(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's the Cube. Covering ServiceNow, Knowledge17, brought to you by ServiceNow. >> We're back. Hi, everybody, I'm Dave Vallente with Jeff Frick, and we're here live at Knowledge17. This is our fifth year. Ian Proctor is here. He is the Director of Consulting at Deloitte. Ian, great to see you. >> Great to see you guys too. >> So we were talking off-camera and Jeff and I, we did our first knowledge. We basically said, look, for this to really explode you need the big consultancies to support this. They're the ones who have the relationship, the deep domain knowledge, the industry expertise. Ian, you've been at this for longer than most. Certainly longer than most that's in new senior management. So tell us a little bit about your background, a little bit on Deloitte, of course, well-known firm, but specifically your ServiceNow practice. >> Yeah, absolutely. So I have a bit of a unique trajectory in terms of working with ServiceNow. Now, I started off as a customer. I was working at an airline in Canada by the name of West Jet Airlines. It's Canada's second largest airline. And we were growing very quickly, and we had internal challenges with legacy platforms. And I was actually speaking at a conference, and somebody approached me about a new platform that maybe could really help. And, so over the course of about 10 months, I grew to understand ServiceNow as a technology. Had the chance to meet Fred Luddy, and really get an appreciation for the underlining platform. >> Jeff: What year was that? >> That was 2011, I'd say. >> Okay. >> And so that was a big move back then, and when I took the ServiceNow opportunity to my executive at that time, no one had ever heard of it. And you know, moving outside of your own data center was a bit scary back then. And we did a very successful transition in the early stages. So, ServiceNow deployed in a major airline in Canada in that time frame was kind of a unique story. And I became a reference client, and I had a background in consulting. I'd been at Delolitte previously, and I saw the opportunity to take the technology platform of ServiceNow and go back to my consulting roots, and the uniqueness of our deep relationships, of our focus on business transformation, and bring those two together. And so myself and one other key leader in Deloitte, by the name of Dan Slowkar, him and I essentially began building that practice in 2012. And here we are today, 2017, and it's been a fantastic journey. As a globally networked firm, we get to interface with a lot of C-level executives of major corporations across the globe. And they have a unique set of needs. Their global operating models need to be integrated, and so ServiceNow is a platform, looking at that as a realization of integration. And so when you look at like the Deloitte expertise in operating models and in really driving true business transformation to generate business value, that's where this synergy has become so strong. And we see a lot more opportunity, as does ServiceNow, to move into what might be, not classically viewed as IT areas, and getting into industry vertical specific solutions where Deloitte has a very deep and rich background in understanding what it takes to make that business work. >> So one of the unique advantages that Deloitte has, obviously, as you pointed out, Ian, is their relationships. You can count on one hand the number of companies who have that type of presence in the board room, at the C Suite. So my question is, what are you hearing from those customers? I know you're in a lot of different industries, but broadly, everybody talks about digital transformation, but what are some of the big themes that they're asking you for help with these days? >> Yeah, that's a great question, because today's challenges are a lot different than yesterday's challenges. But where Deloitte is uniquely positioned is that we've been on a journey with a lot of these clients for a long time. And they expect us to bring them the best across all many number of domains. While I focus on technology transformation to drive business value, we have a risk practice, we have a financial advisory practice, and so getting tighter integration inside these global organizations to drive out some of that transformative change, like you mentioned it, about the digital transformations. Our view is around re-imagining the digital experience, and how that extends into multiple different business units and how, very similar to the messaging that we were seeing over the last couple of days from John and the executive was these organizations can't be viewed as a whole bunch of separate organizations. And this kind of business transformation is something Deloitte has been helping clients with for a number of years. To drive out process sufficiencies, to drive out different ways of delivering, and I think now that we've got the technology platform that enables that, the opportunity to take what we've experienced over the the last couple of years, and apply it in industries you may not think of, like oil and gas, or in the financial services industry, they're desperate for innovation, but they also exist within regulatory frameworks that necessitate a lot of visibility, transparency, audit ability, and when you take that knowledge of like the financial service sector, and you pair that with what you can do with ServiceNow, that's what our clients are expecting from us. >> I'm curious, everyone knows, right, financial services is usually on kind of cutting edge of new technology, right? That's their business, they have to stay fast and furious and out on the edge, but are there some industries that people probably don't think of that you've seen as aggressive adopters with huge ROI in this type of technology? >> Absolutely. I mean, I'm based in Western Canada, and so there's a large oil and gas footprint in Western Canada. Some of the largest martin nationals are head-quartered there. So in the oil and gas segment, there are unique challenges with operating the remote areas. And so having to always rely on the classic technologies which bound you to your desk just don't work. When you're in a remote operating site, working on an oil well, for example, and you need to notify somebody that the well head has a crack in it, well, how are you going to do that, right? Are you going to call somebody? Well, you may not have SAT reception. Or if the guy is miles away, so when you think about the unique business challenges in there, an interesting story about that is, we were helping a client in that regard, as an IT advisor. So, we had ServiceNow on an iPad, and we were sitting there using it, and the rig manager looked over and said, Ian, what's that? And I was, "Oh, this is ServiceNow. "We use this to kind of route work to each other, and get work done, and there's some reporting," "and here's some dashboards," and he said, "Can I have that?" And I said, "Well, absolutely, absolutely." And so, this is one example where these business use cases show up naturally, and then since we've been at this at this a while, like you mentioned I've been doing this since 2012, we see these trends, and so we can take innovations from one segment, re-imagine them, and then apply them to a different segment. >> Alright, we got to go, so I'll give you the last word. Sort of fast-forward to Knowledge17 here, using your experience, what do you see as the big opportunities for you guys going forward? You mentioned going beyond IT. Maybe you can sort of summarize where you see you want to take your clients. >> You know two key messages that I'll close on. It's really re-imagining the digital experience, and that means different things to different people. It's an important conversation to be had, to say, What are you trying to drive from a business-value standpoint? And then secondly, looking at segments that can benefit from all the lessons learned that we've had delivering technology, and a big one there is in the financial services industry, in the core business. So those two areas are really going to be a game-changer for all of us. >> Dave: Ian, great stuff from somebody who really knows this community. Thanks for coming on the Cube. >> Thanks guys, good seeing you. >> Appreciate it. >> Take care. Have a good rest of the show. >> All right, keep it right there everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. This is the Cube, we're live, from Knowledge17. We'll be right back. (upbeat music)