While a major share of the attendees at this year’s ServiceNow Knowledge16 conference were directly involved in the tech market, there’s also a significant portion of attendees representing companies from outside that sphere, which nonetheless are still gaining notable benefits from adoption and integration of ServiceNow’s products and platforms.

Brian Andrews, VP of IT at Stone Brewing Co., sat down to talk with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, about Stone Brewing’s international expansion, how ServiceNow has helped them improve efficiency and what the future holds for its beers.

Clean and tasty

Andrews was happy to provide a rundown of the company for those who were unfamiliar with its services. As he explained, Stone Brewing is the tenth-largest craft beer company in the USA, and its international expansion is taking them into Germany, with new challenges to meet as a result. Part of those challenges come from operating under different HR and privacy laws, but a more distinctly German one is found in the beer purity laws.

As a number of Stone Brewing’s beverages include ingredients such as “espresso, tangerine, [and] good stuff like that,” which would violate these purity laws, finding ways to “break down that bureaucracy” are one of Stone Brewing’s top concerns at this time, something it is approaching in ways such as providing an introductory beer-tasting event serving only beers that would come up against these laws.

Safety in upgrades

On the more technical side of things, factory maintenance and finding ways to incorporate automation has been a significant issue, both overseas and at home in US locations. As Andrews explained, ServiceNow and its utilities have provided solutions to a wide range of concerns facing the company, with one outstanding result being a more proactive engagement in personal interaction data in the factories/warehouses to reduce likelihoods of injury.

“Those tie into training, and certification, and getting people recertified,” Andrews said. “So it’s a learning management program as well.”

Partially driven by this success with ServiceNow’s utilization, Stone Brewing is now looking to stop using old applications and software as ServiceNow addresses more facets of the company’s needs. Some of the ways it plans to do this were outlined by Andrews as plans to integrate with ERP systems to improve cost-tracking, restocking and other “predictive business intelligence,” while an interface improvement for its customers is also planned.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge16.

Photo by SiliconANGLE