 From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering ServiceNow, Knowledge 17. Brought to you by ServiceNow. Welcome back to Orlando, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host, Jeff Frick. Link Alander is here as the Chief Information Officer at Lone Star College. Cube along, Link, great to see you again. Good seeing you again, too. Another ServiceNow Knowledge, although not like the other ones. I mean, things changing. We're in a different venue. We've got a new leader, new topics. Is it old wine, same wine, new bottle, or is it all sort of new stuff? What's going on in your world? Well, you know, it's early on in the conference to see what the changes are. And it was kind of interesting as the change transformed. I didn't make his 100 day visits, 100 customers. He had an event in Houston. I was actually out of town at the time, so I was really looking forward to going to that event. But when you think about it, Frank took it to a certain level and now we're looking at a total of different change and transformation again to where what is next? And when you start talking about the AI, the predictive analytics, proactive versus reactive, and those types of shifts, that's really what we have to have. So, yeah, it is a change. It's a significant change. And I liked earlier in the segment, I was listening to him and talking about the fact that where are your trusted partners at? Where do you invest and where do you align your strategy to? And that makes a big difference for us. So from a customer standpoint, it sounds like you're embracing that change. I mean, Wall Street's has been a little reticent. I mean, obviously they're happy with service now and the stock's up, but I thought Jim Kramer was going to cry when Frank Slutman told him he was leaving. And some of the analysts yesterday said, oh, the stock will be at 102 if Frank were still here. And so that's fine, you know, whatever. The stock market's going to do what it does. But from a customer perspective, you seem pretty comfortable with the changes. You know, it's really interesting is Frank and I had a relationship that went back to data domain. So I'd worked with Frank in different roles and different times. So when I first heard it, I was kind of like, what's going to happen? Immediately I started looking at what happened with Pat. I talked to a bunch of my friends at service now and they're like, oh no, this was by the smoothest transition ever. You know, it's like, yeah, I'm leaving and guess what, here's my successor. So it was a different approach that you don't see often in technology companies. And you think about technology right now, the disruptive of everything is. I mean, what do you take the split of HP? You take EMC and Dell and all these other shifts that are happening in the technology, everything's shaking up. This is not really shaking up. This is just a new direction and where service now wants to head in the future. You know, that's interesting. You're right. I mean, transitions in big tech are never, not really ever this, apparently it was pretty smooth. I mean, look at EMC for example. I mean, they couldn't find a successor. All right, I mean, it was, well, it's not Galsing, well, cool, that. Michael Dell had a commit and pretty good successor, I guess. But so that's maybe, I don't know, maybe a testament to Frank. Maybe it's the culture of service now, but from a customer standpoint, again, you're seeing, you know, huge opportunities. You mentioned AI, you mentioned machine learning. What are you doing with those types of things and how are you applying? Well, we see these at the newer opportunities. So, you know, from the IT service management, the enterprise service management has taken us to a new direction. And when you look at the customer service platform, and what can we do differently and how can we help our customers out? And I have 100,000 students out there that are expecting good support and need to navigate educational systems, which it doesn't matter, we're just not easy to navigate. It's not like going out shopping. We have our own challenges that are out there. So, you know, as we look at the next generation, we're looking at how much more automation can I put into play so that the technicians and the practitioners can actually focus on the real challenges that are out there. Because a lot of times they're dealing with small issues that they bog them down and they don't get a focus on the bigger direction. So, that's what we see on that side. You know, predictive analytics and AI and education have been a big item. We've been doing predictive analytics with students, trying to figure out, you know, what's their likelihood of success and how can we intervene to help a student out? And so, when you look at things in that different direction, now some of you applied in the IT space, which machine learning, it's a lot easier than understanding human behavior. So, talk a little bit more about that. I mean, you know, remember when you were in college? Yeah. You know, the professors would look around, a bunch of you aren't going to make it, and okay. Now we have a dashboard that shows that, by the way. Now you've got the data ran out, okay. So, okay, so you've had, you know, years of data, you've been collecting. What kind of things can you do proactively to help students? Well, some of the interesting things for us. So, you know, in our industry, from the community college perspective, we're very dynamic. We can address change in the industry, needs of the community. So, we're able to introduce programs and activities very quickly. Now when it comes down to students, you're sitting there looking at, I'm going, okay, why are we losing these students? Why are students leaving us early? Why are they not completing? And it was really interesting when we ran the data out, and we started seeing that it was our high achievers that were leaving us early. So, actually at our chancellor at the time, really thought about this a lot, and looked at some different pieces of the data, and boosted our honors college, which then improved our retention of these 3.3, 3.4 GPA students. On the other spectrum, we were all thinking, okay, well, we need to focus on, where's that other student at? How do we save that student? And they've always had those interventions. So, now they're enhanced. Now you have the opportunity for a dean or a chair to say, okay, if I reach this one little group of students, maybe I can make a difference in their lives and their careers. So, they're able to look at the data, look at the data sets, and then actually just reach out and touch them, and see what they can make a difference of. I wonder if we could talk a little bit about just some of the practical things about service now generally and IT service management. When we first, our first knowledge was in 2013, and Jeff and I were talking in our open. When we talked to customers about, well, did you adopt a single CMDB? Have you adopted aggressively a service catalog? A lot of times the answer was, well, kind of, but it kind of gets political. We have for our own little silo, but not across the organization. That seems to have changed. What was your experience in that regard, and how about, can you share with us what you're seeing with your peers with regard to those two items, and then we can talk a little bit further. Okay, sure, from the start we actually went all in. So, we're a long-term customer, 2000, late 2009, 2010, we adopted service now, and we immediately looked at his IT service management. How do we transform the way we do business, and what do we do? The service catalog was very basic at first. Now our service catalog is pretty amazing. Our knowledge bases were primitive. Now, customer service, they can address their items. So, that made a significant enhancement, but really what it brought forward is our enterprise service management. So, for example, while I was waiting here, I was actually approving a legal certification for a contract I have going across in service now. So, it's really handy. I'm sitting at a conference, and I have a legal matter to deal with, and a couple clicks, and I'm taken care of. The same goes now for our HR side. So, HR adopted in two years ago now, and you're seeing that workflow, all the power of the workflow coming in to help employees out. We've got a long way to go to get to that, whatever you want to consider, utopia of service management is, but we're far along that journey, and we're just constantly looking for new ways to improve that. From the peer's perspective, it's also very interesting, so I talk to, I'll deal with a lot of our peers, especially in the state of Texas, but then also nationally in different groups. And their movements are a little slower in the process because of that decentralization, where from our perspective, we're 100% centralized, so it's a lot easier to implement and not have those verticals to knock down. And they're knocking IT verticals down, they're not knocking other verticals down. So, it's a little more challenging, but I've seen some pretty impressive successes, even in those areas where they have different verticals of IT across their organization. They've done a phenomenal job about bringing them into the fold and trying to consolidate those services and show those services better to the customer. The consumerization part is the harder part. It's trying to deliver services now like consumer IT, but still maintaining that enterprise level. And that's probably the biggest challenges we're facing right now is trying to create that consumer look and feel. Is that a UX challenge that ServiceNow needs to address, or is that something that you guys have control over? Well, actually, they've done a great job as far as changing the dynamics of how things are working. So, they've done a great job there. It's more on our perspective of using a customer-centric approach and looking at how does our customer view these services? What happens? How do they engage those services? It's very similar when we're dealing with students and we're trying to understand how they use our systems. Well, they have their own way. We know how they're supposed to be used, but they have their own way they use the system. And so, it's looking for that customer-centric approach. It's trying to understand their behaviors and work from those directions. And how much of that do you do with good old-fashioned, sitting down and watching people interact with the applications? I mean, that was a great thing that LinkedIn, or excuse me, into what you used to always do with early quick quick days, right? A lot of just sit down and watch people interact with the application versus using machine learning and using kind of more aggregated data with, like you say, your huge client set to start to figure out how they're actually engaging with the application. It's really a combination of both. It really is. I mean, one of the things is, it doesn't matter what the machine can tell us. They can give us a pattern and a history, but we don't understand the why sometimes. Why did we do? We saw that recently as we were reviewing some of our registration processes. And we were watching it because we use another product that monitors customer experience on the registration cycle. And we were watching something strange and we couldn't figure out why they were going into a certain direction. We looked at it, we didn't see it, but the students did. And there was actually a navigation on that page that sent them in a different direction. It was never meant to be there to do. It was for certain situations, not all situations. So you have to take a combination. You need the data from the machine. The machines can tell you all kinds of patterns of what's happening, but you do need that human part. That's also where IT, when you start talking about the C-suite and having those discussions, that's where IT always failed. We always talk ones and zeros. Everybody else is trying to have a conversation. So now all of a sudden, it's about having that conversation. How can we talk about, here are the challenges, here's what you see, here's what you'd like to do, and how do we address that and move forward with it? So that makes a difference. It's just funny, the impact of, again, a registration, what feels from the outside, like a very mundane process. And yet, it impacts every single person that you guys do business with. It's their direct connection into your much bigger process and education and professors and the resources for the school. It's everything. And from the outside, looking at them, someone might think, oh, it's registration. It's simple, we got that defined. We've been doing that for years, but it's not at all. And it has to change and it has to adapt quickly. So we're going through a process now where we're really re-evaluating the entire cycle. Because higher education, we already throw all these other things out at you. You know what a bursar, do you know what a bursar is? Okay, how do you understand that? Where do you take care of this problem? Okay, and then you deal with federal government changes, the state, you throw all those complexities in there, and now we're going through a process where we've already started through some of the initial prospecting parts, but how do we simplify it even further? How do we knock down those barriers or at least make it easier to transition? And we've done a lot of great stuff in the past and we use a combination of things to get there. It's not just one set of tools that solves a problem. It's a bit of everything. In the sort of post, coming out of Y2K, there was a lot of discussion, and then when the market crashed, there was a lot of discussion about IT value. You know, Nick Carr wrote the thing, does IT matter, et cetera, et cetera. What's the value discussion like today? I'm particularly interested in somebody who's implemented service now with the single CMDB and the service catalog that's evolved. What is the value discussion that you have with your so-called line of business folks at the college? Well, the key to it is, is we always act as an enabler. We're there to support them and help them walk through the business process changes, look at things from different directions. They don't come to us and say, we want this tool. They come to say, this is my business problem. Now, help us to figure out how to solve that. That's where the IT value comes in. Yes, I have a bunch of very experienced practitioners. We're constantly understanding what trends and changes are happening, but what's the right tool for that problem? And by doing it this way, one, we're understanding the business problems we're trying to solve, but it also improves our agility, which you've heard me talk about it probably a dozen times about this agility because that's what it is. Old IT was locked, depth stuck, and you're always there. Now, when you start talking about agility and the ability to address business needs quickly, but yet still keep that same trajectory, I have legacy systems, I have to have those. But what can I put on the top of that, items like platforms as a service, what can I address things differently on? Probably one of the better ones recently, we had a faculty recruiting team going out and they wanted, all of a sudden, they're like doing Excel spreadsheet. I'm interested in teaching for you in the future and I'm taking this and they're doing an Excel spreadsheet. And we sat down with them and I was in one of their big meetings and I'm like, okay, would you like to do that on an iPad? This is a better way. There's an easier way to skin this, Kat, so we actually turned around, we built a nice app and service now just to collect, hey, I'm taking classes at this university, I'm interested in teaching for Lone Star in the future, I'm in mathematics. Now that same group can turn around and send out a notification every time we're hiring that says, oh, hey, we're hiring right now and we're hiring math professors, so if you're interested, come on and join us. So you're observing how the business is approaching solving problems and identifying areas where you can use, for example, in this case, service now to dramatically improve their experience. Is that fair? I mean, that's the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is what is the problem, let us work on the tool and then make sure we align things correctly, because that's the harder part. I feel I failed my job if they come into me and say, you know what, I want you to buy this because this is going to solve my problem. Well, what's your problem? Well, what's interesting is, you've been in IT a long time and I've observed a lot of interactions between business and IT. When the business people try to tell IT people how to do it, it's never works. But what you're saying is, you have enough visibility on the business and an understanding of how technology can able, you can actually tell the business people, hey, there's a better way. Here, that's the perfect way to approach it, is what is the best way we can do this for you? Whether that is in our legacy ERP, I mean ours is not really a legacy, but in our ERP, or do I put this in the service now platform or do I put it in another platform? And how do we address that problem quickly and easily? How about another question, I always like to pick your brain as you know this stuff so well. How about custom mods? We've probably talked about this before a little bit, but do you sort of have a philosophy of trying to avoid them at all costs? Absolutely. You've succeeded at that? Oh yes, yeah. On the ERP side, we're still less than 10% customized on that platform and we've held that line because we can address the business problems differently. There's ways to address it without doing all these massive customizations. Sometimes it's just about really understanding the true business process. It's walking back to the old days of understanding what the process is and then how does the technology adapt to that process? There's things that you can switch on and switch off that is not a custom mod. So your upgrades are processed faster. Then there's other times when like I said, we come in and we could have gone with that recruiting team. We could have gone and put it into our ERP, but we're like, well, why? We're just picking up context. We're looking for these things. We need something quick and agile. So service now is the perfect jump for it. A quick app. And are they coming to you earlier and earlier in the process? Do they get it that you are an enabler of problem solving, not necessarily an implementer of what I think I need? Absolutely. I mean, and the team we have is phenomenal. So, you know, every once in a while, they're like, hey, we need to do this. Well, do you really need that or what do you need? And then we start that conversation. But it comes down to it's not just myself. And I think that's really the key for any IT leader is it's about the whole team's perspective. It's not going in with a technology solution as much as it is trying to understand the business problem first, work through the technology solution, find out what adapts and what it'll meet their needs. So single CMDB, adopt service catalog, avoid custom mods, anything else you'd tell? Folks that are just getting started with service? I mean, I'll always be proactive. You're always out there trying to have that discussion with people to understand that you're there to help them and you're there to move it forward. It's just engaging that conversation. And that's the hard part. Sometimes IT people don't want to jump into that conversation. What about that business side? I'm lucky, I have a passion for higher ed. I mean, this is why I've stayed in higher ed. To me, you know, I get the reward this week when I get back from Orlando, it's graduation time, and you get to see your success walk across the stage. And each one of those students, you know, whether they're moving on to another degree, whether they're moving on the workforce, I mean, that's something that you get out of this that is so impressive when in my field. So the same goes for how you treat your customers, your employees or your students. It's about how do they feel at the end of the day? Did I do my best to help them out? That's got to be really gratifying, you know, in this day of man versus machine. The answer is education. So, Link, congratulations, and thanks very much for coming back in theCUBE. I love the conversations. We always ask you anything we want, but it's good to see you again. Good seeing you. Good seeing you. All right, keep right there, buddy. We'll be back with our next guest is theCUBE. We're live from Knowledge 17, hashtag No17. We'll be right back.