Dave Stephens has strong views on productivity — particularly older styles of project management.  , has some strong views on productivity — particularly older styles of project management. “Instead of having one project to get done every year, [people have] one project to get done every day. They need a whole new approach,” said ServiceNow’sVP and GM of Service Management in an interview with theCUBE hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante at ServiceNow’s Knowledge15 event in Las Vegas.

When deadlines are tight, a project manager with a chart showing a thousand tasks is not going to speed things along, according to Stephens. Increasing productivity in this environment requires thoughtful innovation, automation, and a work structure that can streamline day-to-day tasks for everyone, not just project managers. And that’s ServiceNow’s specialty: creating platforms that work for everyone.

Increasing productivity through automating and restructuring

According to Stephens, the average enterprise is comprised of more than 800 discrete “services.” By automating and structuring these services, productivity can receive a huge boost. “Service management” thinking originated in IT, but ServiceNow has apps and services to provide systemic support to teams as diverse as legal, marketing, finance, and even everybody’s favorite: Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC).

For example, currently, most GRC is supported by months-long audits and lists of promises where team members “attest” to best practices — and in a “project management” approach, GRC is usually a separate process from day-to-day work. But using service management, performance-based controls can be integrated into the daily workflow. Is there a new rule that requires a server backup after major changes? Using ServiceNow, a business can automatically add a task to the actual work process and even record evidence that the rules were followed, making audits a much simpler process.

Has this model been successful? The numbers seem to speak for themselves. Stephens says that 450 sizable enterprises used ServiceNow for the first time in 2014, and many of them drove a massive adoption of systems. This led to roughly 11 million users interacting on an annual basis and close to 200 million “incidents” of interaction with ServiceNow.

Even Invesco has gotten on board, particularly with their “Good to Great” initiative: “Under that one initiative and one banner, they have a whole series of programs that they’re driving with Service Management and Project Portfolio to improve the way they work.”

Watch the interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge 15.