>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube! Covering ServiceNow, Knowledge 2018. Brought to you by ServiceNow. >> Welcome back everyone to The Cube's live coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge 18 in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Gaurav Dutt Uniyal, who is the North American practice head of service management for Infosys. Thanks so much for joining us, Gaurav. >> Thanks, Rebecca for hosting me. >> So first, this is your second time on The Cube, so I should say welcome back. >> Yes, thank you. >> So tell us about what you do at Infosys and what, sort of what the strategy is in this space. >> Sure, sure. So I lead our practice for North America, and Infosys is our technology services company. And we help our organizations go through their digital transformation journey. And with ServiceNow I've been working for the last 10 years, so we have seen this platform evolving from a basic ticketing tool to a platform that can be used by IT, and now it has reached a point where it's being adopted by, across the organizations, right? All the business owners, be it HR or customer services or program managers, portfolio managers, and so on and so forth. And interestingly, you know, the theme which we have adopted for this year, is how do we help our clients accelerate their journey for HR, CSM, item? So basically how do we help our organization adopt ServiceNow, be on IT, and take it to the enterprise. >> So that's, so that's the strategy. How do we accelerate customers in their journey. And is the strategy led by customers themselves? Did they say, "Look, Infosys, we have this problem, "we're going too slow," or what would you say, where was sort of the impetus for this? >> I think it's a mix of both. You know, we do get, obviously, inputs from the clients, but the value that Infosys brings in is the diverse experience from multiple engagements, right? And to give you some more views of how we are approaching this space, so on a very high level what we see as the key things or strategies in this space. The first of all, any control system that we have with the client, the first and foremost topic is about user experience. That, you know, as we implement SerivceNow, how do we enhance the user experience for the internalized as for the regular customers? That's one. Second strategy or thing that we see is that, you know, while ServiceNow has been matured and implemented for a larger part of IT organization, but how do we make sure that the similar level of maturity can be achieved for HR managers, right? How program managers, portfolio managers, the security organizations, the facilities team, how they can adopt the platform. So that's the second strategy. The third strategy that we work on is bringing in domain expertise as part of ServiceNow implementation, right? Now, for example, if we are implementing ServiceNow for retail, so how do we bring in experience of store's management, for example? If we are implementing it for a foreign organization, you know how do we bring in that domain expertise, and integrate that with SerivceNow. That's the third strategy. And the fourth thing that we are focusing on is some of the newer things, which possibly, not revenue generating engines for us yet, >> Rebecca: Yet. (laughs) >> But down the line, you're 12 months, 13 months down the line, we expect more revenue to come. So things like, IOT, and, I shouldn't even say AI because AI is something we're already implementing for some of the clients. >> So, that's interesting. You're exploring this area, this area is so hot, what are some of the, how do you see some of the potential use cases? >> So the use cases that we are seeing is so ITSM, I think in our viewpoint, it has matured. A lot of organizations have adopted ITSM, the basic capabilities on incident, problem, team management, asset management, CMDB, is already out there, right? An obvious thing, clients taking those foundational capabilities and taking it to other parts of organization, right? So in case of HR, we are seeing organizations adopting it for case management. Helping onboarding, offboarding all their employees. Managing their payroll systems. That's one set of use cases that we are seeing. The second set of use cases we are seeing are around automating your business processes. So, there are a few clients where they identified a set of business use cases or workflows and they are leveraging the power of ServiceNow to automate those. >> So how are you, how are you and your customers measuring the return on the investment here? What are they seeing? >> So what we do is, when we work on these engagements, so at the beginning of the engagements we do identify certain outcomes that we are going to deliver for our clients, right? And one simple example is if we are implementing ServiceNow for help desk, so one of the key outcomes that we would measure is that by implementing ServiceNow, how many tickets that we have reduced? Or how many calls to service desk have been reduced by implementing SerivceNow? Which, you know, actually has reduced the cost of operations for the client. So that's just one example. What we do is across the organization we identify those use cases and the kind of outcomes that it would deliver, and we also identify the set of metrics, right, which we jointly review during the engagement. At what kind of outcomes that have been delivered with this implementation. >> When you think about all of the, the solutions that you helped customers come to, what are you most excited about? >> Yeah, so I think if you look at the different types of solutions that are out there, right, and how customers are adopting it, I think in my view, or the way we see it, the solutions around the specific domain or industry, right? Because so far what we have seen is that service management or ITSM, it's like a whole giant lair, it is not really tied to a specific domain, right? But more and more we are seeing that clients are asking for solutions which are relevant to their business. Which can help make some difference to their business outcomes. And that's where we are seeing turned around building solutions for retail organizations, building solutions for insurance organization, money factoring, finance, and so on and so forth. So that's one interesting turn that we are seeing in the market right now. >> Last question, how many Knowledges have you been to? >> I have been to, I have been coming right from the beginning. >> So you've seen the conference above, why do you keep coming back? >> I think so first of all, this is a great product. A lot of organizations are adopting it. But interestingly I think it's an equal system. If you look at this conference on 18,000, 20,000 people attending it last year it was only 15,000, and if you look at so many partners and customers out there, I think there's a big big family and bigger ecosystem out there. So yeah, excited to be part of it. >> Gaurav, thanks so much for coming on The Cube, it's been great. >> Thank you. >> I'm Recebba Knight, we will have more tomorrow from ServiceNow Knowledge 18. Until then, good night!

>> Announcer: Live 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, and we are covering three days wall to wall coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge 2017. I'm Dave Volante with my co-host Jeff Frick. When we first started doing Knowledge in 2013, you'd walk around the show floor, and the names that you'd see weren't the brand names. Well, Infosys is here and Gaurav Uniyal, who's the industry principal of North America for the practice lead at ITSM for the ServiceNow practice with Infosys, you're seeing the big SIs join the community and really start to add value. Gaurav, welcome to theCUBE, thanks so much. >> Thank you. >> How'd you guys get into this? Like you say, four or five years ago, you guys might have been kicking the can, and now, you're all in. What's the journey been like? >> Sure, sure. We have been a partner with ServiceNow for almost last eight years, and as I look back to the journey, I can categorize the journey into four parts. Initially we saw 2010 to 2012 is basically about ITSM, how do you get the foundation capabilities in? Once that was there, we saw for the next couple of years it was all about how do you integrate services together, the service integration management as a concept. The third wave we saw is where concepts like ITOM, mobility, there's a lot of focus on user experience. And now, here we are in 2017, and as we look at the trends, what we are anticipating for the next two to three years, on a very high level, there are three trends which we believe are going to shape the journey of ServiceNow. First one is AI, obviously, how do you bring in concepts of machine learning, chat bars, predictive analytics, and how would that help organization do things faster, more efficiently, and in a cost-optimizing manner? AI is definitely one. Second trend that we are seeing is now organizations are looking for solutions that are relevant to their business. Solutions which are specific to retail industry, to CBGs, to finance, to healthcare, and so on, so forth. We are seeing a lot of traction there. And third is the natural expansion of ServiceNow into newer areas like obviously CSM, HR and so on, so forth. These are the three trends on the high level that we see, AI, going vertical, and on going horizontal by expanding these capabilities. >> Big factor when you talk to customers is sometimes it's not simple to implement ServiceNow. They need a partner like yours, so where do you start? I mean, when we first started following ServiceNow, a lot of folks weren't adopting CMDB and going too hard on the service catalog. To take advantage of these trends, the AI and other things that you talked about, do they need to be there on the majority curve? I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit. >> Sure, sure. What we see is that obviously there are a set of foundational capabilities that are required. There's definitely a push required from the management to be able to drive the initiator. But more and more we are seeing our clients implementing the solution in a standardized manner. If I look back four or five years back, a lot of customization, everybody have their own processes. But when I talk with clients now, they're looking for something which is ready-made, which can be deployed in a very, very faster manner. >> Gaurav, why Infosys? Talk about what you bring to the table versus maybe some of the other suppliers out there, and what do you consider your sweet spot? >> I think I would, a couple of things. One is Infosys we do a lot of work outside of ServiceNow. We have our practices for cloud, we have practices for HR, and so on, so forth. One thing that have been to our table is the domain expertise. If you're implementing HR, it requires not only ServiceNow skills, but as well as domain skills to be able to configure the processes. That's one differentiator that we have. The second differentiator we have is delivering ServiceNow as a service, so clients are also looking for turnkey projects where one render can bring in the platform, bring in consulting, implementation services, and also be able to manage the platform end-to-end, so that's the second thing. And third thing is basically being ahead of the curve. What we have done, we have invested last, I would say, last eight to 10 months in building a product that we brand as ESM Cafe, Enterprise Service Management Cafe, and it's what we call as a gold image of ServiceNow, and that helps you deploy ServiceNow faster and in efficient manner. >> So, Gaurav, what did you see eight years ago, 'cause clearly ServiceNow isn't where it is today, that gave you guys the confidence to make the investment? >> And before ServiceNow, we used to work with other products as well. What we saw new with ServiceNow was a huge focus on user experience. How do you make it easy for the users, how do you deploy an intuitive solution? And in our view, that has been the key, a focus on user experience, bring simplistic workflows, and be able to drive user behavior. >> Maybe some of those other domains, you mentioned HR, where else do you see Infosys as really strong? >> What we are seeing is ITOM is definitely one area that we are focusing on. HR, CSM, these are two big stack we have. And then, we are also focusing a lot on building vertical solutions. As I said, having specific solutions for retail industry, for our healthcare clients, or manufacturing clients. That has been a focus for us. >> We're out of time, Gaurav, but I'd like to leave you with the last word. Knowledge 2017, what does it mean to you, your customers, and Infosys and your presence here? Give us the bumper sticker. >> So I think, if I have to summarize everything in one word, I will say it's all about diversity. We see so many partners, so many clients, everybody they have their own perspective. But how do you bring in all that diverse experience and gel it together to be able to deliver the experience for the users? >> Great, well, Gaurav, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE, we appreciate it. >> Yep, it has been pleasure. >> Okay, well, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. This is theCUBE, we're live from ServiceNow Knowledge '17. Be right back. (electronic keyboard music)