hi everybody we're back this is Dave vellante from Wikibon Oregon here with Jeff Frick this is silicon angles the cube the cube we go into events like this we're at knowledge service now is user conference we try to extract the signal from the noise would bring you we love sports analogies here we like to bring you the best athletes tech athletes week all them so Carolyn Hollingsworth is here she's I know Carolyn you're a fan of a football but we're going to call you a tech athlete so Karen's with Lennox internationals he's an IT practitioner there Carla thanks a lot for taking some time and coming on the cube so tell us a little bit about Lennox about the organization and what's your role there Lennox is a global manufacturer of furnace and air conditioning equipment were based in Dallas Texas and we have sales of about five billion dollars a year and i'm the senior manager of service operations ok so this conferences amazed this first knowledge conference I've been to I presume you've been to others or is this year first oh this is actually my fourth kind of okay so you were here an inning so they had a few before that I'd be close but so it's it's evolved over the years I told oh yes it seems like year-over-year it doubles yeah so it's gotten bigger and more diverse or in terms of just the content or is it still sort of focused on you know leveraging the platform and now it's got more diverse I mean they've added you know discovery and their this new orchestration which is run book that's new this year they're always adding new modules so and then to now they're really pushing platform that's the custom applications you can build outside of IT so do you they tell us it's really easy to write applications can you write applications on the platform oh yes really okay you a programmer by trader I programmed in a past life okay really don't program today but I can't go in and build screens within service now and do reporting it's very easy so I was a program of past life too and not a very good one which is why I know hosting the cube but I have an idea for an app so I'm dying to get my hands on the platform so I can play around with what they just came out with a brand new app that they say that anybody can sit down and write application app creator right yeah so I will test that anybody claims oh they said we have a hackathon going on I believe tomorrow yeah we actually come in that earlier today you're in there filming at that phone is underway there they're working till midnight I made sure that they had pizza and caffeine and I think they're gonna have a little bonus Vegas entertainment visiting at some point in time so tell us more about how you're using service i'm really interested in the sort of before and after described life before service now came in you know what was that like and how did it change and we'll get into the implementation a little bit well before service now we did have an application for the help desk to take tickets but that's about all we did nothing else within IT really had a system like service now after we brought service now and you know we it's a complete package they keep you know they say erp for IT well it truly is you can do ticketing we're doing change change management discovery of all of our assets we've built our own applications for access management even departments outside of IT are coming to us now and saying hey we see what you've done with service now we have something we think that maybe we could use it for so we've built applications for HR we're building an application for our R&D department to track the various incidents and changes that goes on with the large test cells for HVAC equipment marketing we have some small retailers that has pieces and parts for our HVAC equipment around the United States we've built an app for them to bring in new equipment and it has to go through a workflow and be approved by like a district manager pricing changes sales programs I'll have to be approved well we build an app for them that runs on service now also so prior to service now you had the collection of sperm and I've seen the spreadsheets and it's an asset spreadsheet and the spreadsheets on top of spreadsheets and that's that what that describes your environment oh yes definitely and somebody owns the spreadsheet this is totally right yeah this is before you know google doc so I chose I got it you take it you take it so you had all this sort of conversion simultaneous versions going on convictions or email email was always a big way to pass around test the various people can you take care of this can you do that now you may be very well may have had project management systems right actually we had a homegrown project management so a lot of customers right there yeah homegrown or Microsoft projects or you know whatever 37signals I mean there's there are many out there so how did ServiceNow sort of change things in other words what can you do now that you couldn't do then we have one system where everything is so there's no you know before someone would say this is the way it is and another one might be tracking the same assets or the licenses and we had 22 answers now we have one system that is the record their goal we called our golden record so everything is in service now it's connected to each other if you know if you think of erp for manufacturing is you know everything is connected to each other right so you see each other you used to have to add one plus the other divide by two and say okay that's a truth so parents can you talk a little bit about mobile I'm Mobile's impacting your business we keep hearing about we keep hearing about I think of the Linux guy out in the truck checking in on the HVAC outside the house and the commercial actually they are actually building computer controls into our units now they've announced a couple of them but it's going to be able to call home when it has a problem and it's just starting but I mean they're actually taking this mobile idea to our products and arses we're doing some plc's where our sales force is getting iPads and they're going to be doing some apps within Salesforce calm and talk about that one but it's okay you got to manage a lot of different idea I so many puzzles of that we're starting to delve into mobile we're looking at possibly replacing all of our laptops with either notebooks or tablets so we have a lot of PLC's going on right now just trying to put a strategy together as to what our mobile is going to be but it's coming towards us all different ways were there challenges in terms of would be so you bring in service now you get the single system that we call to the gold golden record record were there challenges in getting rid of stuff we have to keep army called GRS getting rid of stuff getting rid of for instance legacy systems that had sort of embedded themselves into the organization and how did that go how did that all come about well let me tell you first how ServiceNow got into our organization we had this older system and we had it for 10 years and I mean it was meeting our needs we thought I mean we didn't really have any problems with it we weren't looking for a new system and yeah I remember this is five years ago we I got an email out of the blue for with a little embedded commercial for her demo for service now and it was I mean just sort of like mind boggling what they were saying they could do and how it was all packaged in one package and basically I you know I want that just for that just for that day and what we'll use cases they that they outline that grabbed you so effectively it's just that everything you know is there erp system for IT everything was there is connected we had the system we had all we had was ticketing if you wanted problem you had to buy another module if you want to change it by another module everything you wanted was more money this was one package one subscription price and you know you got it all and but it took me a year to convince my peers and our vp that we should be looking at this now why did it take so long what was the kind of friction what was the discussion like well it's like well why didn't we you know the use case why did why do you need a new tool you know this'n seems to be you know taking stock broke right wife is it and Lennox is a very conservative company and and we have in the past run a lot of old software as probably a lot of companies do if there's not a real need there you know they don't go out and look at in retrospect it was broke right in your hair to what you're doing now so how did it affect your business I mean did you get more competitive are you able to you know track better people or you out cost how we we posed it after you know I got some doubles going and everybody in the you know interested in looking at this we convinced our vp that we should go global with this because before Lennox was very structured that each locality because her global had their own IT systems and their own IT support groups so while they reported in dotted line into dallas the headquarters everybody sort of did their own thing so we came up with this program will we were going to do standard global processes with 80 and so that's where we started and then we were going to use service now as the tool of choice so we started down that path and it didn't make a big difference to the business because now most of our IT processes are the same across the globe and you know we're asking everybody to do things the same way go to service now and just work that way so you stuck with it for a year and a half I mean you don't seem like the type of person who's gonna start pounding the table and intimidating people that doesn't seem to be your style so so I bet you but at the same time you you kept at it so it was you know a year and a half before you were able to convince people so how did you go about that sell process I'm really well rhian give advice to the other position Hunter wonder you're watching the shutter say Carolyn help me my senior guys to make us make the sleep in here today thirty percent of it yeah well I till was really becoming big at the time and there was a lot of news going on about I chill and you know we do listen to you know gardener and Forester and people like that so I told was getting big and I think you know it just came at the right time with our vp to say well you know maybe this is something we should look into and you know we got all the senior management together and basically he said you know everybody's got to put their thumbs on the table that we're doing the or we're not going to do it and everybody came to the table said yes it sounds like a good thing to do so what are you most proud of the accomplishments that you've made both professionally and personally as it relates to this initiative I think that our support and operations department or groups are working the most efficiently that the most efficient that they can and I think that you know we're responding to our customers needs a lot faster we're not hearing all the complaints that we heard before that you know hey this has been broke when you're going to fix it you know we're even trying to become more proactive we've brought in some monitoring tools that we didn't have before to help us along those lines so just to be more customer-centric and you know sort of instead of saying no to the customer say okay we can do it now so all this I mean you're using the lines of indoor so all the stuff we hear about from going no to now that's not just to you that's not just marketing you're actually living that is that fair statement yes I mean like I said we started putting up our own applications and now we have all these customers who wouldn't normally come to support and ask that though they have an application built they go to our project side of the house but they're coming to us you know we're working with safety and HR and R&D and you know I could double or triple my staff just to keep up with the request we're getting from outside of our teeth and you're able to do that so the businesses and helping you fund that yes it's got to feel great it's so easy to make an application I mean the other ERP system we use is SI p and you know to get a system up in sa peas big dollars 6 8 9 10 12 months and we literally built the application for our retail stores in two weeks so I mean I've been around IT a long time and I've just seen the finger pointing and what do you spending our money on it sounds like you're you've flipped or in the process of sort of flipping that tality is that is my overstating that er no I think that's that's gotta feel great I mean good congratulations hi Carol doesn't thanks very much for coming on the cube and sharing your story the story of Lennox your personal story and really congratulations on all the great progress oh thank you there's a pleasure all right keep it right to everybody will be back our next guest is marina Levinson who's the founder former at netapp CIO we've had a couple of