>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida it's theCUBE covering ServiceNow Knowledge17 brought to you by ServiceNow. >> We're back this is Dave Vellante with Jeff Frick Rob McDonnell is here he's the head of Enterprise Products at Air New Zealand Rob thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> My pleasure thanks for having me. >> So Air New Zealand you know energy costs are down that's good for the airline business isn't it. >> Anything that's good for the barrel price of oil. >> It's priced like a tax cut to the consumer, we all go traveling. Tell us a little about the organization and your role. So we're in New Zealand headquartered out of Auckland in New Zealand Asia Pacific based but we have routed that travel to London as well. Asia Pacific is our core business. I'm part of the Digital Leadership team in the Enterprise Products, that's products like a typical IT function would run, like a CIO would run. So we have a product organization which we've had in place for the last year and a half. One of the product managers looks after our customers. So for online booking, mobile app and customer experience, one of my colleagues looks after the operational products another colleague looks after air points products with the frequent flier program. And I look after everything else internally so you've got HR products, you've got finance, help desk, incident management, we've got mobility, offices, workspace and collaboration, so there's really quite a bit in there. >> So what are the big drivers in your business that are affecting those things that you look after. >> Probably the primary one now is the new focus and a renewed focus on the internal customer. Since we started in this role a year and a half ago I've been mandating and championing the cause of the internal customer. Typically, it's about the revenue and the external customer but for me it's about the internal customer. And I've got 12 and a half thousand Air New Zealanders that I consider my customers. Those guys are the ones that wake up in the morning, they look at their Apple watch and check a message, or they login in the morning and that experience has to be correct, it has to be right when they walk into the office and when they swipe in with a badge or want to do something like get a payroll slip or something. That experience is my primary driver. So, we're looking at typifying what we have so fixing the pain-points is probably my first thing. Remove all the pain points out of the way of my customers my users, make sure they can operate. Make the job the challenge, not the tools they are using. Focusing on mobility, so focusing on the more mobile workforce that we have. I'd reckon about 60% of my user base is considered mobile. We got crew and pilots that you wouldn't see in the head office from one day to the next. A big push on cloud for obvious reasons, and then future workspace. >> So tell us about your ServiceNow journey, when did that start? >> So our ServiceNow journey started just over a year and a half ago. We had quite a frustrating environment where we had a bad reputation for digital services. People weren't too happy calling our help desk. The name of the product we had was called assist an internally branded product, people called it Cease and desist, the reputation was, we had a bad reputation. So one of our primary goals was to get that reputation back, earn it back and really try and delight out customers. So we had gone through some product selection and ServiceNow came right on top and was the product of choice for us to implement. So we were able to replace four platforms with ServiceNow. We had one platform we buying parts off the internet a couple things to keep it going, so was a bit of a shaky situation. Bad user experience, so implementing ServiceNow we made sure that we took a, when we did the reorganization for digital, we stopped the project and changed it to be a business organizational change project not an IT project. So it wasn't IT delivering a product to the business it was a business choice and a business decision so we changed, stopped the project, introduced and implemented change management as part of the project, we brought in different skills in terms of Agile ways of working and we changed the product structure as well to suit. We went live with an MVP last year, we pushed out redesigned platform January last year, was about 70% ready, so again it was a new feeling for Air New Zealand staff having a product that wasn't perfect, but just suited for going live. And then we went live with the full suite of what we were doing in June, July last year. It's been an awesome journey. >> So you made the decision to sweep the floor of these four other platforms. At the point at which you made that decision you did a contract with ServiceNow. What happened, how long did it take you to get to that MVP, what did you have to do. I mean the old saying is God created the world in six days but he didn't have an install base. You had to deal with that existing infrastructure how did you go from that point to the MVP how long did it take? >> Our approach was to, we were trying to de-risk or learn more about what the experience is going to be for our customers, so we went live, onboard in Helsinki so one of the first customers to go live on the Helsinki product. In the interim, we took the existing platform and we reskinned it with a brand new look and feel. The brand new look and feel was around how we wanted our customers to experience service management. So we followed them in terms of their role rather than just rolling out the product. So we reskinned the existing product and we reiterated and reiterated on what they wanted. Changing the features in the screen and rolling that one out. So we knew we had a really really good product and on the day we went live, we just basically flipped the switch. We didn't carry over any existing tickets, migrated hardly any of the data, started from scratch basically by flicking a switch. The product we went live with on the ServiceNow platform looked exactly like the one we reskinned in preparation for when we de-risked it. >> How long did that take to get to MVP? >> MVP was about two months and we included design. Then the remainder was about three months. >> What are some of the things you're measuring in terms of the customer satisfaction? Obviously nobody is saying cease and desist anymore. But what are some of the things you are measuring getting feedback from your internal customers? >> People like the product they like the platform. They like the fact that we can access it on a mobile phone. Which again, is a new thing for internal staff and Air New Zealanders. Along side the digital changes we were making some physical changes too. So we introduced a new help desk along side both at the airport and in the city offices. So again, people were getting physical and digital experience when we went live. And like I said I like the product, I like the simplicity and our business partners enjoy the speed that they can get catalog items up and get their teams more efficient and more effective. The ability to do pre-approved changes has driven a lot of efficiency, I think we have over 75% of pre-approved changes. We had things like I think 26% of our calls to the help desk were for password resets we're using this took to help reduce those numbers. We introduced a new MPS score as well or a digital happiness score for our internal customers. So we have it for external, so we've introduced that for internal. We promote that on the front of our portal as well so people can give us feedback in terms of what they like and what they don't like. So it's fairly responsive in how we react to what they want in the product. >> You avoided custom modules or did you do some custom modification to the platform? >> Mainly configuration to get it where we wanted to go. The look and feel in the portal was fairly custom but using code components available on the platform. >> Yeah, so when you upgrade you don't have to do the heavy wrestling with the modules. >> No it was an easy journey. >> And then how about a single CMDB is that something that you guys have adopted. >> So CMDB we delayed until this year. We're actually starting it next month. >> What's the conversation like internally around CMDB? Is it, you got a lot of different parts of the organization and is it going to be a single CMDB for the entire organization or are there going to be multiple CMDB's? >> So it's a big, scary topic, and the lady we're getting on, we're talking about it in iterative approach start small and build out. Primarily it will be the core enterprise stack, shared services stack, then we need to look at, and again it's wonderful being here at Knowledge and learning how far people are pushing it in terms of their external customers, so I'm looking at operations, I'll be looking at IoT and figuring how I can use that platform to be more effective. Having the CMDB will be a good starting block for that. >> You said IoT. >> So opportunities for us are around, we're an airline we have plans, we have power machines, we have engines on planes so you would have heard GE being mentioned quite a bit here. So what's the opportunity with those products and how can we use service management for event management of those stacks? When we think about the digital workplace environment and the connected devices, how do we use ServiceNow in that environment and how do we use it effectively? I think there's a great opportunity for us there. >> Can you take us back into the discussions internally when you had to sell the project internally to the management. Who did you have to involve, what was the business case? >> I think the business case was primarily lead by IT. Or the old IT because it was our product. All the onus on the project resided in IT, so I think the sale around the cost of the platform the duration on implementation, it wasn't too hard to sell in terms of the risk we were carrying on the legacy platforms. I think the opportunity if you flip it around the other side it was an easier conversation to our customers to say this is what you're getting and they were quite keen and quite eager to get involved in the implementation. >> What have you seen so far, it's early days but what kind of results have you seen? Can you share any metrics with us? >> I'll give you some indications early on about pre-approved changes and we have a bit of a, I'll defer on the exact numbers on our desk, we have so many parameters going on in New Zealand it wouldn't be fair to anybody. >> Well so just generally the business impact how would you describe that? >> Very positive, so we use it in the GSS area so Group Shared Services, so they're finding it far more effective to engage with their teams allocating work and automating the workflow. We have quite a queue, quite a backlog of other areas that want to get involved and automate and optimize. >> Where do you see this platform going? Do you see it driving into different parts of the business? We hear a lot about that at this conference is that something that you guys are looking at? >> Yeah, we rolled out to a group, our ground service equipment team, so they use it for example, a rampload or someone on the tarmac notifying a vendor that there is something wrong with a piece of equipment. So that optimizes that flow. So we're saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. So that's quite an efficiency gain. So looking to push into again, more HR and finance, Group Shared Services. Looking to optimize against our work day implementation in July, so make sure those two platforms work together very well and build a platform appropriately. >> OK, so you'll bring in the HR piece, is that right? >> Yeah, we'll need to find a, I've been having lots of conversations the last few days around how those two behemoth products fit together how you use them effectively and that's where we need to get to. So how do you use a portal on the front end to make it easier for the customer or the user to do what they want without having to think about what platform they need to go to. >> How about the show? You mentioned it's great being here, as a quasi-noob. Is this your first? >> This is my first Knowledge. I think it's fantastic. >> Things you've learned? What kinds of things are exciting you here? >> I like the ServiceNow people amazing, passionate, including the guys back in Australia and New Zealand a few of them are here, I can see the passion back there and I can see it here so it's quite collegial and it's amazing to see. I think the event's awesome, it's massive. Keynote was fantastic, it was really good. And just the energy with the vendors and the passion that people have for their customers and the business value they can get from this product, that's one of the key things I'm hearing from all the conversations. >> It sounds like you're getting what's been talked about over and over which is such the peer input in terms of helping you figure out where you're going to go next. >> Yeah, lot's of people are here to learn, but also lots of people are here to share and I'm learning that time and time again. Which is great. >> Rob thanks very much for coming on theCUBE and sharing your story. >> Thanks for having me. >> You're welcome. >> Alright keep it right there everybody we'll be back with our next guest. This is theCUBE, we're live from Knowledge17. Be right back.