Revolutionizing Employee Workflows with AI: ServiceNow’s Blueprint for the Future of Work

[00:00:00] Deal has helped over 35,000 businesses simplify global hiring, onboarding, payroll, and compliance. Visit Deal.com to learn more. That's D-E-E-L dot com.

[00:00:15] All right. I want to talk to you for a moment about retaining and developing your workforce. It's hard. Recruiting is hard. Retaining top employees is hard. Then you've got onboarding, payroll, benefits, time, and labor management.

[00:00:28] You need to take care of your workforce and you can only do this successfully if you commit to transforming your employee experience.

[00:00:36] This is where iSolve comes in. They empower you to be successful. We've seen it with a number of companies that we've worked with, and this is why we partner with them here at WorkDefined.

[00:00:47] We trust them and you should too. Check them out at iSolvedHCM.com.

[00:01:04] Hey, this is William Tidcup. You are listening, hopefully watching the Use Case Podcast. I'm here with my partner, Ryan.

[00:01:10] Ryan. Ryan, how you doing?

[00:01:12] Ryan Tidcup. Good. You forgot to introduce me.

[00:01:15] It happens from time to time.

[00:01:17] You know, sometimes he'll go say, this is Ryan Leary and William Tidcup.

[00:01:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can change it up.

[00:01:23] Now today I just got cut out completely.

[00:01:25] Yeah, it's just William Tidcup.

[00:01:26] It's all good. This is, look, you've deleted one track.

[00:01:30] Yeah, yeah.

[00:01:31] Right? Yeah, you're just ignoring me. Hey, it's all good.

[00:01:34] It's all good.

[00:01:35] Well, that's good.

[00:01:36] But we're not here to talk about me, so it's all good.

[00:01:38] No, we are not. We're here to talk about ServiceNow.

[00:01:41] Gretchen, would you do us a favor and introduce both yourself and ServiceNow?

[00:01:46] Absolutely. Thanks for having me, by the way.

[00:01:47] So I'm Gretchen Allerkhan and I run the Employee Workflows organization for ServiceNow.

[00:01:53] For those of you who are not familiar with ServiceNow, the company, we're a platform company.

[00:01:57] We started with a focus on how to support IT organizations, how IT organizations provide support to end users.

[00:02:05] And we've really transformed over the last five years.

[00:02:08] We are now the AI platform company in that we support companies across all types of areas of work.

[00:02:16] I specifically focus on employee workflows.

[00:02:19] So if you think about how an employee looks for information, whether that is IT information or HR information or legal non-disclosures, all this kind of back office things employees have to go through, that's my business.

[00:02:32] So I have our HR service delivery, our workplace service delivery, legal and contracts management.

[00:02:38] And of course, everybody these days has got AI and talent going on as well.

[00:02:42] So that's kind of where my focus is within the broader service now.

[00:02:47] Well, it's like an explosion of the head for my lack of ability to do sound effects, Gretchen.

[00:02:54] I don't even know what to ask you at this point.

[00:02:56] Like that's a whole lot of stuff.

[00:02:57] No, the workflow stuff, it comes from somewhere and you've got a number of years of being in this industry.

[00:03:04] So you've seen a lot of things come and go.

[00:03:07] So these were dealt with in different ways historically.

[00:03:12] The employee self-service center, you know, or employee self-service, the intranet, etc.

[00:03:19] And so much of it is just to give HR some time back.

[00:03:23] So how do we give them some time back?

[00:03:26] Right now we're reading a story about at one point we're going to have an HR assistant with every employee.

[00:03:34] And we're like, well, that sounds cool because then you can ask questions.

[00:03:38] You know, where's dental insurance for Indiana or whatever the bid is instead of calling or emailing HR, which is great.

[00:03:46] But then the back where we thought that maybe the downside of that would be, well, will businesses think they need less HR?

[00:03:53] Which I don't. There's no answer, or at least there's no answer that I can see.

[00:03:57] But tell us more about workflows.

[00:04:00] Take us into it.

[00:04:01] So, you know, as we started this focus, a lot of our emphasis was exactly on those areas where employees have to go through multiple processes that, frankly, they don't spend a lot of time on.

[00:04:12] Right. So my background came from HR, then years in HR technology.

[00:04:17] And the emphasis there for me was always on HR productivity.

[00:04:22] Right. How do I get HR a better system?

[00:04:24] Have them do their work better.

[00:04:25] And we always talked about the employee side of this.

[00:04:28] But the reality is, by the time you get done with one of those big system implementations, the employees don't necessarily get some bang up, wow, amazing transformation on their side. Right.

[00:04:40] And so moving to ServiceNow and really thinking about this from a standpoint of view of as an employee, how does all of this fit for me?

[00:04:47] It's just it's a paradigm shift. Perfect example and where we see a lot of our customers start is when you think about the onboarding process, because from start to finish, from the time you sign your offer to you're ready to work.

[00:04:59] HR typically owns that process. But there are multiple systems and multiple teams involved.

[00:05:05] Right. Because you've got to get laptops ordered and you've got to sign an office if they're showing up in person.

[00:05:10] You've got to make sure they've got the corporate card.

[00:05:12] You know, there's a lot of steps. And today for a lot of organizations, let's just check check marks.

[00:05:17] Right. I've got my my little list, you know, it's a post-it note that's sitting on my on my my monitor or I'm sending emails.

[00:05:24] Mm hmm.

[00:05:25] Our whole focus is how do we actually task you with this?

[00:05:29] Can we say when these processes kick off, it shows up as work to be done by other people and that that actually gets just taken to those people?

[00:05:38] So you don't have to say somebody call it and get a laptop ready.

[00:05:42] The second onboarding started, they know those things kick off and they're just orchestrated.

[00:05:46] So the employee sees it as steps to be completed. So does everybody else who has to fulfill that work.

[00:05:54] So very different approach to thinking about this process.

[00:05:58] Do you do you find that I want to stay here for a moment.

[00:06:01] Do you find that employees have trouble trusting that process that onboarding happened?

[00:06:08] And then just use this example, but maybe you can expand that. But onboarding happens and new employees hired.

[00:06:15] I.T. is hit with the message work to do, get the laptop prepared, get the key cards ready, all of the above.

[00:06:22] The five people in front of that generally would have had to have triggered that notification only after doing steps one, two and three.

[00:06:30] Do you find that they lack the trust in that process? I mean, personally for me, I wouldn't care.

[00:06:35] I'd say, well, the system saying it, it's going to get done. But I feel like there may be some lack of trust there and trusting the technology.

[00:06:43] You know, I think a lot of it is expectations are very low because so many people have had not great experiences going through this. Right.

[00:06:52] I will tell you, you know, personally, when I joined ServiceNow, I joined during the pandemic. Right. Everything had to be online. I didn't have choice.

[00:06:59] But we used our own technology. And I definitely had a little bit of cynicism about, you know, is that laptop actually going to show up at my house? Are we sure about this?

[00:07:07] Well, it's going to have the right login. Right. Exactly.

[00:07:11] And I was pleasantly surprised. And frankly, it kind of made me a believer to say, hey, you know, this stuff works because the computer showed up.

[00:07:18] Day one was not let's spend eight hours trying to make things work and finish those last pieces of paperwork.

[00:07:25] Day one was here's what you need to know about the company. Here's our culture. And now go meet your manager and let's start to get into it.

[00:07:33] A very different experience when all these things have actually worked.

[00:07:36] As we've talked about onboarding, there's so much of it is just tactical stuff that needs to be done, like policies that need to be health care or whatever.

[00:07:46] I've seen a shift. We've seen a shift of pre-boarding once someone signs an offer letter and there's a date that offloading a lot of that.

[00:07:55] Muck to just get that stuff done.

[00:07:58] And some of these things that are like we're talking about the laptop and God, I was about to say business cards.

[00:08:04] Anywho. So like all the stuff that we would ship to them.

[00:08:07] But there's still like say there's an element of onboarding that's personal or human.

[00:08:13] Do you do how do you all deal with that in terms with your clients?

[00:08:18] Making there's an element somewhere in there. I don't know where it is, but there's a moment of humanization in that process.

[00:08:24] There is. And I think there are a couple of things to think about around how you can make this happen.

[00:08:30] One is, well, you know, there's the question of who's got what responsibility as all of this goes through. Right.

[00:08:38] So as you think about these processes.

[00:08:41] You know, what role do you want a hiring manager or the recruiter to play during the recruiting, you know, the post offer sign and pre-board or even post-board?

[00:08:52] Right. They've started and we're trying to ramp them up and we want to make sure they're joining well.

[00:08:56] How do we make sure that's actually working?

[00:08:59] And so this is actually where AI starts to come in a little bit as well.

[00:09:03] So we can actually start to task people with work that needs to be done to help them to see based on what's going on.

[00:09:11] So, hey, you know, this person is supposed to be joining the organization.

[00:09:15] It's been two weeks since we should offer letter and we haven't seen them start anything.

[00:09:19] This would be a perfect time for the hiring manager to reach out and say, how are you doing?

[00:09:24] Are you still excited? I'm excited.

[00:09:26] Like maybe they need some re-recruiting. Right.

[00:09:28] Or can AI prompt and say things are working fine.

[00:09:31] Let's send some tickler letters, but we don't need to spend as much human time here.

[00:09:35] But put the human time where it's most impactful.

[00:09:38] And to me, that's where as we start to think about where AI fits into these broader talent processes.

[00:09:45] There's a really interesting thing here around directing where the personal interactions need to be rather than just saying, oh, it's day 14.

[00:09:54] You should send an email. Right.

[00:09:56] There's a way to actually make that more human with AI assisting.

[00:10:00] Let's say, if we could unpack the term you just used, re-recruiting.

[00:10:06] I've never used that term before.

[00:10:08] I've never even heard that term.

[00:10:09] Trade market before.

[00:10:10] Trade market.

[00:10:10] I feel like I should have heard this term after all of these years.

[00:10:14] My mind went in 10 different directions.

[00:10:16] It's really fascinating.

[00:10:17] Explain that a little bit.

[00:10:18] What are we talking about?

[00:10:19] You know, I think there are a couple of things here.

[00:10:21] I think that when someone goes through an onboarding process, there is always going to be a moment somewhere in there that someone says, you know, is this the right place for me?

[00:10:31] Right.

[00:10:31] Is this did I make you know, there's that that moment of regret or, you know, you're recruiting somebody who has very high potential.

[00:10:37] Is their company going to try to save them?

[00:10:39] Right.

[00:10:39] And so thinking about what do we do to kind of you thought you had them, but did you really?

[00:10:46] Right.

[00:10:47] And frankly, I think this continues on past day one into what are those inflection points once they're an employee?

[00:10:55] And sometimes it's that, you know, you've been here for 45 days.

[00:11:00] You've come up the learning curve and you're kind of like, is this the job I wanted?

[00:11:04] Right.

[00:11:04] Right.

[00:11:04] So, again, where we can find those things where we can say this is a personal touch that's needed and kind of continue to reengage the employee with the excitement and the drive that we had when we were trying to find them in the first place.

[00:11:18] Well, just like a regular relationship, you know, in the dating phase, there's all this romance that's recruiting.

[00:11:25] Okay.

[00:11:26] Okay.

[00:11:26] At one point you get engaged.

[00:11:28] There's an excitement to that.

[00:11:29] And all of a sudden you get married and then some marriages fail because either party or both parties, they take for granted the other person.

[00:11:40] And I've actually sat on stage and I don't think it went well, but I don't think that there's, I don't think you ever stop onboarding.

[00:11:50] If you stop onboarding, you're taking that person for granted.

[00:11:53] So I don't think I like people who are like, oh no, it's two weeks or it's a week or it's a binder.

[00:11:57] It's this, it's that.

[00:11:58] And I'm like, it can be whatever you want it to be.

[00:12:01] It just never stops.

[00:12:02] It should be a relentless pursuit to keep that person engaged.

[00:12:06] I think it's a really important topic and I think it's an area where software can actually help us a lot.

[00:12:13] So, you know, when I think about, again, putting on my HR hat as a manager, most of the interactions I have as a manager when I think about HR are tied to big moments, right?

[00:12:22] It's the, it's time for performance management, right?

[00:12:25] Or it's time for compensation.

[00:12:26] It's big things where I need to spend a lot of time.

[00:12:28] But the coaching that I need, either I need or that I need to give to my employees, that is a workflow.

[00:12:34] And that's actually an area that we've been investing in when we think about, we call it talent development.

[00:12:40] But when we think about that process around, hey, you've got an employee and you want to make sure that they are either growing in their current role or they're preparing for a next role, or maybe they want to become a mentor and give back to other people.

[00:12:54] You know, how can those processes be better orchestrated as well?

[00:12:59] Because those are the day-to-day or the kind of small touches, the pebbles that help someone feel engaged.

[00:13:05] That's again, it's a workflow and it's where AI can really help us to understand where do you need to engage more and how can you make this more personalized?

[00:13:14] So to me, that is like a huge part of the talent development process now.

[00:13:19] Where are companies failing or where, let's just say, I mean, not companies, where are the leaders failing in implementing this idea?

[00:13:27] Why can't they just do it?

[00:13:29] Seems very full of common sense.

[00:13:31] Seems logical.

[00:13:32] I've already said yes.

[00:13:34] Like, we only have a two-person company.

[00:13:36] The workflows are going to be relatively simple.

[00:13:37] However, I mean, to Brian's point, what's the no?

[00:13:42] Yeah.

[00:13:44] You know, I think there are challenges for organizations when you think about where the work needs to be performed and who needs to do it, right?

[00:13:54] So part of this is there's still an understanding or a thought process that, you know, I as a manager, we've moved completely to managers as workers, not managers, or maybe coach players, right?

[00:14:07] But not managers purely as coaches.

[00:14:09] So what happens is it's much more fun to be the player, right?

[00:14:13] You want to do that kind of work more so than you necessarily want to spend your time filling out evaluations and thinking about, you know, there's that hard part's hard.

[00:14:21] And it's not really what a lot of people, when they become managers, have the skill set for.

[00:14:25] So thinking about this not as this is an HR process that you must do because HR said so, and more about these are the best practices that we care about as a culture to say we want you to do your best work.

[00:14:40] We want your people to continue to grow.

[00:14:43] This has to be a cultural statement, but then you got to back it up with the software.

[00:14:47] Because, you know, I can wave my hands and say, yeah, it's a really good idea to have quarterly growth conversations with your team, right?

[00:14:53] Great idea.

[00:14:54] You should totally do that.

[00:14:56] Are you going to do it?

[00:14:57] Really?

[00:14:57] So, you know, to the extent that we kind of say this is how work gets done here.

[00:15:02] And again, the technology can really help us here because we can put things on the calendars and we can say, here's how a quarterly growth conversation should be structured.

[00:15:10] You're a manager.

[00:15:11] You have access to the training.

[00:15:13] But more than that, we've got a process where AI is going to help you schedule it and say, you know, you haven't had a quarterly growth conversation with Ryan.

[00:15:21] It's time.

[00:15:22] By the way, here's a window on the calendar where you're both available.

[00:15:25] Here's a suggested agenda based on his goals, based on the last conversation.

[00:15:30] Ryan's going to add some content to it because he has things he wants to talk about.

[00:15:35] We can facilitate that process with technology so that it's easier for the two players to actually have that conversation.

[00:15:43] And today, that connection of the technology making it easier for you is lacking for most people.

[00:15:49] Yeah.

[00:15:49] And then they, I mean, I could see it now.

[00:15:52] I get the message and I put it aside and I put it aside and we're among past two.

[00:15:57] Do we ever get to the point where this is fully dehumanized?

[00:16:02] These types of conversations where it's just the software saying.

[00:16:06] Well, that escalated quickly.

[00:16:07] Yeah.

[00:16:07] Well, like where, like, like the software handles reviews.

[00:16:11] They know me better.

[00:16:12] I have an assistant or, you know, an AI assistant doing the work.

[00:16:15] It's tracking me.

[00:16:17] It knows my productivity because you get tracking on my phone and computer.

[00:16:20] My AI assistant gives me this feedback and I just become a coworker with my manager.

[00:16:26] And the manager is the one that just kind of pushes down the vision and keeps the culture in that particular group.

[00:16:33] You know, I think there's an interesting question within that around how far can the technology go and where does it really add value for this?

[00:16:42] So I will tell you, you know, one of the things I get really excited about when I think about the possibility here is when I think about, you know, coaching conversations with an employee or I think about, you know, having a performance conversation.

[00:16:54] You know, there's always the discussion.

[00:16:56] It's been around forever around, you know, is there a recency bias?

[00:16:59] Are you comparing people to others?

[00:17:01] Like there are a lot of concerns that kind of come up when you're doing performance reviews.

[00:17:04] If generated AI could start that process for you and say, summarize what this person has done in this time frame.

[00:17:12] What classes have they taken?

[00:17:13] What coaching conversations have you had?

[00:17:15] What feedback did they get all together?

[00:17:18] So that then when the manager sits down, they are actually looking at pre-selected content and they can say, okay, out of this content, here's what's actually impactful for the work I need this person to do.

[00:17:31] Right. So I don't see AI kind of saying everything because AI may be like, yeah, you took a bunch of classes.

[00:17:36] That's awesome. Keep going.

[00:17:38] And I as a manager might be like, you know, you took a lot of time to take classes over the last quarter.

[00:17:43] Let's maybe dial that down a bit because I need to see you apply that learning.

[00:17:47] Right. So having that, but having that summarization to say, here's what matters and let's pull that out.

[00:17:53] So then when you're having the conversation as a manager, you're much more informed and you're able to really focus on what matters.

[00:18:00] I think that makes the conversations much deeper and frankly, more impactful for both the employee and the manager.

[00:18:06] Yeah. There's nothing worse than getting a review.

[00:18:09] That's opposite of everything that you do.

[00:18:12] Right.

[00:18:13] And everything that you're good at.

[00:18:15] Do you even know who I am?

[00:18:16] I literally, I had one of these a hundred years ago and it was every, everything that he said I did was positive.

[00:18:24] I didn't do.

[00:18:25] And everything that was negative.

[00:18:26] I was excellent at that.

[00:18:27] And I mean, I've, I've had one of these experiences.

[00:18:30] What, let me, uh, let me ask about skills.

[00:18:34] Cause it wouldn't be a good podcast if we didn't talk about skills with talent development and with workflows.

[00:18:39] What are your customers asking you about the kind of the, the nexus of skills and skill development, reskilling, you know, all the different variations of skills.

[00:18:49] You know, I think, you know, it's, it's interesting to me.

[00:18:51] I think skills are so core to all of this, right?

[00:18:55] Because you have to have an understanding of the skills that you have in your org and what you need in your org.

[00:19:02] But I think for a lot of people, that's still kind of a big question.

[00:19:05] You know, what we definitely have found is that, you know, in our, our recent research, CHROs are getting much more involved in C-suite conversations about growth and about business decisions because people are realizing that skills are important, right?

[00:19:20] You can't just say we're going to grow into a new organization and have CHRO going, I can't get there, right?

[00:19:26] I can't get there with the people I've got, or here's how much it's going to cost to recruit.

[00:19:30] So that it's coalescing at the C-suite, which I think is fantastic.

[00:19:34] I think where there's still a lot of room to talk about is how do you discuss this at a leader level, a manager level around what skills do you have and what skills are you trying to develop within your organization?

[00:19:47] So one of the things that, that we're really focusing on around how to focus for this for organizations is understanding that first of all, the work that you need to do is going to change dramatically.

[00:20:00] Just by virtue of what AI is doing.

[00:20:02] And it doesn't necessarily mean only developers.

[00:20:04] It means, you know, content creation is going to change dramatically how information gets surfaced to you.

[00:20:11] So you need to think about what skill sets are really differentiated to you and your business.

[00:20:16] And what ones do you need to grow within your business?

[00:20:20] So we're very focused on skills intelligence in terms of helping someone understand what do they have in their organization versus what they think they need.

[00:20:28] And then what are those processes?

[00:20:30] And what I'll say when I think about the workflow tied to talent development, the feedback I get from a lot of customers is we have a lot of things, right?

[00:20:39] We've got learning systems.

[00:20:42] In some cases, we have multiple because we are a global organization and what we use in Europe is different than what we have in the U.S.

[00:20:48] We've got a mentoring program we put in place.

[00:20:50] We've got, you know, a coaching this.

[00:20:52] We've got feedback externally.

[00:20:53] But when you actually try to stream it all together and say, okay, if you're trying as a leader to help your team grow, what do you do?

[00:21:02] Like orchestrating that is hard because you just don't know those steps.

[00:21:07] Like I can tell you I need to go from A to B, but how I get there for me is kind of a black box.

[00:21:13] And that's where we kind of see talent development having a huge opportunity to say this person is closest to the skills you need and here is the best path for them to achieve those skills.

[00:21:25] Yes, you should invest in the training or give them a temporary assignment or what have you.

[00:21:30] So, again, we can start to get from that macro question of the skills you need to develop to the micro individualized this person, this path, and this execution of the plan.

[00:21:43] And I think that's where really kind of making this real for people is important.

[00:21:49] So, when you're talking to customers or prospects, just people in general in this space that would be obviously a great prospect for service.

[00:21:58] Now, why are they coming to you?

[00:22:01] When you're talking to them, well, let me rephrase that.

[00:22:04] That sounds bad.

[00:22:06] Why in the hell would they?

[00:22:08] No.

[00:22:08] So, let me rephrase that one.

[00:22:10] So, when you're talking to them, what is the problem that they're – when you're talking to them, they're kind of like, man, yeah, I know I have, but I've never thought about that.

[00:22:20] And then they get serious about talking to you.

[00:22:23] Yeah.

[00:22:23] I would say a lot of what starts the conversation for many companies is that question of want to put some processes in place that go beyond just HR or even just across multiple HR systems because the employee experience has so much friction.

[00:22:41] And that conversation around how do I take friction out of this experience is very compelling because it isn't just about replace a system.

[00:22:51] It's about let's look at this workflow across the board.

[00:22:54] Where are the steps and how do we put this all together?

[00:22:57] Because I can't assume that they're just going to magically replace a bunch of legacy systems, right?

[00:23:01] But we can still sit on top and orchestrate those processes and make it easier for the employee to go through.

[00:23:08] And then I'd say the other part about it is to the extent we remove that friction or make it easier, that frees up HR to look at these more strategic problems, right?

[00:23:17] Because they're not having to spend time – if you're not having to spend a bunch of time chasing onboarding, maybe you're able to spend more time thinking about internal transfers and how do we get people to better internal productivity, right?

[00:23:28] So, to the earlier question around are we reducing staff, I don't think we are.

[00:23:33] I think we're going to wind up redeploying them to focus on things that are more strategic.

[00:23:37] And to me, that is where we start to get a multiplier effect as the technology takes off.

[00:23:44] Is any of your customers taking you into offboarding and alumni and workflows around those things?

[00:23:51] Yeah, because really, if you can do onboarding, you can do offboarding.

[00:23:54] Same thing.

[00:23:54] Actually, we had one customer who started there as opposed to onboarding because they were concerned, first of all, about risk, right?

[00:24:02] Because offboarding is risky.

[00:24:04] But the other thing they realized was that when people were leaving their organization, they had a question, right?

[00:24:11] They're gone and suddenly it's January and where's my W-2 or, you know, now it's April, where really is my W-2?

[00:24:16] Because I actually am doing my taxes.

[00:24:18] And they found that the alumni had a direct access into their HR service center and were getting actually faster and better responses than employees because of the way they had set up their service center.

[00:24:30] And so putting an alumni service center in place actually allowed them to deflect those alumni questions, which were mostly repetitive, mostly transactional, and actually freed up their HR service center to serve employees better.

[00:24:46] So it was a win-win on both sides.

[00:24:47] And alumni got better answers and HR was freed up to do better work.

[00:24:51] Win-win-win.

[00:25:18] Win-win.

[00:25:22] People think it's in recruiting.

[00:25:23] They spend disproportionately in recruiting regarding their employer brand.

[00:25:29] Recruiting is this, small.

[00:25:31] If you do offboarding well, like really well, your employer brand's going to be fine.

[00:25:37] Well, and it's a great opportunity as well to think about the circular effect, right?

[00:25:42] I was talking with a company that was in retail a couple weeks ago about, you know, hey, they're heading into their busy season.

[00:25:49] And I was saying, you know, you recruit.

[00:25:51] But I would be willing to bet that as you go into your heavy recruiting season, there's a large percentage of them that are coming back, right?

[00:26:00] They come every year.

[00:26:01] They're seasonal workers.

[00:26:02] So why wouldn't you use your alumni center as a recruiting process and do something where you maybe have it as some sort of a fast track apply that if you go to the alumni center, you know, we already know who you are.

[00:26:15] You know, maybe we are able to actually onboard you faster as going through this process.

[00:26:20] So, again, the focus primarily when you think about alumni center is get the information for someone who's no longer here.

[00:26:27] That's absolutely a recruiting opportunity, right?

[00:26:30] And, again, opportunity to say how can we use AI to simplify that process to say you're a former employee, you're eligible to hire.

[00:26:38] Let's skip a lot of this process and, you know, let this be automated so you'd come right on board and the friction gets away.

[00:26:45] Is that more of a – I mean, so using the retail as example, I look at that almost more as a retention tool, right?

[00:26:52] If it's seasonal, like we know we're going to need to hire 10,000 people in November and December.

[00:26:58] And I'll use – and this is a customer service example.

[00:27:01] But just yesterday, I'm calling into Garmin because I have an issue with electronics.

[00:27:08] And they fixed my issue.

[00:27:09] They're really, really good at that.

[00:27:12] But without – unprompted, he noticed that I had another purchase from, you know, years ago, asked how it was and said, I don't see that you've done an update on the software.

[00:27:23] Are you still using it?

[00:27:24] Do you need help?

[00:27:25] And I said, well, yeah, I still do use it and it's not fantastic.

[00:27:28] He said, well, you're about, you know, 10 softwares behind, updates behind.

[00:27:33] Let's get you updated.

[00:27:35] What did you know?

[00:27:36] It's fantastic.

[00:27:37] Like it's working perfect now, right?

[00:27:40] But I was upset with Garmin.

[00:27:43] Not necessarily upset, but I'm kind of like, oh, well, I guess it had a two-, three-year shelf life.

[00:27:48] It really did it.

[00:27:49] That was my fault for not doing the updates.

[00:27:52] And all I had to do was plug the darn thing in and it does the update.

[00:27:56] But he noticed that and now I'm not upset.

[00:27:58] And I'll probably go back and buy more just because he looked.

[00:28:01] And I feel like that's where the retention piece of this comes in from an alumni standpoint, especially in retail.

[00:28:10] Yeah.

[00:28:10] Well, and I think if you think about, you know, first of all, I love that.

[00:28:14] So we do have a customer support product as part of what we do.

[00:28:18] But, you know, part of when we define our playbooks, so if you're talking to an agent, right, whether you're talking to a customer support agent or an HR agent, and that agent's a weird term in HR, right?

[00:28:29] But that could be, you know, a true service agent or that could be, you know, a recruiter or someone else.

[00:28:35] One of the things that we have baked in as part of that capability is the ability to have a structured process and the ability to kind of say, here is other information we know about this person, about their usage, their experience, what have you.

[00:28:50] So, yeah, that's a perfect opportunity for us to say we want to drive consistency.

[00:28:53] That's the main reason why many people start this process is they want to say, hey, you know, an employee gets fairly treated regardless of where they are and who they're talking to.

[00:29:02] We want one consistent process.

[00:29:04] But we also want to bring in those other things to say, you know, by the way, open enrollment's coming up.

[00:29:09] It looks like last year you had to have an exception.

[00:29:13] Let's remind you while you're talking to me about what's going on in this process.

[00:29:17] You need to get this on the calendar.

[00:29:19] We're going to prompt you because AI is going to do that as well.

[00:29:21] But as long as you're talking to a human, here's more that I can engage you with.

[00:29:25] That's exactly what technology really shines.

[00:29:27] I love that.

[00:29:28] I love that.

[00:29:30] Questions that the audience will undoubtedly ask us.

[00:29:35] ServiceNow, so again, kind of a dumb question alert.

[00:29:38] ServiceNow, can they buy just employee workflows or do they need to have other parts of ServiceNow?

[00:29:44] Yeah, no, we actually, they can buy employee workflows on their own.

[00:29:49] You know, I will say for many customers, they already have us in IT because that's typically where they start with us.

[00:29:56] But absolutely, there is no dependency of any kind.

[00:30:00] If this is something that's interesting, they can start with our employee workflows products on their own.

[00:30:04] And we do have customers who do that.

[00:30:05] Okay.

[00:30:06] I think to build on that, Gretchen, you made a point when you said most of our customers start with us in IT and then realize we have that.

[00:30:17] Where is those for the audience that's listening who may only know ServiceNow in that one sector?

[00:30:25] Where have you all evolved over the years?

[00:30:27] And how should they look at you now as opposed to just five years ago?

[00:30:32] Absolutely.

[00:30:33] Great question.

[00:30:34] So I would say, you know, as I said at the beginning, we're a platform company, right?

[00:30:38] So by being a platform company, we have, you know, one platform that serves all of our workflow capabilities, one architecture, one data model, you know, one plate of glass.

[00:30:50] But we have, you know, within our technology workflows, that's really where IT goes, right?

[00:30:55] But it's not just IT services, IT asset management, it's project management, asset management.

[00:31:02] There's more in there.

[00:31:03] And then we have our customer CSM, customer support management, which is more, as I said, sales support and also getting into field service management.

[00:31:14] So, you know, the people who drive around and service you when you've got problems.

[00:31:17] We have our employee workflows, of course, that's me.

[00:31:20] And then we have it within our creator workflows.

[00:31:24] Creator is kind of our low code area.

[00:31:26] So for customers who want to build on top of our platform themselves, there are licenses they can extend there.

[00:31:32] And then we've just gone into finance and supply chain as well.

[00:31:36] So adding in on top of customers who already have those capabilities but want to put more workflow behind them.

[00:31:42] So, yeah, we are a platform company that serves pretty much name a part of business operations.

[00:31:48] We're there.

[00:31:49] And that's our goal, right?

[00:31:51] What we want to be is that company that really is the platform that runs your business from that system of action and system of engagement point of view.

[00:32:01] Oh, and because you can get data out of any of the systems that they've already purchased, whether or not that's core HR or performance management or whatever the bid is, you can get data out of those things.

[00:32:13] I can see it being very useful as, again, as you said, laying on top of that and helping people.

[00:32:24] If a CHRO has never bought employee workflows as a product and as a service, what questions should they be asking of you and your team?

[00:32:35] Yeah, that's a great way to frame this.

[00:32:37] I would say the starting point question that we usually get from customers when they're first thinking about this is, how does this fit with my existing insert core HR system or multiple HR systems here?

[00:32:51] And having that conversation up front about what business problems are you trying to solve?

[00:32:57] Because there is always going to be a need for that core HR system.

[00:33:01] I am not in payroll.

[00:33:02] Nope.

[00:33:03] And I don't tend to be because there is much more value for me in that employee facing component.

[00:33:09] And I would say thinking also about how the technology, as we look at where AI is going and as we look at our further investment, how can we align with our business problems?

[00:33:19] Because typically where the conversation starts is employee experience.

[00:33:23] I want one place to start.

[00:33:25] I want to drive consistency.

[00:33:26] It then goes into productivity and it goes to productivity for HR, right?

[00:33:32] Because I'm freeing up agent time.

[00:33:34] I'm making their time easier.

[00:33:35] We also need to talk about what does this do in terms of productivity for a manager or an employee as we orchestrate these processes and we bring them back together.

[00:33:45] And then the third piece tends to get into more strategic investment, things around how am I going to go more with skills and skills intelligence, driving more that cultural and strategic change within the business.

[00:33:58] So it's kind of a crawl, walk, run around how organizations usually start that process.

[00:34:03] I would say the thing for me is usually, you know, name a business process.

[00:34:09] ServiceNow can help you.

[00:34:11] And the question is, are we orchestrating?

[00:34:13] Are we simplifying?

[00:34:14] Are we bringing a better user interface to it?

[00:34:18] Or are we reimagining the whole thing and helping you really think differently about every touchpoint that an employee has throughout their hire to retire lifecycle?

[00:34:28] Yeah.

[00:34:29] So, Gretchen, final question from me.

[00:34:31] I want to keep it on.

[00:34:32] I'll keep it on product.

[00:34:33] So as we go into 25 and 26, what can customers expect from workflows?

[00:34:40] Where are we going?

[00:34:41] Just give us your roadmap.

[00:34:42] Like where are you going?

[00:34:42] Would you like a roadmap?

[00:34:43] Huh, huh.

[00:34:44] Without giving the secret.

[00:34:46] Like how?

[00:34:47] No, pop up a PowerPoint.

[00:34:48] Let's go.

[00:34:49] Yeah, I know.

[00:34:50] I hear everybody.

[00:34:51] That's all.

[00:34:51] Don't say it.

[00:34:52] Without giving the secret sauce, whatever you want.

[00:34:54] No, absolutely.

[00:34:55] I mean, we are laser focused on driving innovation.

[00:34:58] I have to say the thing that has been so exciting for me being at ServiceNow is just the pace of innovation continues to get faster.

[00:35:07] And it's a fantastic place to be because I'm like in the candy store, right?

[00:35:11] I'm like, okay, I want to this, I want to that.

[00:35:13] We are working really closely with our customers as Gen.AI continues to develop and looking down into Agentic.AI now.

[00:35:22] So thinking about those workflows and how much of that can an agent AI just take on and run with as opposed to needing a human managing those processes.

[00:35:31] So a lot happening in that space.

[00:35:33] I will say within that as well, making sure that we are focused on end-to-end employee journey.

[00:35:39] So we talked about onboarding and offboarding.

[00:35:41] We're having a lot of investment right now on where do we go within the talent acquisition space.

[00:35:47] Again, not to say we want to be recruiting, but where are there gaps and how can we orchestrate that process for a leader, for a candidate, make this an easier process, as well as talent development to kind of, again, tie that together for existing employees to help them grow and find new ways to contribute and new ways to be part of the organization.

[00:36:07] So those are big bets for this year, and there will be a lot more coming.

[00:36:12] I'm trying to keep it to like my top three because I could tell you like 20.

[00:36:15] But yeah, we're innovating like crazy around here, and it is so much fun.

[00:36:19] I love it.

[00:36:20] All right.

[00:36:21] Favorite customer story without their name.

[00:36:24] We don't need to know the brand.

[00:36:26] You got to pick one or the latest.

[00:36:28] It can be the most recent one that it's your go-to.

[00:36:32] So let me tell you about the one that is more on the experience because we spend a lot of time talking process.

[00:36:37] I want to talk experience for a minute.

[00:36:38] So, you know, we have as part of our investment a capability that we can move around building employee portals.

[00:36:45] Kind of like what does that front page look like when you first come in and, you know, whether you're coming in through the portal or through Teams or on your mobile.

[00:36:52] Basically, our point is where an employee wants to engage, we want to be there.

[00:36:56] And so we ran a contest last year leading up to our knowledge conference where we invited customers to participate.

[00:37:05] And to be honest with you, I was worried because we asked for a lot of data.

[00:37:08] It was kind of like an analyst thing where we're like, we need your video.

[00:37:11] We want you to answer an RFP.

[00:37:13] Like it was heavy.

[00:37:14] And I was like, you guys know you're just getting bragging rights, right?

[00:37:16] There's nothing else here.

[00:37:18] But our customers ran with it.

[00:37:21] I mean, they made these polished videos.

[00:37:23] My personal favorite was we had a customer in the South where the CHRO and the C-suite were so invested.

[00:37:31] Like the CHRO was calling his leader daily going, have you heard yet?

[00:37:34] Did we win?

[00:37:35] Did we win?

[00:37:35] But they were just, they're so proud of what they built and the engagement.

[00:37:40] And we had 50 customers participate in this.

[00:37:42] Wound up giving out a top 10 because there's no way we're narrowing it down to a one.

[00:37:46] But just understanding like how they see that framework really transforming the employee experience to me was very rewarding.

[00:37:55] And they all had great measurements behind it.

[00:37:57] It wasn't just it's pretty.

[00:37:58] It's here's how we're driving better productivity and better results, which to me, I mean, that's nirvana when you're talking about an employee experience.

[00:38:06] And it lets you know that you are on the right path, right?

[00:38:11] Like they care that much about this.

[00:38:13] They're willing to put together all of this.

[00:38:15] They actually care about this.

[00:38:17] You guys are in the right space.

[00:38:18] Right.

[00:38:19] Exactly.

[00:38:20] Christian, this has been wonderful.

[00:38:21] I've known you for a hot minute.

[00:38:24] I've never seen you this.

[00:38:25] I've never seen you this excited.

[00:38:27] It's, I mean, I love it.

[00:38:30] I think that the change in which innovation is happening, like you come up with a crazy idea and then roll something out and see if it works.

[00:38:40] I just, you seem really happy.

[00:38:42] Yeah, it is a fun place.

[00:38:44] I'm having a great time.

[00:38:45] That's awesome.

[00:38:46] Well, thank you for being on the show.

[00:38:49] We know how crazy busy you are.

[00:38:51] And thanks to the audience for listening and watching.

[00:38:53] Ryan, thank you for whatever.

[00:38:56] I'm glad I'm included this time.

[00:38:58] Thank you.

[00:38:59] Anyhow, thanks again.