Produced by:
Pioneering Cloud and SaaS to Transform Enterprise Service Management
Produced by:
Pioneering Cloud and SaaS to Transform Enterprise Service Management
A TechPros.io
Interview with
Mike Glock
CEO
🎙️ Listen to the full interview
in the Enterprise Thought Leadership podcast,
powered by TechPros.io
Mike Glock’s illustrious career has spanned management consulting, enterprise IT leadership, and entrepreneurship. His unique experience was instrumental in envisioning and launching Unifii, a next-gen consultancy focused on cloud-based enterprise service management. In his interview, Mike provides fascinating insights into Unifii’s founding vision, their work transforming enterprise IT with ServiceNow, and his perspective on emerging technologies like AI.
A TechPros.io
Interview with
Mike Glock
CEO
🎙️ Listen to the full interview
in the Enterprise Thought
Leadership podcast,
powered by TechPros.io
Mike Glock’s illustrious career has spanned management consulting, enterprise IT leadership, and entrepreneurship. His unique experience was instrumental in envisioning and launching Unifii, a next-gen consultancy focused on cloud-based enterprise service management. In his interview, Mike provides fascinating insights into Unifii’s founding vision, their work transforming enterprise IT with ServiceNow, and his perspective on emerging technologies like AI.
Let's start at the beginning - what led you to found Unifii and what were your goals in starting the company?
Unifii emerged from a desire to reinvent consulting around enterprise service management, embracing cloud, SaaS, and new technologies. After working extensively on outsourcing and IT service deals in consulting, I joined BP and led a set of Service Management & Remedy implementation projects. This experience exposed me to ServiceNow in 2009 as an emerging SaaS platform. I immediately recognised the immense potential of cloud to transform enterprise IT. After assisting Centrica’s adoption of ServiceNow, I consulted independently and collaborated with Steve Mamelock, who led enterprise management engineering at Barclays. We discovered a shared passion for empowering clients through cloud-based solutions. This led us to launch Unifii in 2015 with a bold vision to integrate real-world client experience and fresh thinking into consulting.
You have extensive experience leading one of the largest global ServiceNow rollouts at Barclays. What were some key learnings from that project?
The Barclays programme was an incredible opportunity to implement ServiceNow on an unprecedented scale. Within 12 months, we deployed the platform globally across Barclays, one of the first full-scale financial services implementations. We went live with over 12,000 fulfiller users across investment banking, retail, and commercial banking divisions processing nearly 1 million tickets every month. Beyond sheer size, four vital lessons stood out. First, effective change management and communication are essential when undertaking transformation at scale. Second, governance, risk and compliance need extensive planning when deploying new technology in highly regulated sectors like banking. Third, platforms may need significant customisation for complex global programs but avoid over-customisation. And fourth, access to client data is invaluable for platforms like ServiceNow to continuously learn and improve - Barclays provided pivotal insights that helped ServiceNow enhance their capabilities.
How does Unifii differentiate itself in the enterprise service management consulting space?
Three key pillars distinguish Unifii - our people, delivery model and specialisation. First, we focus on hiring experienced client-side consultants, not just typical vendor-side resources. Second, we invested in permanent expert consultants from the outset, rather than the predominant flexible resourcing model. This instils consistency, continuity and strong client partnerships. Third, we exclusively focus on enterprise service management, specifically leveraging leading platforms like ServiceNow. This provides unmatched depth to effectively solve complex challenges clients face in managing mission-critical services on-premise and in the cloud.
Can you provide some examples of how Unifii has helped clients transform through ServiceNow?
Unifii has led businesses in transformative journeys using ServiceNow. Our involvement with Barclays saw ServiceNow implementation across various divisions, managing approximately 950,000 incidents and 50,000 changes monthly. At Centrica, our collaboration centred on a crucial tool selection project. Additionally, our expertise extends to the UK’s public sector, focusing on rapid digital transformation. Within the tech industry, we partnered with mid-tier telecommunication firms and managed service providers. Furthermore, in the transport sector, airlines and airports benefitted by addressing both operational and customer-facing challenges. Through all these endeavours, our aim is unwavering: ensuring clients maximise ServiceNow's potential for operational excellence.
How do you see service management platforms like ServiceNow evolving with emerging technologies like AI/ML and cloud?
ServiceNow's platform is extremely well-positioned to incorporate AI and intelligent automation. Their recent acquisition of Element AI exemplifies their commitment. Initially, AI promises more efficient ways to manage unstructured data, like summarising lengthy incident records or major outage reports. Longer term, the real potential is intelligently processing organisational data to enhance predictiveness, prescribe solutions, and enable smart self-healing.
As service management matured into mission-critical enterprise platforms on par with SAP and Salesforce, CIOs are consolidating onto a core set of platforms, with ServiceNow being central for IT and customer workflows. ServiceNow's cloud delivery model aligns perfectly with organisations embracing cloud for flexibility and innovation. With robust AI capabilities, they can rapidly advance intelligent service management. But we must learn from previous IT hype cycles, big data anyone, and focus on targeted industry applications addressing real business challenges.
You highlighted interesting challenges around AI regulation in financial services. Could you elaborate on this issue and how it might evolve?
There are formidable challenges today in leveraging AI in highly regulated sectors like financial services. For instance, over 90% of AI/ML investments in banks never make it into production due to difficulties proving models align with compliance obligations across multiple global regulatory frameworks. If an AI engine shifts a trading model parameter, organisations must validate it still adheres to all applicable fund covenants, governance standards, and jurisdiction regulations.
Essentially, compliance teams need assurance that AI/ML models will not stray outside predetermined boundaries without notification. But I believe specialised, focused AI applications trained on individual organisations' data will ease these issues. Compliance will be more attainable with constrained, transparent AI aligned tightly to specific use cases. Additionally, service management platforms like ServiceNow that centrally orchestrate workflows are well-positioned to embed the right controls and oversight into AI automation. Though the challenges are real, pragmatic applications of AI and cloud-based service management can overcome these regulatory hurdles in financial services and other highly regulated sectors.
With technology evolving so rapidly, what advice would you give organisations looking to modernise IT operations and service management?
First, clearly identify and prioritise the core business challenges you need to solve - what is holding your organisation back from achieving its objectives? With this focus, target key initiatives with defined outcomes that can be delivered in 3-6 months. Avoid wholesale modernisation and limit scope to essential functions. Proper business cases and measurable outcomes are crucial.
Second, recognise that these are business change initiatives enabled by technology, not technology projects. Engage stakeholders across functions early to drive adoption. Make sure to involve not just IT but also business teams who will utilise new solutions. Develop a change management strategy and provide extensive communication and training.
Third, leverage experienced partners to complement internal teams with specialised expertise as needed. Managing complex integrations between legacy systems and new platforms requires skill and experience. An outside perspective can also bring fresh ideas and objectivity.
Finally, expect setbacks and obstacles, no major modernisation is flawless. But maintaining a clear vision of the business goals, transparent communication, and pragmatic solutions will enable successful transformation over time. Utilising nimble, iterative approaches focused on tangible business impact is the key to smart modernisation.
Unifii is an elite ServiceNow partner, helping businesses like yours to align technology with strategic goals. ServiceNow is a complete HR software to improve employee experience through streamlined workflows and tools to manage onboarding, document management, LMS and much more.
Transformation can be daunting. We all know that change starts from the top, but making change meaningful and lasting is no easy task. Thankfully, we have over 100 combined years of experience in ServiceNow and delivering impactful transformational projects. You could say that we’ve been there, done that and got the t-shirt… lots of t-shirts.
We’ve run operational teams and undertaken big transformational projects for some of the largest businesses in the world. We know what good looks like and have reliable frameworks to help you get there too. Combining these frameworks with our proven experience in looking forward ensures that your transformation won’t get lost like those before it.
Visit our website at https://www.unifii.co.uk/ to learn more and start your transformation.
See the possibilities with Unifii by exploring the ServiceNow platform
Our team helps businesses align their technology with their strategic goals and deliver the tools and processes needed to support their businesses.