Petra Zijlstra, Chief Information Officer of KPN and Maarten le Noble, Manager of ServiceNow for KPN, spoke with Dave Vellante in theCube to discuss their implementation and experience of ServiceNow. KPN focuses mainly on fixed and wireless communications and dominates the industry in the Netherlands with over 26,000 employees.

Zijlstra explains the catalyst for implementing ServiceNow was the need to make several systems available to customers. Since they did not want to develop their own software anymore, they found ServiceNow was the best breed with that application area.

A major advantage of ServiceNow is the self-service capability by which, the customer has the possibility to find answers to their problems from other customers – the users in the community help each other. Zijlstra notes, “over 10 percent of the incidents are actually solved by the answers themselves versus calling up.” KPN is also looking into how to integrate ServiceNow into other components.

Zijlstra also appreciates the bottom line benefits to the customer. She believes, “technology should be a commodity – my customers want services, they don’t want technology.” Clients have given her varied feedback. On the one hand, she found that there are double reactions, they are not aware of a self-service portal, so they are trying to broadcast it more to make people familiar with it.

Vellante notes that unlike SalesForce, ServiceNow allows for a completely customizable look and feel for the given brand. Le Noble adds, “I think users don’t need to care if they’re using service now, they just want it to work, it’s a means to an end.”

The panel concludes with advice to future ServiceNow adopters. Le Noble reiterates the importance of investing heavily in communications so that customers understand the range and benefits of the new products.