EXPAND: Advisory Senior Principal Eric Lewis Shares Key Client Challenges and Trends
Today’s blog is the latest segment in our EXPAND Executive Insights series. This monthly interview series lets our readers into the minds of top business leaders and their thoughts on today’s top questions around digital transformation.
For February, we sat down with Advisory Senior Principal Eric Lewis to discuss ServiceNow client trends for 2022, the four pillars of a successful ServiceNow strategy, and the biggest digital transformation challenge for customers. Ready to get the scoop? Keep reading to see all of Eric’s answers, along with a quick recap video and this summary slide deck on LinkedIn.
Introducing Eric Lewis
As a Senior Advisory Principal, Eric Lewis brings over 30 years of experience working with business and technology partners globally to identify, develop and execute business solutions that drive global transformation. In his current role, he is responsible for leading critical process improvement, service design, platform functional design, and change management initiatives across various business areas. Eric is based in Columbus, Ohio and enjoys photography, cycling, and traveling in his free time.
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Without further ado, here is this month’s EXPAND conversation with Eric…
What makes advisory such a crucial component of digital transformation initiatives?
Digital transformation is the application of technologies to streamline processes and products. On a fundamental level, advisory exists to guide that process and teach clients how to digitize their business experience. Working with an advisory team can help establish a clear digital transformation roadmap to improve effectiveness and efficiency; stakeholder value; and user experience. By reducing risk and exposure, teams are then able to drive more innovation and value.
The ServiceNow platform is extremely powerful. At times, its myriad of functions and features can overwhelm customers. We look under the covers of our client’s business model to identify the best opportunities where digital transformation can improve processes and reduce organizational risk. For example, many of our clients have contractual service level agreements (SLAs) with their customers that have attached monetary figures. The ServiceNow platform allows clients to automate their services, along with the tools to manage and mitigate the risks associated with day-to-day operations. The platform also provides clients with a holistic view of their information technology environment and operational services.
What are the largest trends in client projects so far this year?
With the great resignation and supply chain issues at a historic high, the biggest trend I see amongst clients is the move to expand their existing ServiceNow products. In other words, firms are expanding into more ServiceNow features and functionality to offset other business challenges.
Business resilience today relies upon embracing automation and workflows to expedite service and achieve overall business objectives. To achieve these business objectives, clients must first have a reference point for their performance which is why performance measurement has also become a popular focus for firms this year.
What’s the biggest challenge you see advisory clients facing?
The biggest challenge stems from clients monopolizing their focus and investments almost exclusively on their platform technology. While this is important, there are other components that are crucial to achieving digital transformation:
- Sound platform strategy
- Platform organizational support model
- Platform processes
- The platform itself (i.e. the technology)
By not focusing across all four of these areas, organizations will end up with a lop-sided digital transformation strategy causing more struggles down the road. As a digital journey, platform strategy must be poised to fundamentally change an organization and its practices. In other words, beyond the technology, digital transformation strategies must account for training, maintenance, and optimization over time.
Without the organizational construct and support model to drive a strategy forward, organizations solely focused on technology will fail to mature their solutions next time it’s time to evolve or upgrade.
Which digital transformation trends are you most excited to see shake out in 2022?
Whether you view digital transformation simply as today’s buzzword or the mantra leading the trajectory for today’s technology, this mindset is the all-encompassing trend for 2022. Companies today are zeroed in on digitizing their environments as a means to modernize their people, processes, and technologies.
For clients, this manifests into trends like applying ServiceNow capabilities to core operational processes, to enhance existing services and other technologies. Meanwhile, ServiceNow will continue to roll out new digital transformation innovations centered around the resolution (and eventual erasure) of organizational pain points.
How can clients navigate the impacts of digital transformation?
As opposed to a journey, I view digital transformation as an expedition that requires an immense amount of planning, communication, and at times, a sprinkling of good fortune. To establish a sound plan, a firm must clearly identify achievable and realistic objectives. The next step is to develop a comprehensive organizational change management (OCM) plan to ensure that the transformational objectives are achieved.
A successful OCM plan lies in overcommunicating the goals, impacts, and effects of the transformation.
Otherwise, a lack of information will prompt individuals to form their own explanations for things. Outside of technology, this is one of the largest detractors to transformation efforts.
OCM plans must also address education and training. Because digital transformation is such a hot topic for many corporations, we often see organizations that don’t complete the planning phase and completely forget the OCM approach. This is a recipe for a rough expedition.
What keeps you inspired?
I’m inspired by the mission to assist clients with developing solutions to improve their businesses. Whether I’m helping a client achieve their corporate strategy, modernize a critical business service, or automate a complicated process, I find a clear and fulfilling purpose in my day-to-day work.
As someone who participates in endurance events, I’m most driven by challenges that drive me to grow as an individual – the push is key. The balance of keeping up with technology’s constant changes and analyzing different ways to use those capabilities to help clients is really exciting to me. In addition, I appreciate the challenge of explaining technical concepts to non-technical folks so they clearly understand how it can make their lives better.
Looking for more content related to platform success? Download our latest Advisory eBook here, or by clicking the image below.
Empower Teams
As we move into 2022 and beyond, security leaders must empower their teams to have the flexibility and awareness to tackle challenges in this rapidly changing environment. CISOs can never take their eye off the technologies that dominate our field, but it’s just as essential to continue to nurture the people and processes to get the most out of those new technologies.