year we'll take out 40,000 pages of A4 that need review. Wow, that is amazing. I'm having saying all week that to me, service now is about scaling your business and it's about delivering business value. That's right. And you just gave two examples where it's enabling you to reach business scale. And I really like this value discussion. Is the value discussion in your mind something that service now is enabling additional value or is it just enabling you to actually see the value flow or a combination? You know, one of the things that I really liked about service now when I first saw it and it's resonated with me since we started the journey is the simplicity of the interface. And I was just talking to one of the service providers downstairs about some reporting and analytics software and I said, what do you want to use it for? I said, actually, I don't want to use it. I want my business execs to use it. Because I don't want to be sitting there writing reports. I think I need to be able to empower my people and my colleagues at the table, as well as my board, to be able to construct reports with information that makes sense to the problems they're trying to solve for. And I think when we look at service now in terms of the value it derives, it's the simplicity of the way in which the information could be presented back. And the information is then providing a framework for taking decisions. And more importantly, I want a framework from which our clients can see the value that we're pushing out to them. We were talking earlier this morning to Fred Lutty after his keynote and the Internet of Things came up. He indicated that as one of the interesting trends that he's tracking. And then he sort of tied it back into service now as part of the vision. They basically, he wants to touch virtually everybody out there and presumably potentially every device out there. So you guys are in the sort of Internet of Things business instrumenting the infrastructure, the energy infrastructure. Can you talk about that a little bit and talk about the whole, this big data theme and what this all means to your company? I think, you know, big data is interesting because I don't think it's really been defined. I think it's still very much at a concept stage. So people talk about it in terms of what do we know about what we know. They talk very broadly about social networks and interactions and information that you can extract. But perhaps I can give you a really good example of where we're gonna take the platform next that will play into the big data piece. You know, over the next six months we will stand up a self-management workforce interface for our people. So if you can imagine this, which doesn't exist today, I think we're really gonna be first in the Southern Hemisphere to stand this up. People will be able to register with our business, putting in place, in fact, their skills, their capabilities, the insurances they hold, the compliances they hold, the type of work that they wanna do. So for example, I only wanna work on a Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. And by the way, I only work on single story houses. I don't do doubles. By the way, here's my contracting model and the subset of contractors that I have. And this is the rate that I'll work for. Now today, we have a very heavy, process-driven HR. You know, I gotta talk to everyone and then I'll employ you and that process just takes too long. We'll get to self-management of not only the registration cycle, but also how I self-manage my profile. Now once I get to there, I think our workforce reach will move from 4,000 to 20,000 to 30,000 people who will register with our business to do work for us that we can then go out and capture. So you'll be able to essentially funnel down those candidates. Right, so then you talk about big data, right? And you say, so now that I know who you are, what else do I know about you in the public internet world? And I can start to look at what people say about you on Facebook. So I can say, okay, you're a plumber. Terrific, we need that sort of skill and capability. What else do you know out there? And how do you represent yourself out there? Because if I'm going to put you out there with one of our clients' customers, I need to know that you're going to represent us the way that I want you to be represented. How about all this, how about all the data that's going to come up with smart meters? How do you envision using that? That's a great question. And we're going to this year to somewhere around about 400,000 smart meter replacements. And those sorts of jobs, funny enough, they take about 28 minutes each. So they're a very quick job. The data that comes back off the smart meter obviously goes back into the utility providers. But one thing that the utility providers in Australia are doing very now is that they have what's called an in-home display device. You put that device on your wall, I don't know if you've got it in the US, but you put it on your wall and you can look at it every minute and it tells you how much energy you're consuming in your house. And you can start to take decisions around the way in which you use your appliances. But if you look at us, we are very much the intermediary there to get that data to the house and back to the utility company. And for us, of course, service now will then form the backbone of the asset management cycle. So we now know where that asset is. We know when that asset needs to be treated and then we can proactively go back and help these people manage their devices, both at a consumer and at the business end. Yeah, that's good. I think you're a little bit ahead. I'm from New England. We're just finally getting rid of our windmills. Yeah, I know that. I know Austin, folks down at Austin Energy are doing some cool stuff like that. I think generally, you're a little bit ahead of the curve. You're actually implementing those today? Absolutely. So we are doing the shippack and dispatch of the in-home devices today in Australia. And then we've also been doing the smart meter replacement for two or three years now and we've got a large cycle to come. So it appears that service now has great potential. I like and do it to a tick. It's not the best analogy, but sort of embedded into the organization. It's like a tick and a virus. But not really. I mean, it's funny because you talk about Salesforce and that's kind of how Salesforce happens, right? You buy two licenses and then three seats and then five seats and then you get a million seats. It seems like service now actually doesn't take that sort of approach. But nonetheless, this whole idea of a platform and the ability to develop other applications seems to be something that your organization could take advantage of over time. Where do you see that going? I think from our perspective, there's a number of things that we need to get right. The first thing is, we've got to be able to capture a workforce. So really we need a workforce of people with skills and capabilities that we can leverage back into the market and we want our clients to see the value in which we hold. I think the second thing for us very much is that we have to be able to move information around very quickly and we need to be able to capture the information in terms of the work that we perform, push that information out, get the information back and then pass that back to our clients. And of course, like any business, we need to be run a very effective billing cycle. So to give an example again, how service now is helping us, we've built in what's called an RCTI process which effectively is just a tax invoicing. So when I go out and do a job, once I close that job in service now, that kicks a process that starts the billing cycle. So I will immediately know that I've just been paid for that job. You know, and we run some assumptions around the quality and the work that you've done. So that part is also next steps for us in terms of just maturing it. I think the third piece, which is probably one of the challenges that I think we're all going to face in terms of six to 12 months is, so we've got all this data. Now, what do we do with it? You know, do we understand the information that we've got? And, you know, one of the things that I really like about the platform that we'll start to work on more is, how can you extract the data in such a format if you like for our business leaders that they can start to take decisions? I really think that the growth of the platform is not going to come from my team. I think I'm going to be surpassed by my business leaders and executives are going to ask me to do more. And I think they're going to ask me to do more in the field and the space of mobility. And they're going to ask me to do more and how can they start to interpret the data they've got to drive business performance. Yeah, and the example you gave, it says it's a great example of instrumenting your business and that seems to be where it's headed. It's taking out cost and efficiencies and driving new revenue opportunities. Yeah, I agree with you. All right, great, so Craig, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. No, thank you. Thanks for your time. We talk a little bit about big data. Go to wikibon.org slash big data. You'll get all the free research that we've done. There's got a new infographic out just today that actually Forbes did on our data. So that's kind of cool. Check out the blog. Craig Wishart, thanks very much for coming on. This is theCUBE right back after this word.