The Day in The Life

“I heard the news today, oh boy.” Those were the first words to the song that has been argued to be the best rock n roll song of all time. A Day in the Life by The Beatles. It was also the sentiment in tech after a crazy Tuesday this week. However, if you step back after a few days to marinate on the news, it all makes sense.

John Donahoe. Current CEO of ServiceNow, soon to be CEO of Nike. At ServiceNow, John has helped transform the company into a modern consumer-like experience platform for companies to solve problems on. This has set ServiceNow apart and literally created a new space for themselves. This train is moving and its crystal clear that ServiceNow has not only created the market but also has some of their competitors making some knee jerk reactions as a result. Time will tell, but I’m a firm believer that you should stick to what you are great at. Otherwise, you may not be good at anything in this fast paced SaaS world. John gets the call for his dream job, and off he goes to Nike...the gold standard for consumer experience. He’s been on the board so there will be no surprises. Makes perfect sense.

Which leads us to his successor. Bill McDermott. He led a company that owned the on-prem world and transformed it to be a cloud business while never going backwards financially. From $40B to $140B. That to me is mid-flight fueling. Growing market share while transforming what it is you are actually selling. Imagine what he can do with a product that is on the front end of a market that has an endless green field to venture in.

Many are asking what I expect.

I expect Bill to be incredibly partner friendly for people like us. It takes a village to grow at a rate that is expected these days, and system integrators can really help move the needle. We are the ones that make the difference between adoption and non-adoption. Which leads to renewals and additional products.

I expect Bill to see what ServiceNow is sitting on in terms of their HR and CSM solutions. These are gamechanger solutions that will truly bring the Workforce and Consumer Experience into the 2020s.

I expect Bill to scale products that were built for the enterprise to work in the middle market. There are only 1000 Global 1000 companies, but there are tens of thousands in the middle market. Plus, many of the middle markets are the brands we know and love.

I expect ServiceNow to become much more of a household name.

All in A Day in the Life of being in the tech space!