>> Announcer: 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. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with Jeff Frick, our cohost. This is Knowledge17, #Know17. Jim Hebb is here, the Advisory Director for People in Change at KPMG. And he's here with Nate Channel, the Enabling Technology Lead at JM Smucker and Company. Systems integrator, customer, gents, welcome to theCube. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you. >> So let's hear the story, JM Smucker, you told me off camera that you just started in November. Right? >> Nate: Right, we went live in November. >> Take us back to that decision point, where you said, "hey we need to do something here." What was that like? >> Well, I guess we were asked by the CHRO of Smucker to look into a current state assessment of their HR Organization. And from that, one of the things we discovered was that, the company is a family owned company, had grown organically over the years, had a very family type os environment, and while that is a big selling point for the company, it also resulted in a more relaxed approach to delivering HR services. >> Love the vocabulary. (group laughing) Relaxed approach. >> Relaxed approach, so essentially, if you were an employer manager and needed help from HR, you had to know who to go to. So you had to have a name, you had to go find them, if they weren't the right person, then you got passed to the next person. Certainly there was no way to record, track, have a collaborative, sort of tool to use for HR service requests. There was no way to report on information related to where things stand. Employees couldn't see where their service requests are it was email, phone call, stop by the desk. That was a gap that we thought, if you really wanted to transform the organization and really ratchet up the level of service, we needed to do something. >> A lot of tribal knowledge. But, now you're in IT, is that correct? >> I'm actually in HR. >> You are in HR. >> Is that where you guys started? You started in HR or? >> I actually joined the company a little less than a year ago. So the project was was already under way, when I came in. Yes, I did start in HR, and I think that, just coming into the organization, kind of seeing it where it was when I came in, and how everything was kind of fractured because we had gone through a lot of acquisitions and that's how we grew, and we grew very quickly. Nothing was really consolidated, so seeing this transformation has really been fantastic. >> But did you guys have ITSM installed or no? >> No, no. >> Okay, so the company started at .. >> Which is unusual right. >> Yeah, I was going to say. >> It started with HR and from there they have now decided to adopt the IDSM platform, >> Right. >> And are going live in a month or so I think. >> Yes. >> It's really interesting that they started with HR. >> So tell us about the implementation, how did it go, I mean a lot of people will share with us, it's sometimes very complex to implement, you chose a partner, to obviously reduce the complexity, share the risk. >> Yeah, so it felt very fast for us. From an IT perspective, we're not prone to doing anything agile. I think having that agile development life cycle come in was a shock to the system. It put us into the position where we had to really focus on what wanted and needed, very quickly. And we were able to do that, and I think we were able to put something in place that will benefit us in the future. And I think, it's benefiting us now. We've transformed our organization. >> And how did you get it in? Were things just breaking or how did you get the opportunity to provide the initiative to bring in this agile new tool? >> So it was really part of a broader HR transformation that we were doing with the company. We were looking at everything top to bottom, their entire HR operating model, their HR org structure, all of their HR processes, all of the HR technologies that we were conturently doing, a Workday implementation with them. Building a new shared services center, looking at their entire North American models. As part of that, this was just a natural piece of the puzzle that needed to be added. >> So a lot of people are confused and ServiceNow's trying to constantly explain to people, we don't compete with Workday. Talk to the practitioner, where does Workday leave off and ServiceNow pick up, if I'm an employee of Smucker, what do I interface with, am I talking to ServiceNow, am I talking to Workday, both? >> Actually our design, we have the portal in place. We have the HR service portal and that's really our gateway for our employees. So it's part of ServiceNow, but it leads them into Workday, and a lot of our employees associate those two as one. They think that if they're having a problem, or anything like that they need to access something, they go through HR Home, but they're thinking they're going right into our deck. >> Dave: It's an HR portal to them. >> Right, exactly. >> Dave: They don't really know or care what's at the back end. >> Exactly. >> Nor should they really. >> Nor should they. And that was presumably the design point? >> Nate: Right, right. >> Again, not always common, right, you hear different stories of different stovepipes, but you seem to have some success with this approach. >> We have, we always try to take it from the perspective of what does the employee manager need, and how do they want to interact with HR. So it's not about, HR often has more of an insular approach to, well, we're thinking compensation or benefits, or providing this type of function. Employees and mangers come and say, I have an issue and I need help with it. They don't really need to know, if this is comp or benefits, they can say, I have an issue with my paycheck, it might be a benefit deduction, it might be an incorrect calculation from payroll, it might be something related to retirement plan, so they don't need to figure that out and have to find where they need to go, they should be able to come to HR and get help, right from the start. >> So onboarding is the classic example. How has that, as a relatively new employee, how has it affected the onboarding process? >> We are still kind of hashing through onboarding right now. We're really focusing on the Workday side to get everything kind of ironed out perfectly before we truly bring ServiceNow as a part of that into it. But from any perspective where there's any kind of problem, we're directing our future employees to utilize the tool, as possible. >> Take us through the project, when did it start and how long did it take? >> It actually started with an RFP process. So we facilitated that, so we had five different providers that we were helping Smucker evaluate. Methodology approach, functionality, technical alignment, business and cultural alignment, cost. And from that RFP process ServiceNow came out on top. That was the selection point that was earlier in 2016, first quarter 2016. Because we were doing an entire transformation, we staged everything in sequential order in terms of what we were doing with Workday, Shared Services, redesign of operating model, all of that good stuff, and we ended up, as Nate said, launching, doing a soft launch, right after Thanksgiving for the ServiceNow platform, full launch with Workday, ServiceNow, Service Center, everything on the December 14th. >> And the business impact, so far is early days, but so far, and what's expected? >> It was completely different than anything we're used to, >> Dave: In a good way. (laughing) >> Yeah, absolutely, it was fantastic. I think our employee population really jumped on board very quickly. Instead of following that traditional HR, you know, pick up the phone or send an email, they're calling a Service Center, and they're following up on cases, instead of following up on emails. >> Jeff: Total relief. >> Yeah, I think we've definitely consolidated all of that into the ServiceNow platform. >> Alright gents, we got to leave it there. Yet another happy customer. It actually doesn't get boring after a while, I love to hear the stories, because things change so much, it used to be ITSM, and now we're talking lines of businesses et cetera, so gents, thanks very much for coming on theCube, appreciate it. >> Thank you, appreciate it. >> Thank you, thank you. >> You're welcome. Keep it right there everybody, we'll be back with our next guest. It's theCube, we're live from ServiceNow Knowledge17. Be right back.