ServiceNow, Inc. (NOW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello and thank you for joining us today from [Audio Gap] operations with ServiceNow. We have that full strategy that Sunoco has implemented across their internal and external customers with a few key goals: to reduce costs, improve their service quality and provide greater transparency. Along the way, we're going to be discussing some of the latest shifts and challenges impacting service organizations, how organizations like Sunoco are looking to ServiceNow to streamline their business processes and improve their operating expenses. which leads us into our exciting discussion that we have planned for you here today. My name is Jordan Lake and I am on product marketing, supporting field service management here at ServiceNow. And today, I'm going to be joined by Charlie Bloemer, who is the Director of Technical Services and Maintenance over at Sunoco. Charlie, it is so great to have you here with us today.

Hello, Jordan. Excited to be here as well.

And in addition, joining us, we will also be joined by Noah Ryan, who is the Senior ServiceNow Solutions sales executive over at Evora IT Solutions and the strategic implementation partner for Sunoco. Great to also have you here with us today for the conversation.

Thank you, Jordan. Certainly a pleasure to be here, too.

We're going to dive into how some of these service organizations are looking at delivering seamless service but also discussing through what are some of the challenges and shifts that we're seeing in the environment. What is top of mind for service leaders like Charlie and others that are out in the field and what is happening with our service technicians and some of the changes and shifts in technology as well. From there, we're going to go into a fireside chat style conversation. This is going to be filled with tons of rich content and information for you, especially as you're looking for how to transform your field service experiences and modernize your retail operations. One of my favorite things to note is that field service organizations are among some of the most innovative organizations. They're always seeking new ways to improve their business processes and the outcomes. So it's no surprise in this modern world that AI and larger transformation of service experiences has become a major focus area. What we're hearing from customers is that AI is no longer [Audio Gap] largely clean data, you need connected processes, you need transparency and so much more. And this is what's making the intersection of field service, automation and AI so exciting. And here's something else that we know, is that for service organizations, the customer experience, it's not just that differentiator. It's the foundation of their brand and their reputation. ServiceNow had conducted a global customer experience survey with over 6,000 customers, service agents and service leaders and the results were striking. Over 69% of customers [Audio Gap] are looking at how to decrease [Audio Gap] to become more of a revenue driver for the business. And they're also held accountable for improving employee experiences and customer experiences. And as we like to say, this is an ongoing process. It can get better and it can get better again but it is never done as we're always looking to evolve. So as we're looking at the voice of the service leader and some of their priorities and challenges, one of the things is very clear. Over 70% of them are reporting that there's increased complexity. It's harder to continue to manage all the processes. It's harder to manage their workforce and it's even more challenging to keep up with customer demand. Which leads us into, no surprise, that over 69% of those service leaders are focused on data and technology investments in order to improve those costs and productivity. We know that you have to have clean data. We know that you have to have connected processes in order to have transparency and visibility across your organization, making this a huge priority for service leaders as they're looking into 2025 and beyond. And of course, last but not least, over 82% of service leaders are agreeing that scaling AI use cases is going to be widely important to their business. Organizations don't want to be left behind. They want to be on the forefront, the most innovative, adopting into this new technology and understanding how they can help them optimize their operations or better streamline their processes and provide visibility up into their leadership teams. Now on the technician front, one of the things that we also know is that most technicians or service contractors, they're in this because they enjoy it. They like fixing things. So often, they are the main face and person that your customers get to see and experience on behalf of your brand. It doesn't come as a surprise that over 70% or 90% rather dislike paperwork. They dislike searching for information, who enjoys manual processes, having to upload things, not having anything be automated. This is a huge pain point that we see where technology can help streamline those and really make information more accessible or even recast easier for those technicians in the field. Now there is this unique challenge on our last 2 statistics. The first of which is that over 25% are approaching retirement age and what that means is so much of this great historical knowledge, the phone a friend for someone who knows how to work on that intense HVAC system that has so many levers and pulls, that historical knowledge, it may not be there in the next few years, which leads us into over 50% of the workforce coming in as Gen Z and they're only likely to work as a field technician for around 3 years. So how do we bridge that technology gap? How do we make sure that we're capturing all of that rich historical knowledge, all of this great asset information and even bring those details as a part of our onboarding, our off-boarding processes or direct help to technicians while they're in the field. So some interesting statistics for us to think about today as we lean into this conversation and welcome Sunoco to the conversation, welcome Evora IT Solutions to the conversation as well. And I'd like to bring back in our speakers for this fireside chat discussion. Charlie, Noah, thank you again so much for being with us here today and sharing your rich knowledge and insights. Charlie, I'm going to pass it over to you first and I would love for you to tell our audience a bit more about yourself, what you do, what you manage and some about Sunoco.

My name is Charlie Bloemer. I work for Sunoco, a little bit of overhead on Sunoco. We are the largest independent fuel distributor in the U.S. and we are a leading operator of critical energy infrastructure. We have 3 key business units within Sunoco. They are our pipeline business, our terminal business and our fuel distribution business. I support our fuel distribution business, which is represented by all the blue states in the map you see here, which includes Hawaii and Puerto Rico. We have over 7,000 retail gas stations that we supply with fuel. And of those 800, roughly 800 of them, we own or have long-term leases at those properties, which means we own the assets, the building, the building infrastructure and all of the fuel-related assets and that's where my specific role comes in. I have 2 key departments. I have a construction department, which installs, builds, creates new assets at those locations. And then I have a maintenance department which is responsible for maintaining and upkeeping those assets. So that's it in a nutshell, Jordan.

Thank you so much, Charlie. I appreciate the quick overview, and Noah over to you, tell us a bit more about your role in Evora IT Solutions.

You bet, Jordan. Thank you. So Evora IT Solutions, as you can see here, we are a partner with ServiceNow. We deliver implementation services of the ServiceNow solutions and software. We have a hyper focus in the customer workflow or CRM module that includes FSM, which is a lot of what we're going to be talking about today. As you can see here, we were established in 2011. We have some other lines of business that we do. But from a ServiceNow perspective, that was established back in 2021. Across the platform, we do IT workflows, employee workforce -- workflows and creative workflows. But like I said, our focus is on CRM, which includes what we did for Sunoco. So from an industry's perspective, it aligned very well with Sunoco energy and utilities. We also specialize in higher ed, health care and life sciences, telecom, media and in retail also, which was kind of a cool thing because there's an aspect to retail with Sunoco but then obviously, the energy and utility side, too. So we are about 350-plus strong. We operate in 8 different countries. I won't list them all here. They're there for you to read. But our ServiceNow experts, we really focus on the business and how technology can meet the needs of the business. So we'll talk a little bit more about that as we get deeper into the conversation on [ serve ]. So it's great to be here and certainly appreciate everybody's time.

Thank you so much, Noah. And we will be diving in deeper. With that, it makes a really nice transition into some of our first questions. So Charlie, we know that over 23% of service leaders say that they lack the proper resources to meet service demands. And this is according to the Service Council Service Leaders agenda. I mentioned earlier about some of the competing priorities. We talked about balancing costs, profitability, both customer and employee satisfaction and how those are always a challenge. So at Sunoco, you're managing multiple stakeholders, from your dealers and franchisees, all the way to the customers that are at the top. What are Sunoco's key business drivers? And how do you balance the different competing priorities?

Yes. Thank you, Jordan. You hit on it perfectly. We have 2 key KPIs that we really look at. And it's cost management, right? Every business has a P&L and we need to manage our expenses. And we have SLAs, so service level agreements, for folks that haven't heard that term. And so we measure those each, each repair, each issue that is reported from our stores, we have time frames that we are expected to meet those repairs within those time frames. And those are important because we really have 2 customer bases. Our direct customers are our dealers or operators that run our gas stations for us. And then our ultimate customers are those consumers who are coming to our locations and buying gas. These SLAs are important because they tie into profitability, that revenue generation that you talked about. And it's really our assets need to be available. They need to be up and working in order to have those customers continuing to coming to our locations. So it's a delicate balance. But it's all about how do we keep our assets up and running and doing it at a tightest cost profile that we can manage.

Tell us more about some of these forcing factors. 42% of service leaders are saying that service innovation is a top focus for their organization. You've been using a solution for a long time but we recently made a change. Can you walk us through those forcing factors behind that decision? What challenges pushed you to modernize and what your vision is for some of the future?

Yes, absolutely. So prior to moving to ServiceNow, we were utilizing our ERP system for our work order management. And the reality is, I would say we were surviving. We were not thriving. We were able to manage the business but there were a lot of challenges. And specifically in the retail space, one of the biggest issues are we don't have the ability to look over the shoulder of our service contractors. We're also very dependent on our dealers and our operators for reporting problems, right? As I'm supporting 800 locations, I don't have 800 employees stationed at those locations to give me all of that information and pertinent details that I need to successfully maintain those assets. So a big technology gap for us was being able to get real-time information from the technicians in the field, being able to get prompt accurate issues reported from our dealers, right? It's so key for us to be able to manage the system, to have that information, have it timely and to be able to support a remote portfolio where I don't have people on site. So that dependency on third party was really a huge issue for us. And it's something that ServiceNow was able to help solve with their tools, specifically the ServiceNow app and being able to get that app in the hands of technicians that are on site.

So that app sounds like it's a really big part of this too for you, Charlie. Like there was a gap in mobile accessibility. And as you mentioned, you can't be there to look over the shoulder for the work performed. So you needed a way for those contractors to really be able to have access to storefronts and report on any of the work that was being performed.

Absolutely. Our prior system, we were very dependent on the game of telephone, right? The technician was on site. He was calling back to his home office, relaying that information. And then that was uploaded into our system. There were inherent delays with that process. There was issues with accuracy of data. And oh, well, let me mention one of the other benefits of the app is the ability to take a picture and post pictures direct on our work order tasks from the app. It just -- it streamlines the process it gives us so much more information that was a struggle to what we had prior.

Yes. No more delays, no more disruptions, just accurate, more immediate visibility into the work being completed. But you clearly didn't do this alone and a clear and cohesive business strategy is really critical for this kind of transformational success. And at Sunoco, I mentioned earlier, your goal was to reduce those costs, increase the service quality, improve visibility, all while ensuring this alignment across key stakeholders. So where did you want to be as an organization when you set out on this journey, how did you approach your business strategy and align your critical stakeholders? And what role did your partners play in helping deliver this value?

A lot there. But I'll start by saying in our business and related to this project, I had 3 key stakeholder groups. The first were our internal employees. The second is our dealers and our operators. And then the third is our service contractor network. So I needed a solution that was going to work for all 3 of those critical stakeholders. And it was a little different trying to achieve that for each of those groups. For our internal employees, I think it was probably the easiest. They were ready for change, ready for a newer system, something that was a little easier to use. But it was different when it came to our dealers, our operators and our service contractors and it was really giving them the accessibility to enter requests in the system, to do it in a streamlined, easy fashion. And then for our service contractors, the tools we could provide to make it very simple for them to do their job. And here's where I'll kick it off or kick it over to Noah. We really leveraged Evora to help us come up with that solution and to ensure it was a very friendly, easy-to-use solution. So Noah, I'll let you add on if you have any additional comments there.

Ultimately, when it came to that partnership with Sunoco, I will say it was an easy partnership because I view our partnership as kind of twofolded with our customers. And from a best practice perspective, focus on the business is extremely important and that's what we did through Charlie, understanding what our customers are trying to do with ServiceNow. If we can understand what the business goals are and the drivers that are behind that, we can design that solution that fits those needs. And Charlie was prepared. He -- Sunoco knew exactly what they wanted and what the outcomes were that they needed. So it became a focus on the outcomes of what they were trying to accomplish. But that second piece is also an alignment in the partnership with IT, right? It's important network connected with the business. But it's also important that we're connected with IT because IT ultimately, they need to understand what it's going to be like to deliver for the business after it's deployed. So having alignment with both the business and IT was critical here for this particular engagement. And I would say it's instrumental with any engagement. So the partnership was great with Charlie from the get-go. So it's been an absolute pleasure.

And I know we're going to talk a bit more about strategy later as well and some of those additional best practices. And so it just goes to highlight how important that partnership is, getting all the stakeholders in the room, getting the buy in early on, having a vision for where you want to go, especially managing 3 different sets of stakeholders. Charlie, if you could just illuminate a little bit more, you mentioned about internal employees. What does that comprise of? You mentioned the service contractor network. Who's included in that? Is that external? Is that internal? And then also your store operators in the various locations?

Yes, absolutely. So our internal users, we have several key groups. We have my team, which consists of our field service managers, right, who are stationed out in the field and responsible for managing our contractors and assisting our operations group. There's our operations group who is responsible for ensuring the full P&Ls of those locations and maintaining the relationships with the dealers. We have our dispatcher group that really is fielding all these inbound requests and routing them to the appropriate places. We have what's called our technical help desk, who supports in a remote -- basically electronic issues that they can troubleshoot and support remotely. And we have our environmental group that manages all of our compliance activities for our gas stations and our tanks and then also our construction team that is using this for their project management. So internal groups, a plethora of different internal groups. External, our dealers, it's really all 1 group. Some of them are multisite dealers. Some of them are individual store operators but they basically have the same role. There's just a lot of them. And then it's our service network, I do not have in-house technicians. So my business is fully third party and fully dependent on those service contractors. And we really talk about 2 different levels of our service contractors. We have what we call our home office employees. Those are the folks that are routing the calls internally, maybe their dispatch managers also would include their invoicing, their AP department and then the actual technicians that are out in the field performing the duties. A lot of different people in play here, Jordan. But that's what it looks like.

Yes. No small feat. It highlights even further why having a strategy and getting all those stakeholders for buy-in and at the table was so crucial and important in order to have a successful implementation. So with that, let's transition a little bit more over to the customer experience. And I want to hear a bit more about the products and solutions you're using. You just mentioned through these various groups all the way into project management. How has this technology helped to transform Sunoco's end-to-end service experience?

Yes. So here's where I get a jump in and use all of ServiceNow's 3-letter acronyms. So we are utilizing several modules within service now. I'll start with RSO or retail store operations. We have 21 company-operated locations on the New Jersey Turnpike, where the store-level employees are actually company employees. So they are using the RSO solution for their inbound and their visibility into the process. Moving on from there, we have the CSM module that the rest of our dealer network is using and our technical help desk is using to manage cases, those cases that can't be resolved remotely turned into work orders and work order tasks that are part of the FSM module. That's where all of our contractors are coming in and using the app, giving us updates on those work orders. Our internal dispatch team is doing the routing and the field management team is ensuring everything is getting done timely. That leads into APO, which is the account payable ops which is where we have all of our invoicing from our third-party contractors tied into our work orders, to really give us that full cradle to grave from a maintenance perspective. So we've been able to achieve -- I have the inbound coming directly into ServiceNow. We have triage happening. If it needs a dispatch, it is being dispatched appropriately to our third-party resources. Those resources are then sending it to the technicians doing the work. The technicians are going out in the field, performing the work, giving me the updates, taking those beautiful pictures and sending that info back in. And then the home office of those contractors are been invoicing based on the work that was performed, which comes into our internal AP team which is processing and approving those invoices to complete the whole process. Oh and I didn't mention, we are also using SPM, which is what my construction team is using to manage their project management activities, construction activities. And that's really where we're onboarding those assets that then flow into the system and the network and then the maintenance team is responsible for maintaining those assets once they've been installed.

And it's many products that are across the platform, which provides that ability to better streamline and connect right? You're seeing every activity that's performed, all those costs that are associated with it and the full service life cycle, which is a dream in terms of the transparency that you would want to see, which leads us into conversations about return on investment. Looking ahead, what are some of the tangible outcomes that you hope to see in the coming months or years as you're continuing to execute this strategy and particularly as you're also exploring the role of AI?

Yes. So we've already seen a lot of efficiencies and streamlining of work activities by bringing everything into ServiceNow. But one of the key areas where I really think we can tap into AI and get even better is in the area of invoice processing. So I talked a lot about the app and how the contractors are using the app. They're logging their travel time, they're logging their on-site time through that app and we have those data elements. What I think we can do is use those data elements, match it up to how they are invoicing and when things are within range build out an automated invoice processing ability, right? It's -- if you think about it, there's really no value add to approving an invoice. The only value add is if you think you're being overcharged and you need to push it back to your contractor and say, hey, you overbuild me here. But if the billable time is accurate on that invoice, there is no value add. So if we can automate those processes or those invoices and tap into AI to do that using all the data elements we're gathering, it allows those resources to be able to do other things that are more beneficial to our company.

Yes, it frees up that time, right? It's not about reducing necessarily the workforce. It's about allowing them to work more productively, more efficiently, especially with access to tools and systems. And are there any critical metrics that you guys are looking to measure over at Sunoco?

Yes. So I talked about them a little bit. Our key metrics are obviously managing our budget. But our SLA metrics, very key, the timeliness at which we are fixing our issues and then the ability to do it at a -- in a cost-efficient manner. So I can tell you, I've taken money out of my OpEx budget as part of this project. So we are very critically looking at our average invoice prices and average travel time, things of that nature, where now we can see that information in a better manner to achieve those business results.

That sounds great. And Noah, we know that you've been there all the way along the way with the journey. How are you continuing to partner with Sunoco to achieve this vision?

It's about trying to how to -- figure out how to leverage technology and AI more specifically to do some of those more routine things that don't necessarily require a manual effort, take that out of a human's responsibility, put it into the solution, put it into the technology to allow the technology to bring that additional value. So it really is about driving those results and delivering great results for the end customer. So we are staying close with them. We continue to work with Sunoco on trying to figure out where those additional value adds are and create those opportunities of discussion to bring that into the fold.

Yes, spot on. And I love that you mentioned about leveraging technology because it has a major influence on outcomes. So let's talk a little bit more about those third-party contractors and how technology modified or improved the experience for them in the field.

Yes, Jordan. So again, I'm going to sound a little bit like a broken record here, too but a big change was the use of the ServiceNow app and deploying that into all the technicians' hands and allowing them to give us that direct feedback. So that was a monumental shift for us. And I hope we probably need to do a poll. I hope it made that user experience better for those technicians in the field because now they're interacting with us directly. Another interesting area that we set up and have working is, with each of our contractors, we've set up their structure for what geographies do they support and what skills or capabilities do we have. On the inbound side, when our work orders come into the system, we have -- we utilize what we call damage codes that are also set up with required skills. And then the locations are also mapped and broken into these geographies or subgeographies. So we've now built it to where there's a matching that takes place. A particular work order requires a skill and is in a specific geography and ServiceNow can then match that with the appropriate service contractor that meets that skill and also operates in that geography. So it enables us to minimize our, I'd say, our incorrect dispatches because there's nothing good for us sending the wrong resource out to a location. And there's also no benefit for the service contractor to get sent to something they can't correct either. Now they might disagree a little bit because they're still going to bill me. They're going to send me an invoice regardless. But we really obviously want to minimize that because the last thing I want to do is pay for service contractors to go somewhere and they're not able to fix something once they get there.

Yes. And on the counter side, too, a missed appointment. I think of the days of e-mail and spreadsheets and being a dispatcher and what if someone is on vacation or they're just unavailable and you have a no show for a customer, or you're looking to source the proper person. So based on the setup by geography, skill, parts, all of these great details, you now have access into a contractor network so that you're able to effectively dispatch that work and make sure that those SLAs are being met and that customer needs are being met. So you end up increasing those first-time fixed rates and end up with happier customers along the way.

Yes, that -- it's critically important. You talked about the missed appointment. If our first contractor that we send is not able to resolve that issue, we're not going to meet the SLA to our customer, right? So it's very, very important that we get the correct resource on site the first time.

So we know that strategic implementation partners, they play such a crucial role in achieving business transformation. How did Evora help Sunoco reach these business objectives? And Noah, can you also share and illuminate more on some of those best practices that have made this partnership successful?

Yes. So I'll jump in first here, Jordan. So Noah mentioned it a little bit earlier but we did come into this project knowing at a high level what we wanted to achieve. And where we leveraged and made sure Evora was helping us was providing a solution that stayed as much as possible within the box, within the standard infrastructure of ServiceNow to achieve those objectives. So I'll let you take it from there, Noah and see what you want to add.

For sure. Thank you. Yes. So I did allude to that a little bit before from a best practice perspective to make sure that we have alignment with you, Charlie, in the business but then also from an IT perspective. But having a clear vision of what you're trying to accomplish, that truly is how we get to a successful deployment. That's the best way to say it. Now there were a couple of things to understanding where you were coming from. That's extremely important. So kind of doing a deeper dive into your previous solution and understanding what some of the, let's call it, constraints you might have had with using that solution to actually deliver the services that you were trying to deliver, that was important. So looking at what your current processes were inside that old solution and then understanding what could we take from that, put into ServiceNow but then make it better, right? So the other key practice, right, best practice and you alluded to a little bit, out-of-box functionality. Let's leverage that out-of-box functionality as best we possibly can before we do any kind of -- have any kind of conversations around customization. We don't want to create technical debt throughout this type of deployment or any deployment. So utilizing that is going to be very important. Now, Jordan, the interesting part here is -- and I'm not going to go through all the 3-letter acronyms that Charlie did but they purchased a lot, which meant they had to deploy a lot. And so understanding each person that's going to touch this solution was important and how they would be able to use it. So understanding how the cases come in, who's working them, is a work order or work order task going to be deployed or created, how then are we engaging those third-party contractors. So from a best practice perspective, like, it was just extremely important to understand how that puzzle all came together. We're not going to say they boil the ocean but they did a lot right out of the gates to really serve the business, their contractors, like their -- the people that they work with on a regular basis but then obviously, the end customer also. So it was quite the endeavor but honing in on those factors is extremely important.

And we've already discussed some around change management, who are the users, who are the stakeholders. But let's double click in a little bit further and around those stakeholders, ensuring adoption, like what's the pulse check so far? Is everyone super happy? Are people's hair falling out? And were there any challenges that existed along the way? Charlie?

Yes. Absolutely, Jordan. So I'll go back to the 3 key stakeholder groups and I'll start with our internal groups. Honestly, I think they were very easy when we talk about change management and alignment. They were ready for a newer, more efficient, more UI-friendly tool. So once we've got their hands on it and they got their feet underneath them, it was really easy to get our internal folks aligned and excited about the solution. Our next group is our dealers and operators. Their touch point is kind of minimal. They're really on the inbound and then just watching and following the process as they go. So the key issue for them was to make sure it was a very simple and easy interface for them to report their issues and then just be able to track and see those updates as it flows through. And honestly, Jordan, as amazing as it might sound, I have not fielded a single complaint from any of our dealer operators. So that tells me the solution is very clean and easy for them. Moving on to our third group is our service contractor network. Now this one was a little tougher. And if you think about a service contractor network, they're not just working for Sunoco, they are working for our peers, our competitors in the industry. And in some cases, we're fighting for their services. And we had a big ask here, right? To date, we've rolled this to nearly 1,200 external users within that service contractor network. And the biggest issue we ran into is, we don't just allow third parties to come into our systems, this day and age, you always have to think about security and making sure you're safe and not allowing people to take over your systems. So our corporate standard is to use a middleware called Okta that requires MFA, multifactor authentication. So as we were onboarding all these third-party users, we not only had to get them set up in ServiceNow but had to get them set up in Okta, work through password resets and oh, they didn't log in, in 7 days, now their initial password is bad. So honestly, that's where the biggest and heaviest lift was in our whole go live and onboarding, was helping and facilitating, getting all of those service contractor resources onboarded in and using the system. The feedback on the app and the system itself has been very positive. So I think they like the system. It's just navigating the technical challenges of getting that set up, working through the MFA aspect and getting them in and rolling.

So Charlie, it took some strong technology to be able to achieve this vision. So I'd love for our audience to understand why you ultimately chose ServiceNow and how did you go about selecting the right implementation partner for you?

Yes, absolutely. So me as a leader in the business, I was very well aware of the limitations of our existing system. And I'll say I was always on the lookout of, hey, what else is out there? What could we do what could we migrate to? And honestly, what opened the door for us is, our parent company is Energy Transfer and we have shared services with Energy Transfer and IT is a shared service. And Energy Transfer was migrating to ServiceNow to manage all their IT tracking using the ITSM module. So once I started hearing about this, it perked my ears. I was like, oh, if this application is already within the portfolio of the companies, the hurdles I would have to jump over to be able to shift just got significantly lower. I still have to justify a project but it's a lot easier once that application is already within the company. So step 1 accomplished, right? ET helped me out there. Step 2 was now finding out can ServiceNow really deliver on what I see as the gaps to be able to get me to that next level. And so if we wind the clock back, we started discussions with some folks at ServiceNow and they said, hey, this Dallas World Forum is coming up in a month or 2, you should go check it out. And oh, by the way, it's free. So free resonated and I was like, okay and it was here in Dallas, where I'm based, which made it easy. So I think it was October of '23 myself and a couple of my peers attended the Dallas World Forum with really the initiative of, okay, let's come away with the yes or no answer of can ServiceNow meet our needs? Can it get us to that next level? So sitting through the sessions there, talking to folks, wandering around the booths and asking my directed questions, I really came away with a strong comfort level of, hey, ServiceNow can accomplish what we want to accomplish. And so that then started to transition into the, okay, how do we take the next step? The other benefit of that show is, there were a whole bunch of implementation partners at that show and that's when I first met Noah. Now to be fair, we talked to several implementation partners but that's where we first met Noah, met Evora. And we went through a process of here's our high-level scope. We interviewed a couple of different implementation partners to understand what could they deliver, what did those time lines look like and obviously, what did that price point look like. And we ended up selecting Evora. So hopefully, I didn't take all your thunder there, Noah. But what would you have to add to that?

No. It was -- you mentioned the World Forum. It's a great opportunity for prospects or customers like yourself to be able to get a better understanding of what ServiceNow can do for you. And I think it's important to kind of touch on you starting with the thought that energy transfer already had ITSM. And this becomes that talk track of a platform play, right? Because you could have gone out and looked at other solutions but there would have been multiple point solutions to try to truly puzzle together to meet your business requirements, meet those business needs. You able to hone in and say, okay, we've got a platform play here to say we can leverage what currently is in place from a data model perspective, be on that same data model and bring to the business what you're trying to do. So yes, it was about feature functionality from a ServiceNow perspective but also it was then looking to the partner to understand what's their expertise and how can they provide what's actually needed. And relationships are a huge thing in business. And I felt like we collectively, the 2 organizations kind of hit it off at that point and it's been a great relationship since. So I think you really hit on it. And I'm glad that Sunoco was able to kind of see that platform play and understand how could -- they could go and expand on what currently was in place. And of course, there's more to come, right? So there's more that ServiceNow does that when you look at transformation, how can we take other pieces of the business, fold them into what's currently in place and maybe decommission some of those other point solutions. So...

Thank you, Noah and thank you, Charlie. And this leads us into our last and final question before we open it up to the audience for Q&A. Charlie, your implementation, followed this big bang approach. Noah, you're familiar with this as well, rather than just a phased rollout, meaning that everything went live all at once instead of a gradual transition. Now that you're live, how are you looking to continuously improve? And with that foundation in place, what KPIs are you looking to track next?

We're always looking to improve. And one area that I'll talk about that Evora has helped us implement since our go live, even though it's only been 4 months, is utilizing surveys within ServiceNow and tying them to our work order task. So let me take a back up, a step back and explain a little bit what I'm talking about. Obviously, operating and managing a maintenance department requires a lot of data, a lot of master data, asset data. And we recognize we have some gaps in our asset data that impedes us from really doing everything we want to do when it comes to looking at the full life cycle of those assets and replacement plans and what have you. Well, we part of our go live was, hey, we have PMs and we need to set up PMs and have those triggered based on the requirements for whatever type of PMs they are. And that was in the initial go live. And then we had this idea, hey, ServiceNow can do all these things. Evora, can you help us build an HVAC survey so that when the technicians are out performing those PMs, they can actually fill out the survey and gather our missing serial numbers and our missing model numbers and give us a condition assessment on the unit while they're doing it so that now I can have that in an electronic format and I don't have to read through the technicians' notes to make any sense out of it. And Evora really came to the table. I gave him this idea and within 2 weeks, they had the solution delivered, said, hey, it's in test, go check it out and I'm super excited about it. Our PMs are scheduled to release. Our HVAC PMs are scheduled to release later this month and we think it's going to be a super awesome way to capture missing data, to fix our master data, to make us stronger and better. And we're already thinking about all the different use cases where we could utilize this survey tool that's embedded in ServiceNow to fill in gaps in other areas of our business. That's just one example that we've done in 4 months. So lots of other ideas percolating in my head, Jordan. We'll -- we should talk a year from now and I'll see how many other ones we've managed to accomplish.

Then of course, of course and gentlemen, this has been such an engaging conversation today. We have just a few brief minutes left with our audience. So I'm going to look over into the Q&A and I'm going to see some of the questions that have rolled in. Before I do, I just want to thank you, Charlie, Noah, being here with us today, sharing your knowledge and sharing your expertise. This looks like it says talking more about transparency, which you spoke quite a bit about, Charlie. But this person is asking how you've been able to migrate away from e-mails. And if so, how were you able to do that?

I have an internal belief that e-mail is the scourge of business. Kidding aside, I think everybody this day and age, battles e-mail, their inbox, how do they keep their inbox clean, how do they prevent things from getting lost. I'm so anti e-mail, it's crazy. But what I will say is I've taken a strong approach with my teams on, let's figure out how to set things up to minimize e-mails, you're never going to be able to eliminate e-mail. That's not realistic. But what can we do to minimize e-mails? And for us, what that has turned into is really utilizing the power of dashboards within ServiceNow. These dashboards are incredibly powerful tools especially if you set them up with specific objectives in mind. And you can start transforming where, hey, instead of an automated e-mail gets sent to a particular user to do X, Y, Z, let's build a queue in a dashboard that now that user, all they have to do is manage that dashboard and they can see, oh, hey, something new came into my queue. And once I complete it, boom, it's gone from my queue and it never touches e-mail. I'll kind of go down my rabbit hole here. But one of the things I absolutely love about ServiceNow is the dashboards, the functionality of the dashboards, the fact that business users, they're simple and easy enough to use that business users can set them up and manage them and really figure out how to do what they need to do and be more efficient about doing it. And there's multiple layers. Like, I also use them for my roll-ups as a leader in the organization where I can see everything at a glance where things are progressing, what the statuses are, where are all my construction projects. It's just a super powerful tool to be able to efficiently see everything that's going on and manage the business that way.

And I'll pipe in here, too, Charlie. I think that this is a battle that I think a lot of different organizations have, is how do they best communicate not just internally but externally to their customers and possibly even their vendors. And this is where providing that -- well, first off, listening to you to understand what are you trying to target from a solution perspective but then knowing right out of the gates that those dashboards and the visibility that you're looking for was possible out of box. So yes, so just wanted to chime in there for just half a second to say glad to see you getting away from e-mails.

Absolutely. If you think about a paradigm shift, I'll give a quick example. So in older school maintenance, you could have a store manager e-mailing a distribution box with their issue. Now somebody has to receive that e-mail, log it into the system. Once it's in the system, it still needs to be dispatched and sent out to the appropriate resource. Well, we've cut all of that out of play because our dealers, our operators are now entering their request directly in the system. Our dispatchers don't have to manage an e-mail box. They're looking at their dispatcher dashboard that shows them what's come into the system. It breaks it down by priorities, so they know which ones they need to work on first. And they just operate out of those queues. It's -- I can't say it enough. It's infinitely more efficient than the old school way of doing things.

Charlie, Noah, I want to thank you both for being here with us today, joining our audience and sharing all of these valuable insights. Thank you so, so much for joining us today for this conversation.

Absolutely, Jordan. It's been a pleasure.

Yes. Thank you so much.

Absolutely. And Charlie, I know that you have a session that's upcoming at Knowledge 2025, for our folks who are here in the audience. I believe Evora IT will also be there with us at Knowledge. Be sure to grab the QR code, scan, register, join us, have those engaging conversations in person, understand the technology solutions that are available to you. And if you weren't able to be here with us live today for this conversation, the webinar is going to be available on demand along with all of our other ServiceNow webinars that will be available to you. So thank you so much again for joining us all the way from around the world. My name is Jordan and have a wonderful rest of your day.