Please tell us about your tech journey and your story behind joining Serviceaide.
I have spent the last 20 years of my career leading the financial initiatives of technology SaaS companies across all sizes – from start-ups to well entrenched leaders with revenue in the tens of billions of dollars. Most recently, I served as CFO for two SaaS solutions companies, Agile Frameworks and KeyedIn Solutions, with a focus on accelerating the growth of both organizations. Prior to that, I worked as the SVP of Finance for Safeguard Cyber, overseeing the sale of its OpenQ business unit to Anju Software. Earlier in my career I was in financial leadership and management roles at Saba Software, McKesson, and Postini (which was sold to Google).
In joining Serviceaide, who is doing amazing work helping organizations achieve new levels of self-service, workflow efficiency, productivity gains and cost reduction, I saw an opportunity to join a company that was in the midst of rapid technological innovation and business growth that I just could not pass up. I felt my experience and expertise lined-up perfectly for their needs – a CFO with experience in supporting a high growth business in the software/SaaS space.
My role and focus moving forward at Serviceaide will be to manage the complexity of their internal structures and create a comprehensive financial structure to support the company’s global growth going forward.
How is Serviceaide harnessing the power of AI to achieve major advancements in service management automation, predictive analysis, and knowledge capabilities?
Serviceaide is leveraging AI-based technologies to bring unmatched innovation across its portfolio of products in order to transform the service management industry. The company has been at the forefront of the AI evolution with research and development dating back more than 6 years and has integrated generative AI across its solution set, driving advances across the rapidly evolving IT, business and customer service industries.
In fact, the company recently launched Luma 3.0, which leverages Generative AI to provide massive information gain to organizations by safely and securely encompassing much of the knowledge accessible on the internet. Through the use of AI, the solution can better understand user requests and IT staff information needs and functions, serving up relevant information without searches, and can natively handle many of the front-line services that users request – all the while reducing workload and costs for support staff.
AI continues to revolutionize various industries, with an expected annual growth rate of 37.3% between 2023 and 2030. What are your comments?
We see the opportunity for AI to have a dramatic impact across all industries. It will be another “revolution”. The last one was the Internet of Things (IOT). This trend impacts our industry as well.
With service and support, companies are seeking to automate support to improve end user productivity. AI based virtual agents will directly impact self-service and we are only at the beginning. Other AI functionality will improve how support analysts do their jobs, reducing the mundane tasks freeing them up to focus on more strategic projects. All this will result in improvement in the quality of service, and reduce the cost of service.
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How is ML being used to provide historical data to make recommendations and predictions? What is NLP? How is it being used today as a part of automations?
Serviceaide is leveraging Machine Learning to and Natural Language Processing (the area of AI that allows computers to understand text and spoken words) to speed automation and resolution for both the support staff and the end user by providing historical reporting to make intelligent predictions and recommendations. The use of auto population of form fills, virtual ticket resolution and support are just a few examples of how these technologies are freeing staff from repetitive and manual tasks, allowing them to focus on more pressing issues. The use of ML and NLP also help to provide improved self-service, deliver better customer experiences, and empower service owners.
What’s your smartest work-related shortcut or productivity hack?
Team alignment-when everyone is moving in the same direction, capacity and yield accelerate to reach the goal and help improve team velocity for future projects.
Given the constant innovation and changes in the industry, as a CFO, what are some of the biggest challenges you see sales teams in this space face when they pitch new innovations and products?
Serviceaide has been talking about AI and innovative technologies since the company was started. This is an area of differentiation. Six years ago we were working with early adopters. The concept of how AI can improve productivity is becoming a mainstream conversation. We have results in case studies that are proof points to the improvement of service and reduction of cost. Ultimately, a digital transformation is about identifying efficiencies and reducing costs.
Thank you, Randall! That was fun and we hope to see you back on Global Fintech Interview Series.
[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]
As Chief Financial Officer, Randall Tidwell brings over 20 years of experience leading financial initiatives in technology industries. He was most recently CFO at Agile Frameworks and KeyedIn Solutions where he facilitated growth accelerating strategies for these SaaS businesses. He also coordinated the sale of the OpenQ business unit from SafeGuard Cyber. His prior experience includes driving positive change at Saba Software, McKesson, and Postini (which was acquired by Google). Randall earned an MBA from University of Virginia, Darden School of Business, and a bachelor’s degree in finance from BYU. In his spare time, he enjoys outdoor sports and braving Minnesota winters.
Serviceaide is a leader in modern service and support. Serviceaide’s vision is to transform service management, across ITSM, business, and customer service. Serving customers worldwide, Serviceaide applies breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing to deliver better experiences, provide enhanced self-service and empower service owners. Serviceaide transforms service through digital labor conversations, automation, and knowledge.
