Rory Fitzpatrick (CloudGo)
CloudGo, a consultancy start-up specialising in ServiceNow deployments, is preparing for a year of “sustainable growth” following key customer wins across Asia Pacific.
The dual headquartered specialist - housed in both Singapore and Sydney - goes to market as a Premier Partner of ServiceNow with additional expertise in Salesforce and Microsoft technologies.
“We’ve had a significant year and are seeking continued growth in 2020,” said Rory Fitzpatrick, managing director of CloudGo. “Our main priority is making sure we grow sustainably and continue to execute with quality and deliver the same 10/10 customer satisfaction.
"We have staff trusting us with their careers and customers trusting us with their businesses. We have to honour that trust and keep delivering.”
Founded in 2016, CloudGo leverages deep capabilities in customer relationship management (CRM) to deliver digital projects specific to service management, customer success and analytics through cloud solutions.
“Our job is solving business problems using modern cloud platforms like ServiceNow and we do that with quality and transparency,” added Fitzpatrick, when speaking exclusively to Channel Asia. “We average less than one change request per project, 90 per cent of customers come back for at least a second engagement and our CSAT [customer satisfaction] is at 10/10.”
Fitzpatrick was quick to state that such a declaration isn’t merely groundless marketing spin however; “check the ServiceNow partner portal for a live update on our results, everything is transparent.”
Achieving such a score on a consistent basis is, according to Fitzpatrick, due to having “value-adding, transparent conversations early” with customers through "asking challenging questions" from the outset.
“A large bank in the Philippines shaved a minute per call off their service desk call handling time and also implemented a chatbot, meaning 12,000 conversations a month are now that much smoother for their customers,” added Fitzpatrick, when citing recent customer deployments across the region.
“A hospitality and gaming company in Australia improved their HR case management, meaning staff can now get their HR questions answered faster and the HR team is more efficient when dealing with growth as they add thousands of new staff.
“And a multinational medical services company re-platformed a customer-facing app onto ServiceNow and used an ISV [independent software vendor] revenue-sharing model to keep their costs down, but share the value as they grow their revenue from the app. It’s interesting how new commercial models can help make the technology business case successful.”
Modernising market
According to Fitzpatrick, the modernisation of legacy applications onto platform-as-a-service (PaaS) platforms, “rather than building everything yourself” through infrastructure-as-a-service or on-premises represents key areas of focus for technology specialists in 2020.
“Many of the consistent challenges of any app - identity, performance and availability - are solved by going PaaS rather than having to manage every detail yourself,” he advised. “Focus on the outcome, not the infrastructure.
“We’re also seeing more and more people talk about customer experience and customer service. We expect that to continue, as well as proper digital transformation that automates legacy workflows to make you more competitive. The trick for both these is that technology alone won’t solve your challenge.”
In a direct message to customers, Fitzpatrick advised businesses across the region to “stay current” despite constant challenges around keeping pace with the influx of new and emerging technologies flooding the market.
“There are so many new products and versions being released, when do you jump and when do you wait?” he asked. “The classic technology conversation of ‘that gets solved in the next release’ is now a 3-6 month conversation with cloud software rather than an 18 month conversation, so you can’t rest on your laurels.
“Also, your staff want to come to work with positivity and go home with a sense of satisfaction, so how are you helping that happen?”
As reported by Channel Asia, ServiceNow is chasing a revenue target of $10 billion with channel partners expected to play a leading role in the software giant’s transformational efforts. Central to such ambitions will be an overhauled partner strategy designed to drive growth through an expanding ecosystem.
Leading regionals efforts will be Marion Ryan, recently appointed as vice president of alliances and channel across Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) as the software giant deepens its commitment to partners. Based in Singapore, Ryan is charged with overseeing the development and growth of the vendor’s partner ecosystem regionally, drawing on more than 25 years of industry experience.
Ryan joined from SAP, having spent more than 12 years in the business, including eight of those in Singapore in the role of vice president and head of channels across APJ. During this time, Ryan rolled out new partner segmentation and commercial models as SAP customers transitioned to cloud and hybrid solutions.
Furthermore, the global business is now spearheaded by former SAP leader Bill McDermott as new CEO, who replaced John Donahoe in January.
“We’re really excited about what Bill is going to bring as the new CEO,” added Fitzpatrick, in assessing which vendors will have a strong 2020. “And Microsoft, because while Azure gets the headlines, Teams is becoming a category-killer and a must-have. We don’t need to pay for Slack, Zoom, Box or Dropbox because it’s all in Teams.”
