Channel Post speaks with Chris Pope – VP, Innovation, ServiceNow about the company’s market approach that has attributed to its success in the region.
How long has ServiceNow been present in the region? Can you explain your journey in the region since then?
We established our direct presence in the year 2015 by opening our regional headquarters in Dubai, UAE to expand our customer base and increase our footprint in the Middle East. This move came after a decade of successful association with the region as we acquired our first regional customer way back in 2007. We have been active in the region since then and in 2015 we felt the time is ripe enough to devote more resources to kick start a new beginning in the region.
We have had a very productive journey until now and to complement our sales efforts, we have established relationships with four strategic partners across the region—DXC, Fujitsu, Quintica and Unikomm, in addition to our network of global SI partnerships. This combination of global and local partners has propelled our success in the region.
What do you have to say about the competition?
The ITSM landscape is awash with products that compete in the ITSM marketplace, as per a research conducted by Gartner that quotes 100+ players in this market. Interestingly, the major players who used to compete with us have somewhat disappeared either due to acquisition or repositioning of their company strategy.
More than competition, we believe the most dangerous trend in the market is customer choosing ‘not’ to do anything. The legacy on-premise installations are still prevalent and it takes time for a customer to build a compelling business case to displace it. However, once this is done, the time to implementation and adoption is very rapid as suddenly they have a cloud based platform with native capability that they have not had previously.
As a platform for managing and structuring work through an enterprise, there is no direct competition that covers the breadth of an organisation as the ServiceNow Platform does.
What has been your experience in dealing with enterprises in the region?
We have had some great experiences to date and will continue to do so. Many of the challenges we see are the same as in other regions—driving digital agendas, DevOps, machine learning and so on. The region is definitely keeping abreast of the latest trends and adoption of technology. Security is an obvious concern for all, but after due diligence is done and the trust is in place, we are able to execute and deliver on our customers’ expectations.
How similar or different do you find customers in this region when compared to their counterparts in western hemisphere?
The exciting part about the Middle East is the amount of new companies, green field opportunities and the ability to work in an agile marketplace. To a large extent, the local customers are able to innovate and transform at a rapid rate compared to many western organisations. This ability to move fast, make quick decisions and deploy, allows the marketplace as a whole to modernise and in many instances, lead the way.
Why should an organization look at adopting ServiceNow?
At ServiceNow we are committed to helping enterprises transform how work gets done by automating work patterns to accelerate flow of work. With the ServiceNow Systems of Action, the only cloud platform built for the entire enterprise, ServiceNow replaces the unstructured work pattern with intelligent workflows of the future, allowing enterprise to work at lightspeed, unleash productivity, deliver game changing economics and create an intelligent connected enterprise.
In the last 12-18 months, we have had some major breakthroughs with enterprises in the telecommunications and critical infrastructure sectors. In one instance, a large regional media organization was able to realize a savings of over US$10M, over the course of a year, by implementing our enterprise asset management solution. In another recent project, a leading regional telco achieved significant improvements in productivity and efficiency with our enterprise wide cloud automation and employee self-service portal.
What kind of difference can ServiceNow make in the life of a CIO or even CEO?
Many CIOs are challenged with driving innovation, transforming the business to be digital and provide world class customer and end user experience. What cannot be forgotten is the ongoing compliance and regulatory pressures such as GDPR, PSD-2, etc. Enabling technology is only one piece of the puzzle and CIOs need to make sure that it is governed and managed appropriately, ensure compliance and controls are continually tested and the right transparency provided to ensure smooth operations.
ServiceNow natively supports and helps CIOs overcome many of these challenges (and more), whilst driving innovation through Virtual Agents, Mobility, Intelligent Automation and Cloud Management, all in a single platform.
