Opportunities for innovation

The Government of Alberta and its employees share a common vision of proudly working together to build a stronger province and make a positive and lasting difference in the lives of Albertans. It’s one of the largest employers in Alberta with over 25,000 employees throughout the Canadian province.

ServiceNow plays an integral role in that commitment to the people of Alberta. It’s one of the Government of Alberta’s strategic platforms for delivering services to Albertans, and it’s also one of the government’s key IT platforms. ServiceNow helps power more than 70 government call centers, and the platform also underpins a broad set of services, ranging from environmental protection and licensing transport of heavy loads on Alberta roads, through to helping protect people at risk of domestic violence.

ServiceNow training is a critical factor in the platform’s success

According to Terry Schultz, Director, Enterprise Service Management and Dynamics Platform Services—and ServiceNow platform owner—at the Government of Alberta, ServiceNow training plays a huge role in the ongoing success and future potential of the platform. He explains, “It’s not just about getting people trained for their jobs. To get business stakeholders to come onto the platform, we need to build their confidence and solve their problems. ServiceNow training lets us do that.”

Unlocking business insights and breaking down barriers

By creating a common language, ServiceNow helps business stakeholders see the full scope of what’s possible. Terry says, “If someone isn’t familiar with ServiceNow, their first reaction is that it’s just the IT system. But if they’ve had some basic ServiceNow training—for example, ServiceNow Administration Fundamentals—they see the full scope of what the platform can do. So, instead of my team trying to uncover potential business use cases, business owners start to think about how the platform can help them and come to us. That’s incredibly powerful. Business owners know their part of the business far better than we do, so we’re constantly uncovering opportunities for meaningful innovation. And because they believe the platform is the right choice for them, it creates an instant and willing partnership.”

Taking full advantage of new ServiceNow innovations

Terry’s own platform team also depends on ServiceNow training to build the skills they need to deliver great services on the platform. More than that, they use it to understand how they can benefit from new ServiceNow innovations. Terry elaborates, “The capabilities of the platform are so vast that no one can understand everything. But, with ServiceNow training, we can get instant insights into new areas for us, such as HR service delivery. And, with two platform releases a year, there is a huge range of other innovations we want to understand and benefit from. ServiceNow training is an absolutely wonderful way to get these insights.”

Scaling innovation through distributed development

Terry also has big plans for distributed development. For him, it’s a natural evolution of the close partnerships his team has with business stakeholders—having business teams build their own ServiceNow apps on the platform. And, once again, training is critical. He elaborates, “We want to empower our business partners. But, to do that, we need to make sure they know how to use the development tools and understand development best practices. ServiceNow’s low-code capabilities make it really easy for anyone to build apps, but we still need to make sure they know what they’re doing and that they don’t do anything that adversely affects the platform. That’s why we’re mandating that everyone who’s going to build apps gets ServiceNow development training first. It’s the best way for us to unlock the huge potential of distributed development while keeping everyone safe.”

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