ServiceNow’s Canadian general manager Marc LeCuyer talked with ChannelBuzz about the company’s momentum in Canada, broadening its offerings to digitize workflows and enhance customer experience, with the growth in their channel business playing a critical role.
Marc LeCuyer, ServiceNow’s Canadian General Manager
ServiceNow just reported its best fourth quarter ever this week, with 33 per cent growth over the previous year’s Q4. For the full fiscal year which ended December 31, 2018, they posted 36 per cent growth on $2.608 billion in revenues. They reported growth across their entire product portfolio and in every geography. That included Canada, where the company has been aggressively expanding its business to ride the crest of the digital transformation wave, with the significant expansion of their channel business being a key to their success here.
“Everything we do as a company is rooted around our purpose – that we make the world of work better for people,” said Marc LeCuyer, ServiceNow’s Canadian General Manager. “We are totally focused on customers’ outcomes. I’ve worked for many companies, and it is only here that I’ve found one that is really grounded with that level of purpose.”
ServiceNow started out providing IT service management software – help desk ticketing – but has expanded well beyond that, adapting to the digital transformation era with a full platform of subscription-based services.
“We digitize workflows to unlock productivity that is stuck in the siloes of an enterprise,” LeCuyer said. “The term digital transformation used to be a buzzword. Now, it’s about prioritizing initiatives. At home we have technology experiences, but at work it has been a different experience. If you want to change your password, you have to call the help desk. We typically play horizontally, creating a level of engagement to digitize workflows. For example. HR information can be routed to ADP for payroll, to IT to procure assets, or to facilities to make sure the new person has a place to sit. We route that work around the enterprise to make sure work gets done in the most efficient manner.”
ServiceNow emphasizes their enterprise customers, of whom they have about 5,400, including almost three quarters of Fortune 500 companies, but LeCuyer said that their presence in Canada is significantly broader than that.
“Our target market really depends on where a customer is starting their journey of digital transformation,” he indicated. “Every company in the world has an HR department. Large and small companies alike have to adhere to compliance regulations. Before Christmas, a large consulting partner who has been a partner for many years said that we have changed a lot in their eyes from when they first adopted us. They brought us in to solve an IT problem – IT service management – ticketing for the help desk. Now they talk about us in the context of a ‘third platform.’ The first one is the ERPs that run the business, like SAP. The second is collaboration and communication, like Office 365. He described us as the platform of experience. Everything else is just plumbing that makes the business work. We touch the workplace experience every day. It’s becoming that strategic to their customers. We help our partners better serve their customers. A lot now adopt us as the later between the customer to drive efficiency and provide visibility back to their client. If a customer opens a ticket with an MSP, we give them complete visibility on the ticket.”
These partners are absolutely critical to ServiceNow today, LeCuyer emphasized.
“We are in a transformation state around our channel,” he said. “We have done a ton of work in Canada over last two and a half years to drive partner excellence. Today, upwards of 85 per cent of our business in Canada goes through partners. Three years ago, we would have struggled to be above 50 per cent.”
LeCuyer described the channel in Canada as broad and vast, and said that it came in several different flavours.
“We have some MSPs who drive better management of their clients, as well as large service providers,” he said. “We have consulting partners who don’t do any resell. We have traditional resell partners who resell and implement. We have national partners, and regional partners who service defined areas.” Accordingly, ServiceNow has a broad presence across the country, including all the major cities, with financial services, health care, telco, retail and government standing out among their strong verticals.
Looking ahead, LeCuyer said that he has two main objectives in Canada this year.
“The first is driving customer success, and we have learned that the legacy way of selling and driving deal size doesn’t work here. We need to be focused on customer outcomes, with a systematic and methodical approach to giving customers value out of the platform. The second is to continue to strengthen the channel, which is a strong priority. We know that we can’t do this alone. We need to leverage these people with capabilities and resources in the market to help customers realize their visions and outcomes.”
