ServiceNow acquires UltimateSuite, furthers investment in EMEA talent
We’re thrilled to announce that ServiceNow has acquired Czech Republic task-mining company UltimateSuite to further its investment in innovation and Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) talent and skills.
The acquisition provides ServiceNow with key technology and a team of researchers, developers, and leaders who’ve spent years developing a task mining solution. A core piece of process mining, task mining uncovers actionable insights to identify automation opportunities and streamline repetitive work.
This follows ServiceNow's investments in Internet of Things technology provider G2K in Munich and database performance company Swarm64, based in Berlin. All three of these acquisitions were about much more than technology. They were also about the people and expertise behind the companies.
Investing in people
“When it comes to speed and agility, it’s hard to beat a subject matter expert with a strong startup spirit,” explains Elias H., director of business strategy for NowX, who joined ServiceNow as part of the G2K acquisition.
“With our strong background in the retail industry, we’re very pleased that ServiceNow understood our expertise early on and positioned and enabled us in a way where our knowledge can really reach its full potential and influence how ServiceNow approaches and understands the retail industry,” he adds.
Yana K., part of the Swarm64 acquisition, delights in ServiceNow’s approach to not only gaining talent and technology, but also growing it for long-term business success. “The business push to have a better database to better serve customers gets very nicely merged with our startup,” says the senior manager of data platform software for ServiceNow.
“As a startup, we get the best outcome: the right technology, the right people at the right time,” she adds. “It’s such a fruitful ground for innovation. That’s just a magical mix for doing innovation at scale.”
Expanding roles
Both employees have experienced career growth as a result of their transition to ServiceNow. Yana’s team is responsible for database provisioning and cloud service operations. Her role changed substantially, from being part of the executive team to working closely with development teams.
“It was a very positive change because I get to work closer with the technology and with engineers,” she says. Yana found ramping up a bit intimidating, as she and her team had a lot to learn. “Everything is massive here when you come from a small startup,” she explains. Creating relationships with people helped. “The more you learn, the more you understand.”
Elias transitioned from a general role at G2K to a more specific role at ServiceNow. “There’s a team and an expert for everything, and you never have to face a challenge alone,” he notes. “There’s best practices and templates to work from, and the amount of knowledge available and the knowledge management around it is incredible.”
Growing and retaining EMEA talent
After six months at ServiceNow, Elias feels that the EMEA regions are becoming more autonomous and less headquarters-centric, “which is shaping up to be a better framework for scaling and building a structure that works with the local workforce, customer base, and regulators,” he says.
Those regulators and regulations in EMEA can sometimes be a bit complicated, Yana adds. “EMEA is pretty strict in many aspects compared to the U.S., with regulations around support.”
Despite that, “EMEA is buzzing,” Elias says. “It’s dynamic, growing fast, and full of interesting customers that make it inherently attractive. What makes it even better is that ServiceNow takes that Silicon Valley vibe and blends it seamlessly with the social needs and demands of EMEA. It’s like a unique work culture cocktail.”
ServiceNow has kept G2K’s former office space in Berlin and given it a new lease on life, Elias continues. “There’s talk of it becoming its own executive briefing center and demo hub, further strengthening the region and giving customers and partners a great new place to see and interact with innovative technology in the heart of Europe.”
Improving employee experiences
In addition to being investments in EMEA talent, the UltimateSuite, G2K, and Swarm64 acquisitions were investments in improving employee experiences. The technology gained in each acquisition has been or will be merged into the ServiceNow platform.
“If you look at how ServiceNow has been doing acquisitions in the past, we pride ourselves on organically surfacing these capabilities into our unified platform,” Eduardo Chiocconi, vice president and general manager for process mining at ServiceNow, told TechCrunch.
UltimateSuite’s task mining tech will help employees be more efficient and productive. Converting real-time data into insights and actions, G2K’s tech offers a way to streamline workflows with broad applications across industries. Swarm64 database tech enables personalized experiences for greater employee productivity.
“With G2K’s technology, a retailer can automatically track the availability of products on the shelf and connect a workflow that, once a critical low availability level is reached on the shelf, automatically checks for product availability in the on-site inventory and alerts and guides frontline staff through the replenishment process on their handheld devices,” Elias explains.
The tech can also detect equipment failures as they occur and automatically trigger Field Service Management workflows and instruct frontline staff with countermeasures. “These are just two of the many use cases retailers will benefit from with G2K’s technology on the ServiceNow platform,” Elias adds.
Integrating Swarm64 tech with the ServiceNow platform helps provide faster response times and faster dashboards, Yana says. “On top, we support many more use cases. The variety of workloads with ServiceNow can be better supported with Swarm64 technology,” she adds.
Investing in technology and expertise helps ServiceNow fulfill our purpose to make the world work better for everyone, regardless of their geographic location or company size.
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