>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering ServiceNow Knowledge 2018. Brought to you by ServiceNow. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, and we extract the signal from the noise. We're here at Knowledge18, ServiceNow's big customer event. 18,000 ServiceNow practitioners and partners and constituents here. As I say, this is day three. This is our sixth year at Knowledge. Jeff Frick and I are co-hosting. When we started in 2013 early on, we saw this ecosystem grow, and one of the first CIOs we had on from the ServiceNow customer base was Link Alander, who is here. He's the Vice Chancellor of College Services at Lone Star College. Link, always a pleasure. Great to see you again. Thanks for coming back on. >> It's always great to get back and talk with you, see what's happening in the industry, and follow you. But, once again, great conference. >> It really is, I mean, wow. Last year was huge. The growth keeps coming. We said that Dan Rogers, the CMO, K18, 18,000. How ironic. >> Yeah, wow, let's see, your first was six years ago, right? >> Dave: Yep, it was 2013. So my first would have been New Orleans, which had been I think 2012, 2011. >> Right, right, the year before we met 'em. >> Three to four thousand in this conference. Actually, that might be the high count. >> Yeah, I mean, it's quite amazing. And the ecosystem has exploded. What's your take on how, not only ServiceNow and the ecosystem have grown, but how it's affected your business? >> Let's start with the, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's start with the ecosystem part because, really, you've got so many more partners out there now. You've got so many more integration points. What was really exciting as we saw this morning with Pat, and some of the enhancements they're doing on the DevOps side, but also what we're going to see with the ability to integrate our cloud linkage, which is really the challenge for everybody as a practitioner today. How do you bring all these cloud services? I've got quite a few of them in my environment. How do I actually integrate those in with my ServiceNow, with my ERP, with all of the other instances? So, seeing what they're doing in that space is great. From the business standpoint, when we came onto ServiceNow, we came on like everybody else, a journey for IT service management. Can we improve our services? Can we help our customers out? In our case, that'd be our faculty and staff. What we didn't realize was the opportunity that came to us with the platform. And one of the first things we did when we brought the platform back to us was we built an app for students. We built a way to help students out with their student financial aid. Now I've got, I think we're roughly at about nine of our areas that are using Enterprise Service Management. I just came back from giving a presentation about legal, and what we've done in the legal space to where that's helped the organization to move forward faster. So that's really cool in what it does, but it also elevates the position of IT in the organization. It really does bring us forward. >> Yeah so, let's talk a little about Lone Star College, 'cause I love your model, you know, and we can both relate. Kids in college, and, you know, the cost of education, the ROI, which I think is a big focus of what you guys provide for your students, so how's that going? How's the model working? >> Well the model's working great. And you know, you hear the pressures out there, 'cause one of the first thing is, how do you help a student complete. So, we're really very focused on student completion, but then now, you've got another focus that, well, it's been there, but it's really getting stronger, on gainful employment. So not only that, how do you get a student in college, how do they complete on time, but then how do they come out and have a livable wage, an earnable wage? And so I'll give a plug on that always because that's what we're focused on. Whether you're just coming to us to transfer to another institution or whether you're coming in the workforce. And we have a very strong workforce development, and one of the things I got out of this conference that I've been working on for quite awhile was for us to become a ServiceNow train, to get that integrated into our curriculum. And I was really excited. We've talked to them before about this, and it's been a discussion, but now what we're looking at is a program that they put in France where they have a six week program that if people are going out of there, coming in, six weeks later, job retrained, 100% placement. A year later, they have 98% retention, and those 2% just went to another company. So I can't think of a better opportunity for us from our standpoints in our workforce development. And I'm really excited we're going to be starting to move that forward now. >> It's interesting to hear John Donahoe on Tuesday talk about their measurement of customer success. And we were asking him on theCUBE, well, your customers measure success in a lot of different ways, so how do you take that input? Your measurement of success is student success, as you just have indicated. >> Absolutely, absolutely. You know, my focus has always been is IT is just a support operation. We're not the mission of the college. And that's important. Because as long as we have that mindset, we realize that it's us helping the faculty to less stress on their life, or the staff, then we've improved their experience, which will improve the student experience. The same goes for the administrative systems. We want administrative systems to have a user interface that's intuitive to today's student. It wasn't designed by a person that was intuitive to today's student. So we have that challenge, and that's what I liked about the change this year and the user interface in ServiceNow and where they're going with UI and UX, and how much of an enhancement that makes for our customers. But it's also, that's the changes that are happening in industry right now. Coach K was at the CIO Decisions, and he was talking about he's headed to go through all this process, and 50 forward years of difference, and he's recruiting 18-year-olds, and he's sending emojis to them, his recruits. But like, yeah, because you have to relate to it. So, we started a process, and this is where coming to a conference like this helps me a lot, because it's like, yeah, I went down the right path. But my team came to me, and I've got a phenomenal team. They came to me and said, you know what, we really need to look at UI, UX, and design thinking. And I'm like, okay. Now let's discuss what we really want to do with this. One group was wanting design thinking to think about analytics. What does the customer need? How do they want to see this data come to them? And how can they make data-informed decisions? Well, we have then rolled that same design thinking into, how do we roll out the fluid technologies in our ERP? How do we become more of a user interface that today's student wants, to what we're trying to do next in mobile? >> That's a really interesting take, because we talk often about millennials entering the workforce, right? And consumerization of IT and expectations. But they're usually a pretty small and growing percentage of the workforce at a particular company. For you, it's like 90% of your customer base, right? And they're on the bleeding edge. They're coming in there 18, 17 years old. So you got to be way out front on this customer experience. So have you really taken that opportunity to redesign that UI, UX, and interface to the applications? That must be a giant priority. >> We've done a lot of incremental items, but really it's been a huge priority for us for the last, we have two really cool items coming down the path. One is the UI UX experience. How do we transform the student experience? The next is a process that our academic success side, the student services side have gone down, with guided pathways. Okay, you and I went to college. What did we do? We saw an advisor every single time we registered. Then we up to the thing, and we filled in a bubble sheet, right? >> Right, right. >> Well right now, the students are registering on a mobile phone while they're sitting down at a Starbucks. They're not seeing an advisor. We want them to see an advisor. So we push them those directions, but this guided pathway says, you know what, I want to do this degree. Then we just line out, here's the classes you're going to take, and whether we use program enrollment, whatever methodology, we can help guide them in their pathway to success and completion, which is a big difference. And that's what needs to happen today. >> Right, well it's interesting, I always like to talk about banking, right? 'Cause banking, you used to go see the banker, go into the teller, and, you know, deposit your check and get your cash. And now most people's experience with their bank is via electronic, whether it's online, on their phone, or their app. You have kind of the dichotomy, 'cause they still have their interaction with the teachers. So there's still a very people element, but I would imagine more and more and more of that administrative execution, as you just described, is now moving to the mobile platform. That's the way they interact with the administration of the school. >> Well, that's their expectation. So, that's what we have to deliver, and it's a challenge because we have resources, we have limitations in resources or capabilities, but it's really keeping that focus going to where you look at it. So as we're doing this UI UX right now, one of our major goals is going to be to bring students in the engagement as we go through the design process, and get their feedback. Not computer science people, not IT people. We want the normal student that's going to go register for a class. And since what you have is such a large transient population, you know, two years, they're in, they're done. 100,000 per semester. 160,000 unique each year. You've got to create that rich experience, but the engagement, the bonding to the institution. And I like the bank for an example because not too long ago I switched banks because I didn't like their app. >> Dave: Absolutely. >> And it's easy to do, it's real easy to do. >> Airlines, you appreciate the good apps. >> Link: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. >> How does ServiceNow contribute to that user experience, that, your customer experience? >> Well right now from the student side, they don't see much of ServiceNow. They can submit requests, and we can handle their incidents, and those types of items. They have certain things. We have the student financial aid. But it really is about the Enterprise Service Management philosophy. I think if you go back to one of theCUBEs, maybe two or three years ago, I said, "Who would have ever thought they would come to IT to talk about service delivery?" Okay? Now, everybody at Enterprise is like, okay, how do you do this? How do you not let things fall through the crack? So that the legal app was a great one, because that was a challenge that our general council or our COO had when he came in. Everything was falling through the crack. So they worked through their workflows. They built a process. And then they built, we built an app for them in ServiceNow that handles everything. Now when I'm in a cabinet meeting, I get to hear about how legal's doing so great. I'm like, what about me? I think we're still doing a good job. (laughing) >> Well, Link, I'm curious too on, kind of the big theme has always been at this show kind of low code, no code developing, right? Enable people that aren't native coders to build apps, to build workflows. How has that evolved over time within your organization? >> Well, we still want to make sure when we're putting out code. What it's enabled for us is, of course, our developers, it makes it easier to get to time to completion of a project. But we still want to make sure that whatever's built is production ready. You know, so we're not opening up the tool case to everybody. (laughing) But, sad to say, I actually still go in, and I'll build my dashboards, and I'll build my interaction, and I use my performance analytics, which does enable people. And we're seeing that in some of our heavier Enterprise Service Management side, but as far as letting them dive into the no code environment, I still have to put some protection on us. And like any organization, we always have to think of IT security. That's the other piece of it. What are they putting out there? What could be a violation of privacy? How do we handle that? >> Jeff: Right. >> So, we stay completely engaged, but the speed to deliver is what the change is. Our legal app was a three month development project. Three months to go from a, they had a separate system. And to go through the process, redesign it, build it, and put it in production. Three months. >> Three months? >> How many people, roughly? How many people did it take to get there? >> Well, we use a development partner that used three, and then I had two at the time on my own. I still have only three individuals that actually handle our, that are primary to ServiceNow in my organization, as large as our installation base is. >> Really? And that includes the permeation of ServiceNow into the rest of the organization, or? >> Link: Yes. >> Dave: Really? >> 'Cause I added, and before that, if it has been last year, it was one and a half. >> Dave: Wow. >> That's what I had then. And technically, I probably have only two and a half because one person has another job, which is running our call center. >> So what are you using now? You got obviously ITSM, what else is in there? >> ITSM, ITBM, we got a great presentation we gave earlier on project portfolio management, and what we've done with that. And where we're going next. Business operations. We're actually launching this summer, if everything goes right. This is more of an internal, us doing it, but what I've been doing is I've been taking our contract management piece, utilization, incidents request change, and project. Now I'm going to roll it in and then do analytics against it to come back with what is the total cost per service per month per individual. On every license contract I hold. >> It's funny, the contract management software licensing management piece is a huge untapped area that we hear over and over and over again. >> So, two years ago we talked a lot about security. I think ServiceNow just at that point had announced its intentions to get into that business. What do you make of their whole SecOps modules, and is it something you've looked at? State of security, any comments? >> Well this is one of those situations I think we're just a little bit too far ahead of them again. 'Cause we actually had built a modular ourself that handled what we needed. In my environment, I've got an ISO, but I also have the partners that support us. My SOC is operated by a third party. So they feed in the alerts. We ingest the alerts into the security module, and then we take action from there. So basically, they were about, a little bit behind us. And we had just looked at the model saying we need a better way to manage that event. >> So you got that covered. Yeah, I want to ask you, you know, a couple years ago we, when the big data meme was hitting, we were, of course, asking you all these data questions. Now the big theme is AI, and in some regards it's like, same wine, new bottle. But it's different. What's your thoughts on machine intelligence? Obviously ServiceNow talking about it a lot. How applicable is it to you? >> Okay, so. (laughing) >> You know why, that's good. I had to ask. >> Augmented intelligence. Let's just not make it artificial, okay? 'Cause I, when Fred had that conversation during the fireside and he said, you know, a computer takes 10,000 images to know what a cat is. And of course, the computer's a mundane object that can look at 10,000 images to determine that's a cat. You showed me the other ones earlier today, I about rolled over laughing. >> It's allowed on the blueberry, check it out. >> You know, augmented intelligence is going to be a driver. There's no question about it. What we saw on the interface about it abled to, as the machine learning goes through the process, it's picking up the information, and it's helping the agent to get to the resolution faster, that's great. Knowledge bases that are integrated in with that. Can you think about how much quicker it would be for somebody like myself who's going to go to a chatbot, and I'm going to run through a chatbot in automated intelligence and do that type of work. So that's going to make a significant difference. One of the areas we think they will be dramatic, for especially this generation, the millennials coming into the school, will be to put that augmented intelligence in, in that process. Because, trying to explain to a student, you know, yeah, you go to the registrar's office to take care of this, and you go to the bursar's office to take, they have no clue what those mean. Well, if we can take it to their language, but then also add in augmented intelligence to guide them through those navigation points. So augmented intelligence over the next years, it's taking that big data now, it's actually put into use, all that machine learning, and making something happen out of it. >> You know, digital is one of those things where I actually think the customers led the vendor community. So often in the IT business, and the technology business in general, a lot of vendor hype, whether it's hyper converged or software to fund, they kind of jam it down our throats, and then sort of get it adopted. I almost feel like, you've been doing digital for awhile now because your student force has sent you in that direction. And I feel like the vendor community is now catching up, but is that a right perception? I mean that, the digital is certainly real, and then you guys are leaning in in a big way. >> I think between the three of us we could probably come up with all the different hype words that have been used, and probably fill this room with every one of those words, right? But the reality is, as practitioners, you're looking at what is your customer base, what do you need to be able to deal with. So, we've been into digital transformation, absolutely. Is it a good definition? Was cloud a good definition? I mean, what am I really? It's either I'm going to use software as a surface, a platform as a sur, I have a gigantic private cloud. Okay, that's great. We're talking about high availability and scalability. But when you put all those in, we've been in a digital transformation everywhere. Your banks did it, that's why you have a bank app. Airplanes did it because, you know, what was that ticketing system they used to use? >> Dave: Yeah, Sabre. >> Sabre, that's what it was, oh yeah. It's probably still out there somewhere. But the reality is, is that, if you're not transforming digitally, you're going to get left behind. And even some big IT companies, and I'm sure we got a list of those bit IT companies also, that have fallen off the face of the earth, or are struggling to stay on because they didn't go through that digital transformation. They tried to do the same thing the same way and move forward. You can't do that. >> You know, you just reminded me. I just got a, hey, it's been awhile since I goofed on Nick Carr, but you remember, as a CIO, Does IT Matter? Right, in the early 2000s, that book. I mean, IT matters more than ever, right? I mean, Nick Carr obviously very accomplished, but missed it by a mile. >> Well, it's funny 'cause then IT was a support organization. Now that IT is an integrated piece in the way that everything just happens, right? It's not keeping the lights on and support so much anymore. >> I can't remember who brought that up in the keynote. Talking about the fact that, basically, we permeate the organization, okay? 'Cause there's not a function that they're doing that doesn't have some type of IT. And the question is are you sewing it together correctly. Because in the end, what are they going to want? Well, you want a seamless student experience. You want a seamless employee experience. Nobody's perfect, everything needs improvement. I'll always say that. But then at the same time is, you want that data to be all tied together so you can take advantage of big data. You can take advantage of machine learning. And then you can come back and report on it. You know, what we've done, so I guess three years ago is when I took over. I was put in charge of our analytics team. And our focus was unlocking the data so that people could have access and make decisions that are informed. You know, it's not data driven. We need to see the data, look at it, and come forward from there. So things like what ServiceNow did in performance analytics. Our general council highlighted the performance analytics as soon as we, we missed it, as he said. We put it in the first app, we didn't do it. We needed to add it. So we added it in. And he's like, wow, what I always thought was one thing. But now that I'm seeing the data, and I'm seeing the patterns, it's totally different. Because we have assumptions just 'cause we think we're busy. Performance analytics is letting him see exactly what's happening in his organization. >> Let me ask you a question. If somebody on your staff, let's say somebody that you mentored, came up to you and said, "Listen, Link, I really want to be a CIO. I mean, it's my aspiration. What advice would you give me?" >> Well, it's kind of hard when you ask this one, because I've mentored and then partnered, I wouldn't even call it mentored anymore, a great friend of mine, and he's now a CIO at Spellman in Georgia, yeah. In fact I was just chatting with him earlier because I saw something, I was like, hey, you need to check this out. It'll solve your problem. You know, it's a simple key fact. If you want to be in IT, you've got to be agile. You really have to be agile. You can't be rigid. You can't close those doors and keep your focus, and you have to constantly learn. If you don't just constantly learn, then you fall off. And that's something, when we talk about digital transformation and these companies that haven't made the transformation, that aren't here anymore, they stopped learning. They thought they had it. It's the companies that have actually continued to learn, or the CIOs or people coming up the ranks that look at it. And they look at things differently. It really is. The digital transformation is about keeping the CIO transformed, and every one of the staff. Had a discussion not too long ago with one CIO about how does he energize his staff. He's trying to do a transformation, but his staff is entrenched in the old way we did things. And, you know, sometimes you just have to shake things and get 'em excited about this piece of it. And a lot of times, if you're especially in a college, I have the luck of bringing a student in. What was your experience with that application? What did you think about it? They think it's the greatest thing they've ever created. But when you get it in front of a student, it can be something totally different. So, the biggest one right there, you got to have agility, you got to constantly learn, and you really, you know I might have a laser focus about things, I have a very agile planning model I use, but at the same time is I try to keep the door open to any possibilities. >> Well, Link, you're a great leader, and a friend of theCUBE. Can't thank you enough for making some time out of your busy schedule to come back on. Great to see you again. >> Jeff: Good seeing ya. >> It was great seeing you again, as always. As always. >> Alright, keep it right here, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. We're live from Las Vegas, ServiceNow Knowledge18. You're watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

(electronic music) >> Narrator: Live, from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE! Covering ServiceNOW Knowledge17. Brought to you by ServiceNOW. >> Welcome back to Orlando, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host Jeff Frick, Link Alander is here as the Chief Information Officer at Lone Star College. Cubealom, Link, great to see you again. >> Good seeing you again too. >> Another ServiceNOW Knowledge, although, not like the other ones, I mean, things changing, we're in a different venue, we got a new leader, new topics, is it old wine, same wine new bottle, or is it all sort of new stuff? What's going on in your world? >> Well you know, it's early on in the conference to see what the changes are, and it was kind of interesting as the change transformed, I didn't make his 100 day visits, 100 customers, he had an event in Houston, I was actually out of town at the time, so I was really looking forward to going to that event. But when you think about it, you know, Frank took it to a certain level, and now, we're looking at a total different change and transformation again, to where, what is next? And when you start talking about the A.I., the predictive analytics, proactive vs. reactive, and those types of shifts, that's really what we have to have. So, yeah, it is a change. It's a significant change, and you know I liked earlier in the segment, I was listening to him and talking about the fact that, you know, where are your trusted partners at, where do you invest and where will you align your strategy to, and that makes a big difference for us. >> So from a customer standpoint, it's sounds like you're embracing that change, I mean, you know, Wall Street's been a little reticent, I mean obviously they're happy with ServiceNOW and the stock's up, but I thought Jim Cramer was going to cry when Frank Slootman told him he was leaving. And some of the analysts yesterday said, "Oh, the stock will be at 102 if Frank were still here." and so, that's fine, you know, whatever. The stock market's going to do what it does. But from a customer perspective, you seem pretty comfortable with the changes. >> You know, it's really interesting, 'cause Frank and I had a relationship that went back to Data Domain. So I'd worked with Frank in different roles and different times, so when I first heard it, I was kind of like, what's going to happen? Immediately I started looking at what happened with Pat, and I talked to a bunch of my friends at ServiceNOW, and they're like, "Oh, no, "this was probably the smoothest transition ever." You know, it's like, "Yeah I'm leaving, "and guess what, here's my successor." So it was a different approach that you don't see often in technology companies. And you think about technology right now, how disruptive everything is. I mean, what do you take the split of HP, you take EMC and Dell, and all these other shifts that are happening in the technology, everything's shaking up. This is not really shaking up, this is just a new direction, and where ServiceNOW wants to head in the future. >> You know, that's interesting. You're right, I mean, transitions in big tech are not really ever this, apparently it was pretty smooth. I mean look at EMC, for example. I mean they couldn't find a successor. I mean it was, "Well, it's not Gelsinger, "well, it's not Gould, I don't really know." So Michael Dell had to come in, a pretty good successor, I guess. So that's maybe, I dunno, maybe a testament to Frank, maybe it's the culture of ServiceNOW, but from a customer standpoint again, you're seeing huge opportunities, you mentioned machine learning. What are you doing with those types of things, and how are you applying them? >> Well, we see these are the newer opportunities. So, from the IT service management and the enterprise service management has taken us to a new direction. And when you look at the customer service platform and what can we do differently and how can we help our customers out, and I have a 100,000 students out there that are expecting good support and need to navigate educational systems, which, it doesn't matter, we're just not easy to navigate. It's not like going out shopping. We have our own challenges that are out there. So, you know as we look at the next generation we're looking at how much more automation can I put into play so that the technicians and the practitioners can actually focus on the real challenges that are out there. Because a lot of times they are dealing with small issues that, they bog them down, and they don't get to focus on the bigger direction. So that's what we see on that side. You know, predictive analytics and A.I. in education have been a big item. We've been doing predictive analytics with students trying to figure out, you know, what's their likelihood of success, and how can we intervene to help a student out. And so when you look at things in that different direction, now all of a sudden you apply it in the IT space, which machine learning, it's a lot easier than understanding human behavior. >> So talk a little more about that. I mean, I remember when we were in college, you know, the professors that would look around and bunch of you aren't going to make it. >> Now we have a dashboard that shows that, by the way. (chuckles) >> Now you've got the data. >> Red. >> So, okay, so you've had years of data you've been collecting, what kind of things can you do proactively to help students? >> Well some of the interesting things for us, so you know, in our industry, from the community college perspective we're very dynamic. We can address change in the industry, needs of the community, so we're able to introduce programs and activities very quickly. Now when it comes down to students, you're sitting here looking at them going, okay, why are we losing these students? Why are students leaving us early? Why are they not completing? And, it was really interesting when we ran the data out, and we started seeing that it was our high achievers that were leaving us early. So actually our chancellor at the time really thought about this a lot, and looked at some different pieces of the data, and boosted our honors college, which then improved our retention of these 3.3, 3.4 GPA students. On the other spectrum we were all thinking, okay, well we need to focus on, where's that other student at, how do we save that student? And they've always had those interventions. So now they're enhanced. Now you have the opportunity for a dean or a chair to say, okay if I reach this one little group of students, maybe I can make a difference in their lives and their careers. So they're able to look at the data, look at the data sets, and then actually just reach out and touch 'em. And see what they can make a difference of. >> I wonder if we can talk a little bit about some of the practical things about ServiceNOW generally and IT service management, when we first, our first Knowledge was in 2013 and Jeff and I were talking in our open, when we talked to customers about, well, did you adopt a single CMDB? Have you adopted aggressively a service catalog? A lot of times the answer was, "Well, kind of." But it kind of gets political, we have our own little silo, but not across the organization. That seems to have changed. What was your experience in that regard, and how about, can you share with us what you're seeing with your peers with regard to those two items and then we can talk a little bit further. >> Okay, sure, you know, from the start we actually went all in. We're long term customer, late 2009, 2010, we adopted ServiceNOW, and we immediately looked at it as IT service management. How do we transform the way we do business and what do we do? So the service catalog was very basic at first, now our service catalog is pretty amazing. Our knowledge bases were primitive, now customer service, they can address their items. So that made a significant enhancement but really what it brought forward is our enterprise service management. So for example, while I was waiting here, I was actually approving a legal certification for a contract I have going across in ServiceNOW. So it's really handy, I'm sitting in a conference, and I have a legal matter to deal with, and a couple clicks and I'm taken care of. The same goes now for our HR side. So HR adopted in two years ago now, and you're seeing that workflow, all the power of the workflow coming in to help employees out. We've got a long way to go to get to that, whatever you want to consider utopia of service management is, but we're far along that journey. And we're just constantly looking for new ways to improve that. From the peers' perspective it's also very interesting, so I talk to, I deal with a lot of our peers, especially in the state of Texas, but then also nationally in different groups, and their movements are a little slower in the process because of that decentralization where from our perspective we're 100% centralized, so it's a lot easier to implement and not have those verticals to knock down. And they're knocking IT verticals down, they're not knocking other verticals down. So, it's a little more challenging, but I've seen some pretty impressive successes. Even in those areas where they have different verticals of IT across their organization, they've done a phenomenal job about bringing them into the fold and trying to consolidate those services and show those services better to the customer. The consumerization part is the harder part. It's trying to deliver services now like consumer IT but still maintaining that enterprise level. And that's probably the biggest challenges we're facing right now, is trying to create that consumer look and feel. >> Is that a UX challenge that ServiceNOW needs to address, or is that something that you guys have control over? >> Well, actually they've done a great job, as far as changing the dynamics of how things are working, so they've done a great job there, it's more on our perspective of using a customer-centric approach and looking at how does our customer view these services, what happens, how do they engage those services? It's very similar when we're dealing with students and we're trying to understand how they use our systems. Well they have their own way, we know how they're supposed to be used, but they have their own way they use the system. And so it's looking for that customer-centric approach, it's trying to understand their behaviors and work from those directions. >> And how much of that do you do with good old-fashioned sitting down and watching people interact with the application? I mean, that was a great thing that LinkedIn, or excuse me, Intuit used to always do with their early QuickBook days, right, a lot of just sit down and watch people interact with the application versus using machine learning and using kind of more aggregated data with your, like you said your huge client set to start to figure out how they're actually engaging with the application. >> It's really a combination of both, it really is. I mean, one of the things is, doesn't matter what the machine can tell us, they can give us a pattern and a history, but we don't understand the why sometimes. Why, what did we do? We saw that recently as we were reviewing some of our registration processes. And we were watching it because we use another product that monitors customer experience on the registration cycle. And we were watching something strange and we couldn't figure out why they were going in a certain direction. We looked at it, we didn't see it, but the students did, and there was actually a navigation on that page that sent them in a different direction, it was never meant to be there to do. It was for certain situations, not all situations. So you have to take a combination. You need the data from the machine, the machines can tell you all kinds of patterns on what's happening, but you do need that human part. That's also where IT, when you start talking about the C-Suite and having those discussions, that's where IT always failed, you know, we always talk ones and zeroes, everybody else is trying to have a conversation. So now all of a sudden it's about having that conversation. How can we talk about, here are the challenges, here's what you see, here's what you'd like to do, and how do we address that and move forward with it? So that makes a difference. >> It's just funny, the impact of again, a registration, what feels from the outside like a very mundane process, and yet, it impacts every single person that you guys do business with. It's their direct connection into your much bigger process, and education and professors, and the resources of the school. >> It's everything. >> It's everything. And that, from the outside looking in, someone might think, "Oh, registration, you know, "it's simple, we've got that defined. "We've been doing that for years." But it's not at all. >> And it has to change and it has to adapt quickly. So we're going through a process now where we're really re-evaluating the entire cycle because higher education, we already throw all these other things out at you, you know, what's a bursar, do you know what a bursar is? (Dave and Jeff laugh) How do you understand that? One of you take care of this problem. And then you deal with federal government changes, the state, you throw all those complexities in there, and now we're going through a process where we're, we've already started through some of the initial prospecting parts, but how do we simplify it even further? How do we knock down those barriers, or at least make it easier transitioning. We've done a lot of great stuff in the past. And we use a combination of things to get there, it's not just one set of tools that solves a problem. It's a bit of everything. >> And then the, sort of, post, coming out of Y2K, there was a lot of discussion, and then when the market crashed, there was a lot of discussion about IT value. You know, Nick Carr wrote the thing, Does IT Matter, et cetera, et cetera. What's the value discussion like today? I'm particularly interested as somebody who's implemented ServiceNOW, with the single CMDB, and the service catalog that's evolved. What is the value discussion that you have with your so-called line of business folks at the college? >> Well, the key to it is that we always act as an enabler. You know, we're there to support them and help them walk through the business process changes, look at things from different directions. They don't come to us and say, we want this tool, they come to say, this is my business problem. Now help us figure out how to solve that. That's where the IT value comes in. Yes, I have a bunch of very experienced practitioners. We're constantly understanding what trends and changes are happening. But what's the right tool for that problem? And by doing it this way, one, we're understanding the business problems we're trying to solve, but it also gives us a, it improves our agility, which you've heard me talk about probably a dozen times about this agility because that's what it is. Old IT was locked step stuck, and you were always there. Now when you start talking about agility and the ability to address business needs quickly, but yet still keep that same trajectory. I have legacy systems, I have to have those. But what can I put on the top of that, items like platforms as a service, what can I address things differently on? Probably one of the better ones recently we had a faculty recruiting team going out and they wanted, all of a sudden they were like doing Excel spreadsheet, okay, I'm interested in teaching for you in the future, I'm taking this and they're doing an Excel spreadsheet, and we sat down with them and I was in one of their big meetings and I'm like, okay, would you like to do that on an iPad? >> Dave: There's a better way. >> There's an easier way to skin this cat. So we actually turned around, we built a nice app, and ServiceNOW just to collect, hey, I'm taking classes at this university, I'm interested in teaching for Lone Star in the future, I'm in Mathematics, now that same group can turn around and send out a notification every time we're hiring that says, oh hey, we're hiring right now, we're hiring Math professors, so if you're interested, come on and join us. >> So you're observing how the business is approaching solving problems and identifying areas where you can use, for example, in this case, ServiceNOW, to dramatically improve their experience, is that fair? >> I mean, that's the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is, what is the problem, let us work on the tool, and then make sure we align things directly. 'Cause that's the harder part. I feel I failed my job if they come into me and say, "You know what, I want you to buy this, "because this is going to solve my problem." Well what's your problem? >> Well, what's interesting is, you know, you've been in IT a long time, and I've observed a lot of interactions between business and IT, when the business people try to tell IT people how to do it, it never works. But what you're saying is, you have enough visibility on the business and understanding of how technology can able, you can actually tell the business people, "Hey, there's a better way." >> That's the perfect way to approach it is, what is the best way we can do this for you. Whether that is in our legacy ERP, and I mean ours is not really a legacy, but in our ERP, or do I put this in the ServiceNOW platform, or do I put it in another platform? And how do we address that problem quickly and easily? >> How about another question, I always like to pick your brain, 'cause you know this stuff so well. How about custom mods? We've probably talked about this before a little bit, but you sort of have a philosophy of trying to avoid them at all costs? >> Absolutely. >> And you've succeeded at that? >> Ah yes, yeah. On the ERP side, we're still less than 10% customized on that platform, and you know, we've held that line. Because we can address the business problems, there's ways to address it without doing all these massive customizations. Sometimes it's just about really understanding the true business process. It's walking back to the old days of understanding what the process is, and then how does the technology adapt to that process. There's things that you can switch on and switch off that is not a custom mod, so your upgrades will process faster. Then there's other times when, like you said, we come in and we could have gone with that recruiting team, we could have gone and put it in our ERP, but we're like, well why? We're just picking up context, we're looking for these things. We need something quick and agile. So ServiceNOW was the perfect jump for it. A quick app. >> And are they coming to you earlier and earlier in the process? Do they get it, that you are an enabler of problem-solving, not necessarily and implementer of what I think I need? >> Absolutely. I mean, and the team we have is phenomenal, so, you know every once in a while, they're like, "Hey, we need this." Well, do you really need that or what do you need? And then we start that conversation. But it comes down to, it's not just myself. And I think that's really the key for any IT leader, is it's about the whole team's perspective. It's not going in with a technology solution as much as it is trying to understand the business problem first. Work through the technology solution. Find out what adapts and what will meet their needs. >> So single CMDB, adopt service catalog, avoid custom mods, anything else you'd tell folks that are just getting started with ServiceNOW? >> I mean, always be proactive. You're always out there trying to have that discussion with people to understand that you're there to help them and there to move it forward, it's just engage in that conversation. And that's the hard part, sometimes IT people don't want to jump into that conversation. What about that business side? I'm lucky, I have a passion for higher ed. This is why I've stayed in higher ed. To me, I get the reward this week when I get back from Orlando, it's graduation time, and you get to see your success walk across the stage. And each one of those students, whether they're moving on to another degree, whether they're moving into the workforce, I mean, that's something that you get out of this that is so impressive when in my field. So the same goes for how you treat your customers. Your employees, or your students, it's about how they feel at the end of the day. Did I do my best to help them out? >> That's got to be really gratifying. You know, in this day of man versus machine, the answer is education, so Link congratulations, and thanks very much for coming back on theCUBE. I love the conversations, we always ask you anything we want, but it's good to see you again. >> Good seeing you. >> Good seeing you Link. >> Alright, keep right there everybody, we'll be right back with our next guest, this is theCUBE, we're live from Knowledge17, #Know17. We'll be right back. (electronic music)

>> From Las Vegas. It's the cute covering knowledge sixteen Brought to you by service. Now carry your host David, Dante and Jeffrey. We're >> back. This is knowledge. Sixteen. This is the Q. We go out to the events. We extract the signal from the noise. This is day one of a three day Walter Wall coverage. The Cube has of knowledge. Sixteen Hashtag No. Sixteen like a lander is here. He's the CEO and vice chancellor of college services at Lone Star College. Longtime Cuba Lem like it's great to see again. >> Good scene again to >> another is >> great to catch up with this >> place, Another knowledge have a bigger and better than ever. You're you're speaking later on this afternoon. You've been over at the CIA event house this year going for you. You know, it's going >> great. The CIA oven, of course, is excellent lot of leadership foundations. Keynote TOC where, you know, service now is heading right now. Kind of. You know, that the shift and I always were still back to one of the themes from eons ago. Let's kill email. But the reality is emails not dead. So as we focus on it, you know, I came into this from the stance of moving the enterprise service management. So as I bring a team here, we really get the opportunity to see where we're at today in that comparison, and then how we can leverage the platform and move yourself forward >> So your role is evolving at Lone Star College, You said off camera, you're not giving up a title. A CIA, your CEO. >> Yes, I am the CEO >> and bread. That's not Teo, but your responsibilities are expanding. Talk about that side of things well, >> so well, last year actually been a year and a half. Now human resource is put underneath me. That's why the title change and all that to fit better and then analytics because, you know, analytics is not it much. People want us to think it should be buried inside of it. It never should, because it's about the business process. About the business service human resource is was just around the concept of aligning that service management what we had completed in it around service excellence. One of my right hand's basically put it as customer delight. Our focus is on customer no light. So it is about that communications piece. How do you talk to your customer? How do you move forward? How do you understand what their challenges are and help them find a solution. It may not be its instead of saying no, I can't do that for you. Sorry. You're out of luck. So in that, in that evolution, we've really moved ourselves forward on the enterprise service management platform side and early days, financial aid. We brought in student call centers. Now you've got human. Resource is were talking earlier about We're moving our legal in there. It's going to accelerate the pace it takes to get a contract illegal down TTO one day, maybe two days or some way didn't catch their approvals fast enough. So that's the big transformation from an organization >> of automated. That whole process over I actually, before going, I want to ask you questions about analytics. So you have. Ah, datas are that's working for you outside of it. Is that right or you? The days are >> well, you know, I actually have a team, >> have a data >> team s o. We're talking two different sets. Analytics too, because we're actually using service now. Analytics when it comes to the Service management analytics. Right. But for the organizational analytics, we actually have a large team that that does our analytics everything from dash boarding through, You know, in our case, core institutional reporting that's required. >> And is there a chief data officer as part of that team? >> I have a personal leading that group. >> De facto even >> factor. Yes. >> So there's a lot of discussion to about whether the CDO should report to the c. E. O. In this case, it does. But you had you had said things questions as to whether or not that Data Analytics function should be in it. It's not a night function. We kind of agree on that, but yes, but what kind of reports in to the head of, Well, >> you know, But see, when I when I sit down at that table, I sit down as the vice chancellor college services. So I have to sit down with three separate hats in front of me. Andi, I can't favor one over the other. Otherwise I wouldn't be doing my job currently. So when I look at the analytic side from a perspective, I will get on my team that provides the data, my database services and, you know, why are you not getting this done or what's happening here? So I've gotta look at it from all areas >> like Bill Belichick, GM coach way Tom Brady. You got to figure out who >> you are. At that point, I'm >> well. So is this how the role of the CEO is evolving? I mean, we've heard of this event previously. Frank's Lupin one year a couple years ago, said CEO should be a business person. Absolutely certainly seen examples of that. Now you're sort of given responsibility for you. No other services beyond just services. How was that role evolving? >> Well, rolls about for years. The question is, Is the CIA evolving? So? And that's where the challenges in the organization. So a lot of CEOs they're going through this process now where they're understanding that, Yes, I need to understand what are the business goals and objectives howto achieve those goals howto I had value to the organization. How did not become a cost center that has a target on my back? How you become an enabler enabler for the business And that's really where we came into that part of the process because we're recognized that Alcide nightie was here trying to help find solutions and provide better customer service. I myself come from a background in higher it for a long time through different institutions. And so when somebody talk to me about student services or student success, these air topics, I understand. I came to Lone Star originally because I didn't feel I had the strength in the academic side. And so when I first arrived there, I was really focused on academic understanding how the academic side operates and what they need in it. So I've had the opportunity to get well rounded in education, but it doesn't. It really is just about anybody that comes into this role. You must understand the business you're in, and then the next part is you need to be able to talk. I have an intelligent conversation around a topic area, bring value to the organization and come back with ideas. Well, you know, if we did this so the legal one was rather interesting because we had a new general counsel. Come on, and we're trying to help him, and he's like, Well, there has to be something better. You ask me. It's a better way to approach this. And we were able to dig through. Is that you know, What service? Now we've been doing this in HR. We're doing this here. So finally, we've got them into service now. And they see an opportunity the same way we see it. Which is we're improving. We're getting rid of the little stuff, the mundane work, You know that the task orientated work and we're focusing on the things that are really a challenge. And it has been there for a while because self service and all the other opportunities we've given the customer. Now we can shift that back and say, Okay, I cannot focus on what does the hard thing to get completed. How Doe I really put in effort in and a lot of a lot of staff hours into this one piece. >> So you started service management You mentioned hr Legal >> Financial Aid General Student Carlson are We're looking at scholarships right now. We tell a little bit ideas around our foundation in scholarships and what we could do for them. Grants. Grants are very big challenge because you have to really track and trend your grants. When you look at it, sm the areas that we've matured there are phenomenal, and then we're getting ready now to move and I Tom, which we didn't do because we already built a complete structure around that we were feeding that to service now. So now I'm looking at from opportunity that if I can eliminate a lot of the tools, I put in a play and get into one single tool and maximize the value of that tool. So I think you heard me many times when we talked in this. It's never about the tool. It's always about people in a process first. And then how does the tool come in? Well, this platform, we can actually adjust that because we're not We're not bound by the tool. Like the legal module. They have a great legal module. Well, it didn't fit what we needed. So it's been adjusted accordingly. T meet our needs from the platform side by keeping the core components so we haven't customized. We haven't taken it to a path where we can never upgrade. But at the same time as we looked at the process they had and how do we take that process and then actually put it into play with service now? >> And they were all inward service now do you worry about locking? >> Always. I think >> that Do you manage that risk? >> Well, the very first thing, to be honest with you is any time you enter in any cloud situation or any product situation, you want an exit strategy of some kind In case something goes wrong, something happens. You have to be at that point. So the only way to manage it really is to one. Keep a good, strong partnership. I believe that I have a strong partnership was service now. I don't believe it's a vendor relationship and I think that's critical because as we look at what we're doing each time as a partner, were were engaged with things like Where you heading? What's happening next? You know what? And then the same thing with the user group community were engaged with that group. So from a partner standpoint, we look at that first. But if the worst case scenario came, I've got to be able to get out of the solution. I've gotta have an exit strategy which we actually had designed before we went into it. Now the question becomes is we get further and further entrenched. What do we do and I'm comfortable. I'm comfortable that the company and the operations are going the right direction for me at the same time. If I'm gonna protect my organization to make sure we're safe. >> And that's a big, big part of transparency on the part of service now and your ability to communicate, you know your road map and your needs, I mean, a scale of one to ten ten being, you know, really transparent. How Where would you put service now as an organization >> who? That's a tough one, Especially when I'm sitting here. >> Uh, Frank's not around is a freaking God. He's breathing guy. Let's see. You know, >> a CZ forest transparency. I would give him good, strong seven. >> Yeah, >> I think I would. No company can be completely transparent. They've got a lot of things working in the back room or ideas that they're moving forward >> because they don't know. They don't know what they don't know. Going. Yeah, >> but there's there's ideas that they have that they're moving forward. It's gonna like today with the watch demo. I'm like, Oh, yeah, I love wearables. I you know, I live off. I could very easily now just say Oh, yeah, I just >> got an e mail. Sorry. Yeah, but, >> uh, at the same time is, you know, for them to bring that forward at this point. So they're creative and looking at these items, but they don't want to get out there too soon. >> I'm curious on the partner vendor, you know, mentioned a couple aspects of what defines that relationship of all the vendors you have. How many do you consider to be? You know, close business partners where your, you know, really sitting at the table and building a long term relationship, You gotta have an exit, but its life so much easier. If >> you're working with a partner verse a vendor right now, I would stay out of our partner strategy. We've got four. That's it. But those are four core providers for the organisation. Their leaders in the market space. That's the other key. Most my partnerships or with leaders, of course service. Now, at the time when we first engaged with them and actually I would say, from a partnership standpoint, a strong partner was service. Now, probably since about two thousand ten, we've been on the platform since two thousand eight. So we built that partnership over that first couple of years. You got past that vendor relationship and then moved on from there. But right now, just our core technology stack would be sitting in that partnership room, and I've got others than in that court Technologies. Technically, I'm not a partner there. A vendor there there were by cell. They have a great product, but they don't really want to bring us into that point. And we really haven't approached that point. >> We had a great discussion off camera about you had mentioned. You're looking at potentially expanding into this security realm with service now. And you were sharing with me like your philosophy on security. So I want to document that The premise that I'm going to put forth summarizing our conversation is, you should organizations increasingly should treat security as an ongoing part of their business continuity plans, not necessarily as a sort of separate stovepipe managed by a few security practitioners. Is that a fair summary? >> Yeah, Service continuity is what I use. I don't have >> service continuity, service continuity, that your business. Yeah, it always comes >> out to service continuity. How do you How do you continue that process and provide the same level of service in the in the event. It's very simple to me as I look at all those events as like problem management incident management, you have a response that you have to take, so it has to be inherit. It has to be natural. You just do it way we're talking about that. That response, specially for security, is what's more important is that you have everything planned out and you're ready to deal with that incident in that rock response because it's gonna happen. So how you handle that response can actually dictate your future, right? Wei had that little bit of that discussion there, too. So it does come down to that service continuity. How do you continue to move forward as and get through that threat and then afterwards make sure that you prevent that from happening again. >> Unlike many CEOs that I talked to, your discussions with the overseers at the college are not entrenched largely in the security discussion. You've earned some level of trust with regard to your capabilities. Is a business your ability to respond. Can you talk about that a little bit? How you actually achieve that, what expectations you were able to set and how you're able to execute on that? >> Well, the biggest, biggest part, especially when you look at it at that event, it's how. How is it performed overall over the history? You've gotta have some history. You've gotta have some credentials. How do you deal with these responses in these emergencies? That gives you a little bit more slack in that process, but it is about constant communications. So what the board received for me is communications. It's very straightforward. Typically, in an annual report type format, Short updates clear, concise updates. But then, when event happens, we're talking about the flood that happened in Houston, and very quickly I had an email out and my service test team was already on it. They already implemented their service continuity because while we may be shut down, we have students online taking classes. We have students that need to know what's going on, what's happening so they're calling in, and our service desk continued on through that entire process without issue. So they see that as an example on a regular basis. If we have a system down, everybody gets to see exactly. We did X, Y and Z or if we even have a like today, I should say today Monday we had a blip. We did, Nam. We have. We saw performance degradation. We immediately had a team on. We had a WebEx open with everything running. So we're preparing for a service continuity event that didn't happen. And they see those two because the business units are getting these notifications. Hey, we've gotta WebEx open. We have this issue coming up, and when they see that, they realize how fast we are to respond to what could be a potential issue that we built that trusting relations. >> So that's a good example. If I understand it correctly, the regime that you've put in place puts a heavy emphasis on the response. I mean, obviously you're trying to stop the bad guys who wouldn't go innovated on the response as well. Is that a fair assessment? >> Yes. I mean, the threats, goingto threats gonna happen. The threat happens all the time. So it is about that response. It is being quick to respond to communicate and take care of the problem. >> Do you think that's changed amongst the CEO community in the last ten years that that the shift in mindset toward that response versus so to keep him out big dig a bigger mode, Wider moat. >> Well, you can dig a big, wide moat. Doesn't matter. >> I think I've >> got these big, robust to hot data centers. Amazing firewalls. They're redundant. You tried overload him. They're going to take over. I've got next gen firewalls behind that. I've got you. Just you, layer layer. This tax of protection I have put in you still have to prepare that we're talking about it is Okay, so that's the perimeter. Well, inside my perimeter is one hundred thousand students, those hundred thousand students around my network. So how do I protect against that? So now I have inside perimeter protection. You can build all this entrenchment that you want to build. But the reality is you need we prepared Just gonna happen that you are. Somebody is going to get to that point. Or at least then the alarms up that you have to respond to >> service now is talking yesterday at the financial analyst meeting about you know, the statistic. And I've heard a range here, but it's large that that after an intrusion it takes, on average two hundred five days for the average organization toe. Realize that there's been an intrusion. I've seen numbers as high as three, three, three, fifty, etcetera. Um, first of all, does that sound consistent with what you see in there in the real world and conservative now help compress that time. >> So the interest was service. Now, of course, is tracking and trending those responses. I, tom and Service watch. There's a lot opportunities with those tools and course we have a perimeter we have a pile of tools were using. In our case, our threats are a bit different because, of course, we're not a big financial institutions. So we were not right with all those other pieces. But you're from the days to recover from a major event and my peers and what that have actually experienced a data loss event? Yeah, it easily is that it is easy. That >> and you think, feel is, though that service now could help you attack that compress that >> yes, mainly through the data collection and then the reporting and then as the events going on all of this information that's happening in the problem management side. What you're seeing from outside information coming in and technicians on the inside updating information as they go through it. You have a comprehensive log of the event from start to finish. >> Now you're speaking just right after this. I think you're just what? You're what you're talking about. >> The shift for my tea service management. Teo Enterprise Service Management. It's actually Enterprise. Wow. But I'm actually walking through the journey. But the best part about that is it's the pitfalls we learned along the way because Wei didn't know we went to Enterprise Service Management. It's kind of I think we had a discussion when we went to the cloud. I didn't know we went to cloud. Exactly. I just knew we went to this heavy virtualization, these two out data centers and I kind of realized, Wow, we really pushed into this new this new wage, this new change. >> We've got a new operating model on on, >> you know. But now yeah, it really is about how we are journey to enterprise service management and the fact that we actually started in a price servicemen before I've even heard of it. It just was around The fundamentals of Hungary. Better service provider. How can we help our customers, uh, achieve their objectives and the business units make it simpler? >> My last question is, what's exciting you these days? A CEO practitioner. What? Float your boat? True. >> What's exciting? You see, I asked if you're gonna give me any hard >> questions for you. That's exciting. >> You know, What excites me is that you're seeing the maturity level of a cloud. The platform side. It is so flexible that you can respond to a customer need quickly that you, khun dynamically spin up the capacity Your When I first started this process, trying to build this high availability was difficult. Now hie availability is really not difficult. It's just around. The process is so that the maturity of the technology and the maturity the service piece that excites me. But it also excites me when I start seeing new team, people come into the market space and they understand that already they're coming in with an idol understanding there they're coming down, understand that business mentality. So original Lighty practitioners didn't have that business background. They didn't have that communication skill you're seeing a lot more of it. The organization now. >> Well, you're a real leader in this space. You've got a lot of experience. Appreciate you sharing your knowledge. And I'm sure the service now community does as well. So good luck with your talk this afternoon. And thanks again for coming. >> Thank you. It's great being here. >> All right, Link a lender. Always a pleasure. Keep right, everybody. This is the cue. We'LL be back Live from Mandalay Bay. This is knowledge sixteen. Right back. >> Service. Now is the time.

live from Las Vegas Nevada it's the cute covering knowledge 15 brought to you by service now okay welcome back everyone you're watching the cube live in Las Vegas this is the cube so look at angle he bonds flagship program we go out to the events and extract the sink low noise I'm Jennifer with my coach Dave vellante our next guest is q bola link alandur beep vice-chancellor college services Lone Star College welcome back good to see you here servicenow mean we've been he world vmworld what's new what's up what's up with you what's happening oh there you know there's so much going on especially the educational space so let me step into Lone Star a little bit first because you know we first talked I think we were talking about 85,000 students now we're supporting over 100,000 students we're the largest institution of higher education in the Houston area fastest growing in the United States but I gotta put it in perspective in the last three years we've added thirty three thousand students and we're on for a double-digit growth again so you know that type of growth presents a lot of challenges whether it's in the IT or the instructional space or facilities as you look at it so it's been exciting it hasn't changed any over over that period that's a wave of new new inbound absolutely ability so how did you handle that give us some give us some working examples of what you went through emotionally taxing with technology I mean you know there's a lot of work coming in right well there's a lot of challenges to it I mean you know you can look at it from the IT perspective in the capacity management or the facilities and and their capability or the ability to bring on you know qualified instructors through that process so the challenges have been continuous but but the reality is we've been in this pattern for so long that we've adapted very well we're very agile but what we do the interesting challenge though is this last August we have a new chancellor on board so we had two completely different vision to an extent but it really isn't now it our new chancellor came in from inside was a president and he basically did a mission realignment so we pride ourselves in the fact that we want to be a college of choice that we want to be there for the first time in college student but now we've actually strengthen our mission around workforce and workforce training programs in fact actually I'm really excited because we are now actually becoming an educational partner for service now and we're going to be putting students to a training program but we've also wove it into our converged infrastructure program so they're learning IT Service Management Idol foundations and there and that's embedded in that train it's like an integrated track for them in this new specialized way we're adding a little sore snail component into the bigger picture it what we're doing is in the internet program we're giving an opportunity is that they learn the fundamentals but then I get certifications along the sides so they can actually in the converge program get a certification in emc and to virtualization such a knee I mean you're helping build the product it's building what I need in my pipeline I made it I can't find highly qualified entry level students that know these items and really around the IT service management side so you know this new vision in this new workforce part has been phenomenal and it's going to propel our growth it really well so let's talk about the role as CIO it's something that's I know you're passionate about that some people have said the role of CIOs going away some people say it's transforming the chief digital officer chief data officer the COO on and on and on let's talk about the evolving role the CIO what's changed in the last 10 years and what's going to change all right so let's put this in perspective 5-10 years ago would you look to IT to help deliver services would you have came to him said you know how can we improve our service delivery no there's not a chance you know the business have been really good on the outside edge of the customers or a b2b strategy but internally we're no good to each other internally between whether you're talking an HR you're talking finance our ability to deliver services inside the organization hinder the organization so now we're in a totally different role the CIO has to be a business partner and now we're being looked at is how do we expand service delivery look look at IT did over this period of time now they become a service provider that's trusted I mean part of my mission statement in our organization is customer delight and you know people first look at a customer to like East customer delight we have to be aligned with the business we have to look at how do we support the organization and how do we become a valued partner and part of that is delight you're happy with what you get from us just like when they were talking about earlier why do you use ever said if attack see well you get to light you get you get what you need and you get it into think ratification you got it that's what the world's about today is it and you pay more for that instant gratification sometimes you even pay less Jerry under false news you bring a cost of delight is the outcome that's the value that's a renewal that's the happiness that's the checkbox and under the covers is the cost to do that so talk about the efficiency piece of this because that seems to be what service now saying and their messaging is ok we automate a bunch of work processes that I say I call Monday you know that's not their word they've actually use that word but you say mundane tasks whether on value producing for sure well there any machine there in the machinery workflow but I could you get rid of human moment just the easy task so what's the efficient seeing what have you seen and how did you well well let's start with the first part so I like the idea of getting rid of email and you know I get too many too many requests in all the time they come in via email and I'm like wait a minute okay or I lose it it gets lost in the shuffle whereas when you're using a service management platform it doesn't get lost in the shuffle stays in the queue until you close it out or you pass it on to somebody else so changing that workflow around requests in the types of services you provide is efficient you're getting your work done faster you're not dropping the ball here and there it's better than a task list or sheet of paper the post-it note you know by far so that's an important part of that the efficiencies though become especially nit as you transform to an organization it is running a private cloud that's using public cloud services and integrating their you're looking at that IT infrastructure that running water and nobody cares about the running water they just want to know that I know what I'm doing and I have the right team to keep the water running okay now where's that next little piece and then next little pieces around how do I provide that level of service that is aligned with the business and then they want to get to the very top of that pyramid they want to get down to innovation what can we do they can help the organization to be innovative and you think higher education how can you be innovative in higher education there's thousands of ways and faculty have amazing ideas so you need to be able to look at what their want to apply in technology in the classroom and how do you deliver that new service and how do you engage with them so as you look at service management fundamentals you're taking care of that base level that that core operational need and then you're constantly just expanding and growing so I want to pick up on that theme of alignment you're talking about email and and what a pain it is and and you gave an example of having a service management system where you can have all those requests you know documented and acted upon but there's a nuance here you could do a lot of that with a ticketing system but it's not a whole house solution it's a bespoke solution so can you talk about the relationship between a holistic service management approach maybe it's a single cmdb maybe it's not be interested if you're taking the approach and just sort of bespoke tools like a ticketing system well we do use it as a single cmdb so that that is a critical part the other part of about it is is that so I actually in our user group talked about that this is basically the youngin rapper outside and it wraps around that ERP core service where you have all these core services that you don't get out of your ERP and that you don't want to build or customize in that erp we're anti customization in my organization so that we can be a drummer you telling us that oh yeah so now now I look at this platform as a platform that allows me to do more automation to improve processes without causing damage in the ERP and being a single source of record you know so this is the sole source of truth and so I'm Caesar about four years ago we actually did student financial aid as a service inside of service now before they were even thinking outside of service now we knew that the students needed to get quality responses we need to track what was happening and so we just applied IT principles and built out an instance that supported financial aid so people that say how would you say to people that say I've we've had people do them we've been a conference is people said the CIO roles going away see I was gonna have to make a choice have to become the chief digital officer chief data officer that coo or the CTO make a choice ever had the chief innovation officer ok I forgot that one so if I'm inferring what you're saying you're saying no no the CIO roles going to transform to a service management you know guru who are enabler a business person essentially but you can you elaborate on that well for one you're going to see that there have to be a business person they're going to have to be in that alignment so as we talk about changing role I find it interesting we start about earlier i think in 2010 you announced me as the cio of the lone star and i was at that time the CTO so i found that to be a chuckle and I thought that'd be a good lead-in to this one because my role did change already when this new chancellor came on we had a lot of discussions around the service delivery and the team the fundamentals and my role changed significantly in the fact that now i'm actually not just over IT so I am the CIO but I also oversee analytics institutional reporting and when you think about that that's kind of a big data thing that's correct and we're doing predictive analytics and we're modeling in that direction but it's also about items like how do i align the analytics to student success how do i provide faculty with the information that they're looking for and feed it through so it's a totally different than just it's so this brings up the whole point that fred was bringing up which is as you connect devices and get the data it brings up new capabilities so what your story is progressing is showing is you know vice chancellor is a holistic view now that includes not just IT that but the business model of the institution well I didn't get the last one I also took on so so I awesome over human resources now really yeah have you heard that one before no logistics coming next facilities no CFO job then you can approve all your I don't think you like that either there are certain things I don't even have a desirable but no but it is reality question though this business model impact right i mean what is it comes down to it how do you get people in the pipeline correctly and I'm really excited I've spent a lot of time here I've got some HR staff here we're rolling out the HR service delivery model in service now and I've got some HR staff here ServiceNow is great when I came in early we had a chance to sit down with a bunch of chr OS and talk and understand the challenges we looked at the onboarding application and said wow you know this is this is what we need we need to make employees welcome when they come in so it really is if you think about it IC is in everything change early you are the instantiation of that that transformation I mean you think well we were talking before we're talking about you know server virtualization you know storage backup recovery business transfer but but they're all just as important I mean I'm the hood that has got his brazen elevation yeah and you have to match your services with your target audience deliver that value get paid for it the end a that's the outcome and have happy customers correct so that's an IT function basically I mean we're so much better than everything so you know you talk the Internet of Things well you just think about it IT permeates the institution so the key to that and one thing we didn't really get into is that transformation is also it's not just the CIO transforming you have to transform the IT staff and what that really means is you know I've got some phenomenal individuals we're a hundred percent centralizing organization which is odd for higher ed but the reality is is that we really have focused on a lot of soft skills on leadership skills on training so that the IT staff has that same mindset and when we talk about goals and objectives they understand that we are not the mission of the college we are there to support the mission and to do that we need to understand what the business drivers you've been do you feel that you guys are agile and that's a term that's been kicked around that's a goal that people have in their transformation or a over your extremely agile I mean we have the ability to work closely with our partners or business partners we can deploy services quickly and that comes down to when we went into the private cloud and we looked at how do we become highly available and provide those core services at the same time is we adopted project minute management methodologies that are unique I have a phenomenal portfolio by the way kept in service now and give them their plug there because I love the product I mean every morning when I walk in at seven o'clock two monitors go on and I see exactly what's going on my service delivery side and I see what's going on my portfolio side I can see if projects are hanging but that project portfolio it was reshuffled and reviewed and adjusted every four months I don't believe in projects that go over six months sometimes I'll have a phase two for a year but that's it we won't push that because things change too fast there's other opportunities that may come up and we're not we're not just being so agile that we have no plan I have a very clear plan but the plan really comes down to what are the business needs how did the partners look at it and how do we move it forward from there we had rob thicke going on yesterday CIO and he said his number-one value probably just service now when he went to the c-suite was for the first time he could show executives this is what I teen looks like and actually give a picture to your dashboard question so Andy now take it to home of the level so a sense that's the your comfort blanket of service now gives you the capability well the keepass transparency so I T needs to be transparent every says OIT spends too high this is going on you know we need to control we need to be a better value partner but if you're not transparent and they can't see that then the questions do arise we have large budgets we have a huge operational expenses and we can quantify those by looking at the analytics well I'd see you know it's so true like because if you look at technology technology were always doing more with less our budgets don't go up maybe you do because you're growing but what other part department does more with less but the problem has been I don't know what's in there it's like just get this big IT tax you know every month on my P&L but when you you know when you look at the budget ago there's no more money left over it's not like we're having big parties here we're not throwing big marketing it out it's a we're picking up all the pieces and trying to make it work so that transparency is key know you so did you start with itsm and then part of that was project till you moved into project and HR is facilities next maybe talk about that journey okay so the journey as I see it right now we actually started in ITSM in 2009 with service now okay we've been there for a long time and we are constantly looking at new ways to improve services and add you know in turn on other modules I guess the better way to put it as we move forward when project came out the first time it wasn't ready for prime time so we stayed on our project servers and I had to spirit project information so i didn't have that transparency when the next generation rule is released it was like this is exactly what we need you know we across the organization adopt one platform one view gave me that capability so true portfolio view absolutely connected aligned with the other I constants I can sit down with any of my business units and show them a CIO roadmap that is related to their area and to the institution as a whole so they're able to see what I have on the roadmap and where things are going right now we've rolled acid in we're rolling the finances in I've been very good about the finances always it always come down to can I be transparent about the dollars but now I have a dashboard view versus a bunch of spreadsheets and we're moving that part in HR when HR was discussed a couple different times as a way to improve that service delivery like that we don't quite a few other things analytics before they reported to me went into request management's are doing that financial aid we've done that as a service before that we just applied the ITSM principles to that now we're looking at from the HR perspective a true case management solution that will help us walk through everything and then and then follow back through or could we get a call we can we can see what's going on exactly something we don't have that that visibility facilities is an interesting one we're going to as we after we roll out HR we're gonna meet with facilities group and talk to them and say what do you think here because as we talk about the automation the Internet of Things you're talking about all of these controls you talk about nest in the house we are seeing johnson controls and what it does in in large building spaces it's great it's pretty impressive stuff so how can you you know can you feed that kind of data in there and provide that same service request platform so we'll look into those directions there's quite a few different areas we feel that service now is platform will take care of those items we don't have that aren't available to us how about developing apps and you guys aggressively doing that or you know service now are not necessarily not necessarily will do the standard service requests like said I'm anti customization so you're looking for cuts you know I'm looking for efficiencies we roll out the newest releases very quickly every time we stay on track now that's a little bit different in this apps development because it's not as complicated we are going to look in the store excited about what I've seen already in just the quick peeks at the store and see what's there with the training program we're going to have app developers being trained in our organization now so that might open some opportunities also you want to buy enough build necessarily right now that's really we're not I mean we're an IT support organization we're not a software developer so the question I want to ask you to end the segment here I know you gotta run thanks for your time by the way your create visionary and also great executive leading the charge is showing really where I t I'm an executive standpoint managing now it's every its permit for mysteries across the organization so that's congratulations to your success share the folks out there you know service now how does that change your job your your company and what advice would you give them if someone's kicking the tires for service now I'll see their developer communities exploding and getting some great foundational growth and company's success has been pretty significant well you can't beat rapid deployment and service now I mean we basically turned it on and started running and then we had a bit of build a strategy around how do I take those idle principles and itsmf and actually make them functional because as you know they're not exactly functional when you you read the instruction set its kind of just ideas so you're able to make them functional very quickly so that speed the deployment is phenomenal but really the transformation the organization comes down to is that transparency again my customers can go see exactly what's going on with a service request they can see when we have a problem that the problem information is out there and it we're cueing everything up and we're working through this it's they're not left in the dark I mean we're my organization is great about communications we have I communication strategy for a long time but this is even further because most people don't know the problem you work in the problem yeah they wanted they want to go see it so they can go into the portal there it is what's going on they understand better about especially in the project side now they see not just the projects but we also align those to our strategy and to the institutional goals and objectives for strategic planning so now they can see that I've got this meeting the queue that are related to this initiative this initiative in this initiative and you know that so ServiceNow kills the pills the excuses and says oh it's in my spam folder emails then I take away email yeah yeah and I could have done that with a project portfolio management system before but it's in a stovepipe it's as i connect to a CMU V and doesn't connect you know to the bit I know it they said that did right and you could sort of create these sort of scoring things that sort of worked with a ton of work I mean a ton of work a lot of you know heavy right now do that yeah great like appreciate your time coming for you appreciate have a good flight home appreciate it the gallons or vice president vice chancellor college sources here on the q of cio cio nice we screw is timeless yeah yeah co we've been there she's three running every day it'll update he'll be running be CEO soon next time on the cube thanks for coming out for you right back its pressure break