Service Excellence with ServiceNow

You don't have to explain the importance of SMEs to anyone in Switzerland from scratch. "What makes SMEs so strong is their versatility," explains Nadia Bischof, Director of Commercial Business at ServiceNow in Switzerland. "In this sector of the economy, we see everything from innovative startups and forward-thinking technology companies to global players, as well as traditional family businesses." We spoke with her about how ServiceNow Switzerland is "discovering" SMEs as a customer segment.

Ms. Bischof, although it is a global company, ServiceNow does not yet seem to be known everywhere. So what can ServiceNow offer SMEs in particular?

Nadia Bischof: In a nutshell, it's about simplification for efficient collaboration and automation, transformation, and digitization of processes - and this with a single data model. There are a wide variety of customer needs that we are confronted with at ServiceNow when we discuss their challenges with IT processes and optimization concerns with digital workflows in detail with the customer and advise them. Instead of then developing everything ourselves, we look around for suitable solutions on the market and incorporate their complete functionalities into our Now Platform, which the SME customer can then use ideally for their specific requirements.

With ServiceNow, you get everything from a single source and can customize everything for yourself in the modular system?

We don't like to talk about customizing, but prefer to call it configuration. Because all integrations are available, and the customer determines which of them he needs. Because we want to serve the users from a standard and not "tailor". Thus, we hardly need advice and knowledge from implementation experts.

But the SME landscape in particular is very diversified. I think it is anything but trivial to simply come up with a standard solution and cover the most diverse needs.

Right. That's why ServiceNow 2020 decided to invest in the SME sector in particular - we call it "General Business". That was also the reason why I joined ServiceNow, because I have a lot of experience in SME business due to my previous activities. Today, we have eight account managers who only deal with this business area. After focusing on large customers, it was a strategic decision by ServiceNow to expand the SME business area.

A quasi "reverse scaling", then?

Exactly. We had to learn that SMEs have a completely different organizational structure. Whereas in large companies the CIO is our contact person, with whom I can talk about technical aspects, the people I talk to in SMEs are also concerned with financial aspects and beyond. So I needed people on my team who know how SMEs work and have the relevant experience. In addition, we are also strengthening our partner network. Through these partners, we are even closer to our customers.

Especially since many SMEs prefer to source their IT services from local implementation partners.

Not only. Hybrid forms are common. Cloud readiness is important in this context. Many smaller companies still like to have the servers in-house and have administrators who are very familiar with them. The change in thinking to now obtain software from a cloud has not yet fully arrived in many SMEs. Microsoft is making headway with Office 365, which is now "forcing" companies more and more into the cloud. But production companies still have many CNC-controlled systems with on-premise software in the background. Here, it is also a matter of introducing long-serving employees to the "new world" in a transformation process. The Corona era has shown how quickly working environments change.

So which functions are most in demand by SMEs?

Customer communication is a big topic. HR is also suddenly starting to care about technology. However, one thing is clear in SMEs: technology is led by IT, but not by the business. That's why we are now trying to establish a stronger relationship between business and technology. Because HR doesn't have a technology budget per se, because that's all up to IT. But there is a great need in HR. There are questions like: How do I retain this employee? How do I deal with the desire for flexible working? It can be observed that in many companies the desire for a regular five-day presence is returning. But in the meantime, many life models have adjusted to a new reality: If someone has a dog, goes to work, the children are at school - who then looks after the animal? New solutions are needed, and one of them may be for someone to leave a company and go to work somewhere else where they are more flexible.

Some companies have begun to order their employees out of the home office and back into the corporate office. Are these "rearguard actions" of an outdated corporate culture or is the pendulum really swinging back to pre-Corona conditions?

The need simply grew again to come together and develop projects together. That was also the case with us. Of course, I myself want my employees to be with the customers. But this quality time is beginning to be redefined: Being together makes a team grow, and new ideas emerge from that. How does that work? That's also a leadership issue! Of course I can work here in the office, but the team doesn't get to see me all day because I have to make one call after another. The schedule has now become a challenge: Even more has been crammed into a day, we've learned to work even more compressed. And that's exactly why I need a platform where everyone can work for me. Project work is one domain of our platform: You have an overview of the status, you can track what impact, for example, an employee's absence due to illness or how supply chains are changing. Resource-oriented management is one of the homework tasks that many of us still have to do.

To what extent is it precisely these questions that you are now confronting SMEs with? They might be surprised to hear such questions from an "IT company".

The fact is that we receive many inquiries from classic IT service management. But then we also want to know who and where the CISO is, because security is playing an increasingly important role. A lot has changed in the sense that we no longer focus only on service management, but also on everything else that goes with it. We are also noticing how well networked SMEs are - everyone knows everyone. That makes this market very charming.

Customers need to understand what you can offer, and you in turn need to understand how and what an SME does. I guess that's not always easy?

We have focused our solution on four areas: Manufacturing, Banking, Public Administration and Healthcare. This is so that we can speak the same language as our customers. To this end, we have departments that are responsible for only one of these areas. In the healthcare area, for example, we have also recruited doctors who, thanks to their affinity with technology, can consolidate communication between us and healthcare professionals. They maintain a regular exchange to identify needs and see how we can meet them with our technologies. We also train our sales representatives on values rather than pure functions so that when we interact with customers, we can understand what their process chains look like and where any gaps are. Our goal is always to find the best possible solution for each customer, their environment and their needs. Customer focus is one of the key priorities we put in the hands of our team.

What goals - quantitative and qualitative - would ServiceNow like to achieve in the processing of SME customers in the near future?

In industry, we are aiming for growth of 25 to 30 percent. At the same time, we are investing heavily in our vertical processes. We want not only to win new customers, but also to further consolidate the platform with existing users. Our growth strategy is based on the motto "hungry and humble," which means that while we want to grow with our customers, partners and employees, we also remember to be a good and responsible member of our community. We are also encouraged to share some of our success. All employees are expected to spend at least two days a year volunteering for charitable organizations as a way of giving back to society.