At ServiceNow Knowledge16, discussions of ServiceNow’s expansion into new market sectors were a big part of the conversations taking place, but the influence its services are having on the more traditional enterprises also got its share of the spotlight.

April Carter, IT Operations senior manager at Cars.com, met with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, to talk about the influence of ServiceNow’s IT Service Management (ITSM) on her job and the company at large.

Digitize now

In discussing the “transformation” brought on by incorporating ServiceNow’s ITSM programs to her company, Carter was very positive. “When I got to Cars[.com], they were very paper and spreadsheet-driven,” she said. “E-mail is even still very key to what we do. … ServiceNow has helped us to really start that process [of digital transformation] and really rethink the services we deliver to our employees.”

Having worked with other ITSM groups and platforms at other companies, Carter was dubious of the three-month time-frame for implementation put forward by ServiceNow, but she and the rest of the Cars.com company were very satisfied when that target was met and the results started making themselves evident almost immediately.

“The business impact was really trying to drive our business partners and HR and even the development space to try and rethink how they operate internally,” Carter said, though she acknowledged that by not taking the overhaul as seriously as they might have, there were still some kinks in the system, though she anticipated they would soon be ironed out.

“The design when we were implementing … it was a very broad scope, so we didn’t think too heavily on the design of the portal, and I think the organization of the portal is probably what annoys me the most at this point.”

Racing toward new goals

Along with an aim to push HR away from their stacks of multi-colored papers, Carter said, “The other thing that we’re really excited about … is we’re opening up a lot of APIs that our developers can use to automate a lot of their processes.” She cited automation of release cycles as one improvement that would soon be implemented, as well as the continued smoothing of systems access for workers: “I would say the biggest benefit is that employees’ ease of use.”

Looking at the conference on the whole, Carter was very happy to be returning for her fourth year at the event. “I always find something good here [at ServiceNow Knowledge], and I learn a lot of things, so it’s very helpful.”

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

Photo by SiliconANGLE