 Live from Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE. Covering Knowledge 15, brought to you by ServiceNow. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are live inside theCUBE. Widing down day two of wall-to-wall coverage with theCUBE, which is Silicon Angles flagship program. We go out to the events and they strike the citizen noise. And this is an exciting segment. We're going to introduce the winners of the Knowledge 15 Innovation of the Year Award. Winners and guys, congratulations. Our next guest is David Leskali, Service Delivery Manager and Josh Mills, ServiceNow developer from SRA International. Congratulations for winning the Innovation of the Year Award and welcome to theCUBE. Great, thank you so much. Thanks. So you guys built an app in partnership with the National Cancer Institute. Tell us the app, this is a huge award. This is the Innovation Award and ServiceNow doesn't take this award very lightly. This is a big deal. Those guys are very innovative and their software is fantastic. So for them to get you the award-winning spot, tell us about the story. Okay, so about a year ago is when the story began and we supporting the National Cancer Institute, there's a number of physicians and research scientists, lab environments and very technical environments that our technical support staff were supporting and at times the support was running long. We were relieving people at times three or four days for a ticket to be resolved and in worst case scenarios several months. And so, you know, in the tech support arena keeping people in the right area and with the right knowledge as a challenge is always evolving and the technology changes. And so what we were finding is that our technicians were often looking for resources that weren't there. They were looking at a knowledge base and they were searching and they were trying to find an answer but they couldn't get it. And so as I was visiting the staff down there on the campus area, a number of them felt that that was kind of their big hurdle and they were looking for help to figure that out. And so we realized that we're not really supporting IT, we're supporting cancer research. And so when you got in the mindset of what that was the impact of being down in the service arena, it really changed our focus a lot. And so we positioned ourselves to try to reduce the amount of time spent researching and therefore increasing the speed of service to the customer. And in this case, the customers could be providing treatment, also providing research, doing studies and trying to eradicate cancer. So in the creation of this, our federal partner, Warren Kibbe is the CIO of the National Cancer Institute has really provided an enterprise where he encourages creativity, allows us to reach out and try. And that was really encouraging for us to come up with a new way and kind of stretch a little bit. The federal lead in this case, Jeff Schilling and I were talking at length about these challenges and we came up with the idea very initially to use an asset tag to trigger some information. And so as I was here at the conference last year, I saw Fred's keynote and there was maybe a three second blurb about QR being able to support QRs in their release. And so as we were going down one path, I saw that and we came back and started getting into- Did the light bulb was from the keynote? The light bulb went off, yeah. And I thought that was fantastic. It gives us a little bit of freedom and so the project was really born at that point. So you saw the QR code as the linchpin doing some awesome stuff with the platform. Yeah, it was- That could be an enabler. It was absolutely it. So really what, you know, knowledge is available everywhere. People can return to their desk and find what they want. That's not a challenge. The challenge is, in many cases, the buildings are dozens of floors tall, they're acres wide. There's a lot of landscape that the technicians don't know. And so we didn't want it to be a trip back to the desk every time they needed information. And so we brought the information to where they were going to be. So these QR codes, they can be put pretty much anywhere. And so the original thought was, let's put it on the front door of the lab or facility that they need to go into. They can scan it on their phone or iPad and see everything. It's like a URL for a web page. It's exactly what it is. Like I used to do that with the ShopBass savvy app, my code of fries. You know what I'm talking about, Josh, man. Okay, so tell us the use case. Okay, so knowledge, management, mobility, KM square, that's what you're calling it. Those guys do all the service. So it's a real time, it's in the moment. So it's near real time. I guess it's real time QR code. It's as real time as you're going to get. What was the use case? So take us through some of the use case that they had and then what went on the product under the hood. Good. Okay. So basically we had a lot of techs that were coming in and out. We also had a tech rotation in various buildings that we support. And then our ancient campus is similar to a college campus. A lot of different buildings, a lot of different layouts. Some of the buildings were created at different times or different wings that are connected in sort of interesting ways, I guess. So you can't always get from point A to point B without going around all over the place. So one of the things that we really kind of wanted to try to do with it by putting that information in their hands immediately and then tech rotation, if you're walking into a lab and there's a lot of scientific equipment, often there is a scientific and very sensitive configuration that goes with it. And when you're walking into that, it helps to know that ahead of time so you don't go in, you're minimizing the interruption to the research that's going on. And that's really what we wanted to establish a new efficiency for. That's a great example of consumer experience like Apple Maps or Google Maps inside your workflow. Right, you guys took a consumer experience. Okay, so how long did it take to develop? What was some of the feedback? How did you guys roll it out? Give some insight into what happened. Yeah, so the project, we did a lot of the planning stage. It was really long in the planning stage. We were trying to figure out what are the things we needed to get going. We looked at media stock for the label itself. We needed something that wasn't going to wear off after a few uses. In fact, they were going to appear on laptops and we needed to make sure that they were going to be permanent when we fixed them there. So we spent a lot of time researching. We worked with the pre-sales team with ServiceNow, which is fantastic. They're able to help us get started in the right direction with the QR. And the number of resources there got us moving in the right direction. And really at the time we started the development. The project was turned over to Greg Lockhart. He was one of the guys that was instrumental in making sure that this rent, he kind of brought in all the resources from the right areas, including Josh. And at that point it really took off. And I turned over to Josh for the development time because he did most of the work himself. So once Greg brought me on, the initial prototype took about a week to put together. And I think just having that model and allowing people to really see that this is your idea and we've put it in, the idea is kind of snowballed from there and everybody saw it and they said, it'll be great if we could do this or we can put this in. So over the period of about a month or so, the ideas just kept rolling in and we kept adding in more functionality. And I think it's really sort of grown in the future. We've demoed it for some of the federal customers. We've demoed it and shown how the techs are using it right now. And the reception has just been overwhelmingly positive. People are saying it would be great if we use it for the data centers, for land closets, for maybe even biographies for some of the VIPs or some of the very important scientists kind of showcase what they've been working on, what are they working on, what kind of sensitivities are there and there. So I think it's something that now, it's already had an enormous impact on how the techs work day to day. And I think moving forward, it's just going to continue to grow and it'll have really just a positive benefit for everybody involved. Dave, I got to ask you about the innovation around the product and the target audience. So who was the target audience of the product? What was their makeup? And what was their, they're familiar with the tech and honestly, they don't want to go back to their desks for two hours, but who's using the product and what was the makeup and the demographics of the... Sure, so who's using it and who benefits or two kind of different parties? The intention has always been for me to give the technical support staff a tool that allows them to not have to spend so much time researching and do more time helping to restore services and provide service. The people that benefit very clearly are the ones that were waiting for service and or whose computer was down and they couldn't get information and or in many cases like Josh said, the equipment is highly scientific. It's not something that most technical staff have any idea how to support. And so bringing in the things like vendor support information, contact numbers, ticket history, which is really helpful to understand that it's not just a device today, it's got a lifespan of its own and to be able to report back on that all in one screen is really valuable. And also the time savings for the techs is huge. I mean, that's an immediate gratification. That's the aspirin, right? They get headaches go away and they run back and they get more efficient. So they get kind of the vitamin effect where I'm actually being more productive and the benefit is the people who are using it, right? And eliminate them fast. Absolutely. No more emails. Can you drive down that? Yeah, and we're invigorated by today's keynote as well. We saw a lot of features that we're already thinking about how we can use it into the future. But the whole key is really the mobility. If you're doing field service, you're mobile, but we're in a building, but it still feels like field service because it's long stretches of territory. And if you think about the commute time back and forth between home base and each office is a lot of time wasted in there. So we're really looking to just capitalize on efficiency and make sure the techs feel confident when they go in to provide service and that in return, the customers also feel that they got a great experience and they can leave company. Well, Knowledge 15, innovation of the award winning winner is a big compliment. Give some shout outs to people we'd like to and explain SRA International. Talk about the company background. Sure. It'll plug in there, but you can give some shout outs if you want. Anyone want to thank my mom? You know, right? Right. So SRA International supports a number of federal contracts. We have actually quite a few at the NIH. The NCI contract is the primary contract that Josh and I both work on. We have very close partnerships with CIT who's kind of the master IT supplier for all of NIH. We have great relationships with there. We've been developing and comparing notes and sharing ideas back and forth. It's been fantastic. SRA has reached into a number of business sectors and we're primarily focused in the health sector at the moment. This contract was extremely important to the company because, you know, of course it's about business, but more importantly, it's really about the mission and I think that's the thing that hit me most when I came on board is really understanding what you do and what you're supporting. I can't pretend to understand the science or the medicine that's all in there, although I learn a little more every day. But you know the mission, the mission is big. It's huge and it's one of those things that I don't know anyone that hasn't been impacted by it. So it's an honor to be supporting that and to be able to provide insight in the technical spectrum and then to try to do these innovations to help move things along. And so, you know, shout outs. As you said, Greg Lockhart's been my right-hand man. He's been a tremendous support for me. I took ownership of the project and coordinated all the pieces of it. So I owe him a huge debt of thanks for that. On the federal side, as I mentioned, the CIO Warren Kibbe has just created an environment for us to be able to do this, which is awesome. And Jeff Schilling and Jason Levine have been kind of our partners in crime working on the solution, figuring out the right technical pieces. And then our team, the voiceover, if you guys have heard the video, the marvelous British accent comes from. John Please? From Tom McGee and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention. And David Shreve, who's also been, he wrote a lot of the video pieces for us. So did you have fun? We've had a blast. If you couldn't tell from the video, Josh is the actor and he's got actually a number of people that have seen him and called him out at the booth. And we did have a lot of fun and that's really the cool thing is that you had fun. And we know that maybe the full value doesn't get realized because we have so many things to do. But the impact is going to be huge. We're getting pushed up on time, but I want to ask you one final question to be both to comment or have insight. What was the big magnified learnings that you guys take away from this exercise? Obviously very emotional, obviously the mission of cancer institute is huge from a global perspective. But just there's also pretty geeky. I mean, it's pretty cool tech innovation. What learnings were magnified? I mean, you guys are the innovation of the year winners. It's a huge accomplishment. What was learned the most out of this? What was the magnified learnings? I think for me personally, just having the chance to kind of do that, we kind of jumped into it and we had this idea and we weren't afraid to take a stab at it and try to figure out how to put things together and get them working. And I think some companies, it's hard sometimes to make that investment to take that large of a step and to see maybe it's not going to work out. But I think there are so many things that really are possible. And when you have the support of your management and upper management and they really are on board with what you're doing, I think it really empowers the employees on the team and the people underneath of you to really feel like I can do this or I can do whatever it is that you're trying to do. And I think for me, that's just been great experience. So translation, the parachute open. Yeah, exactly. Don't be afraid, because you've got a good platform behind it. Is that kind of the big thing? Yeah, exactly. Great, David, anything you'd like to share? No, I feel the same thing. It's really the promise of service now in the presales is you can do anything you want. And so oftentimes you get in there and you realize it's a lot of heavy lifting. This is kind of proof to the opposite that with a good idea and the right support, we were able to build it in a really small amount of time and it's got a high impact and clearly something that's thought of well by our peers, which is awesome. Doing something new is always uncomfortable for people but having that platform and trust is a big deal. You got it. Congratulations to the Knowledge 15 Innovation of the Year award winners, National Cancer Institute with SRA International, Service Now partner. Congratulations to Josh Myles, Service Now developer, David Lassek-Elite, Service Delivery Manager at SRA International. Thanks for coming on theCUBE and congratulations. Innovation of the Year here, mobility app, just greatness here inside theCUBE. We're sharing more and more with you. We'll be right back after this short break.