It was announced last week that ServiceNow has hired Paul Smith to lead the company’s EMEA region. This appointment is particularly interesting for two reasons: first, Smith previously served as the UK general manager at cloud computing giant Salesforce, and secondly, this is the first clear indication of how CEO Bill Bill McDermott plans to strengthen the ServiceNow leadership team. sign.
We of diginomica had the opportunity to (actually) sit down with Smith to better understand his ambitions for ServiceNow in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, what attracted him to the company, and how he intends to make ServiceNow a buyer Home’s strategic platform considers their response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before we conduct the interview, it is worth noting that in recent years, ServiceNow has been seriously implementing its strategy to enter the market-expanding its ITSM foundation and further focusing on customer service management and customer and customer service. Staff experience. CEO Bill McDermott-former long-term CEO of SAP-recently joined the company and has been pushing ServiceNow’s philosophy to the center of the company’s “workflow revolution.” For more background on the ServiceNow strategy, you can read diginomica’s analysis here and here.
Why choose ServiceNow?
When asked why he decided to quit Salesforce, Smith said that ServiceNow has become an interested company after working closely with the Salesforce Customer Advisory Committee. In the past year or so, Smith said that customers in question actively talk about how they use the Now platform throughout the organization. Smith explained:
Why use ServiceNow now? In terms of what I have seen and heard on the market, it is rooted in what we have just said. The very senior technical directors I trust and the opinions I trust are talking about the organization’s almost “unexploited potential.” Unexploited potential in the Now platform. This is amazing for ITSM and its current market, but if you think about what challenges the world will need to face in order to meet all these challenges the organization faces-huge untapped potential.
When referring to “current challenges,” Smith specifically discussed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global organizations. Taking into account family measures and social distancing requirements, the company not only had to reconsider its operating methods, but also faced unprecedented demands in the customer service function. In other words, employees are under increasing pressure and need to rethink future business models.
All of this is happening fast, which means that the company will make strategic decisions around its technology use six months ago at an unlikely rate. ServiceNow wants to be at the front and center of these positions, which is Smith’s top priority.
He cited an example of a multinational manufacturing organization (which cannot be named publicly yet), which had 58 projects before COVID-19 and had a high profile at the board level. After the COVID, this has been stripped back to 11 projects. However, Smith said that these are 11 projects with “great impact.” Smith explained:
All these new business models have been opened up and must be put in place. What used to be a six-month decision-making cycle has now become a two-week decision-making cycle. Everything is accelerating. Of course, this gives ServiceNow advantages in terms of agility, speed and being a partner who can help implement these new business models. Not only within employees, but definitely extended to provide customers with a great experience.
Smith is fully aware that there is no time to waste, because the company will make changes in the near future. He added:
Now I am in a hurry.I woke up in the morning seven days later [in the job] Make some changes with an impatient mood. When you enter a high-level organization, you will be in a unique and privileged position because your eyes are refreshed and you can see this successful business before your eyes. You must avoid the mistake of changing for the sake of change. Let us keep the amazing places and eliminate any bottlenecks to speed up development.
But then I think the risk is a missed opportunity and not developing fast enough. The risk is that the CEO will make decisions about future challenges in the next 12 months with the organization he will work with. I want to make sure that ServiceNow is and is part of these conversations. Therefore, there is an impatient attitude to ensure that we are doing this. Yes, it is being executed quickly.
Focus on $10 billion
As mentioned above, ServiceNow has a long history of providing services to the ITSM market. However, in recent years, due to the versatility of the Now platform, efforts to expand its scope of responsibility mean that it has focused on various use cases across the organization.
Smith said that although he only worked for a week, he had heard stories about ServiceNow getting deals in the customer service management area, for example, dealing with buyers who did not use the ITSM platform. If you want to become the “workflow engine” of the enterprise, these types of transactions will become the key to ServiceNow’s future success. Identifying and highlighting use cases outside of the IT department is critical for continued growth in the future.
Smith believes that ServiceNow is on the right track and he has set his sights on achieving the $10 billion revenue goal. He said:
Let me look at the growth curve-now $4 billion in revenue will reach $10 billion. The road to income from 4 billion to 10 billion dollars will be incredible, and I want to be one of them. I went through a similar journey in the last organization and learned a lot in the process. I think I can help ServiceNow complete it faster.
Smith said that the ability that enables ServiceNow to scale across the entire enterprise is the simplicity of the platform itself. In order to achieve growth, it does not have to be a Frankenstein cloud composed of dense systems. He said:
Another thing that attracts me here is an architecture, a platform, a data model-it has not grown due to large-scale acquisitions. I think this is an organization that has not yet developed platform functions. It is big enough and powerful enough to scale to support the needs of some of the largest organizations in the world.
It is this purity that creates our agility. When you need to achieve growth through acquisitions, please re-platform these acquisitions as we have done so far, and then keep them on Now Platform. Maintaining agility will be very, very important.
Adapt to senior suite
Smith said his main goal for the next 18 to 24 months is to be able to publicly outline how ServiceNow is used in the 10 largest and “most exciting organizations” in the world. Not only to work with them as a solution to a specific problem, but also as an organization-wide platform to help them solve the 2020/2021 challenges.
However, Smith’s idea is to enable his team in EMEA to sell this version of ServiceNow clearly, effectively and confidently among the board of directors and senior management. CEO Bill McDermott also expressed this point, in his speech he talked about the interaction with the CEO rather than the IT leader. He added:
One thing I am passionate about is ensuring that we, as partners, can communicate with the CEO and executive board who are struggling to meet these challenges. This is one of the things I want to focus on. It is to help the ServiceNow team in the entire EMEA region conduct such conversations. Provide them with ambition, confidence, tools and support to have a dialogue with the board of directors of XYZ company. Easier said than done, but we must make sure that the team is lined up and able to do this.
The team must be fluent in senior management to communicate this opportunity, which is a priority.
I take
In the past six months or so, ServiceNow has gained new vitality. McDermott (McDermott) has clearly attracted intense attention across enterprises and is improving the company’s expertise to ensure that it can handle various use cases. I’m sure that Smith has extensive experience in this field since joining Salesforce and has an exhaustive contact list. As I said before, the market has a solid understanding of how ServiceNow solves ITSM problems-but use cases beyond that need to be identified, clarified and displayed for everyone to see. Companies need to be cautious not to fall into the trap of talking and talk, but to provide the market with practical advice and clear examples of how this workflow engine solves the problems in the COVID-19 world.
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