A case-study featuring TPN's capabilities to build a digital customer experience that scaled for global production
Introduction
ServiceNow is a software company that creates digital workflows. A B2B business with a global footprint, ServiceNow offers a cloud-based platform for employee and customer experiences to route work effectively through an enterprise. As a global business, ServiceNow has over 60 locations across the world.
With our business, ServiceNow saw the potential to produce a large amount of digital content at scale to virtually connect with their global audience of customers and accounts with creative consistency. We provided ServiceNow with a full spectrum of services including content capture, logistical management, and media production. ServiceNow planned to build digital content for their customers and accounts in order to educate and train on their product, as well as and engage people and inspire customers to invest in the product and brand for ServiceNow.
The Challenge of Building a Digital Customer Experience & an Opportunity to Scale Globally
ServiceNow is a global business with multiple offices and customers across the world. ServiceNow intends to record over 200 presentations, offering them to global customers and accounts as a training, education and engagement tool. ServiceNow has several internal groups creating and presenting content for customers, to be broadcast as part of the annual sales and training event, Knowledge22.
The current corporate infrastructure at ServiceNow has no formal pathway to organize these internal groups, and lacks the people power to manage the project to schedule, record, produce and organize several hundred presenters and digital files.
While, in the past ServiceNow hosted this annual Knowledge event as an onsite experience, for 2022 they elected to host the event virtually. ServiceNow wanted to pre-record speaker content and have the video and presentations ready for on-demand viewing.
ServiceNow has inherent complexities found in global, hybrid events. The business has over 500 global presenters from both the internal organization and from customers they are using to evangelize and sell their product. Across all presenters, there is no consistent technology used – each presenter uses and relies on various forms of software and technology (Apple, Android, etc.) in their day-to-day business environment. As presenter were not organized into groups, they work from various countries, and have different streams of communication, ServiceNow required a high-touch event service agency.
In January of 2022, ServiceNow added an onsite component to Knowledge22, planning to host in-person events across several countries — Australia, Netherlands, and two cities in the U.S. — Las Vegas and New York. This element of in-person created a last-minute demand for all content to be recorded, produced, edited and uploaded for on-demand viewing before the in-person events on May 11, 2022.
“We were given an impossible task and you crushed it!”
— Kurt Smith, Senior Director Strategic Events
Why ServiceNow Chose Us
ServiceNow is just entering the digital space, with a first proof-of-concept event in 2019 that went very well. Originally, TPN (formally Evia) was engaged as content capture and platform solution and today, TPN has established itself as the primary digital content production agency for Knowledge22.
We provide a full-service event experience, offering event project management, creative services, video production, technical support, speaker management, remote recording + media production, and digital editing with delivery. Full-service event experiences created ease for ServiceNow, alleviating the need to juggle several vendors. TPN offers a professional mix of talent and manpower, having the ability, equipment, and services to produce this large event at scale.
For ServiceNow’s high-level recordings, we managed, scheduled, and recorded five c-suite executives. With close to three decades of hands-on virtual event experience, we are particularly skilled at managing high-touch clients.
We have the knowledge and equipment to offer recording and editing services for speakers in any location across the globe.
How We Responded
TPN developed processes and implemented workflows on this project to improve any future collaborations with ServiceNow. Several teams within Evia were engaged to succeed in delivering files on a condensed timeline.
EVENT PROJECT MANAGEMENT
TPN scheduled weekly meetings with ServiceNow and a dedicated Event Project Manager (EPM). In order to collect and build any necessary branded assets, TPN worked directly with the broadcast tool kit provided from ServiceNow.
The EPM served as a funnel for all information and data points received from various teams across ServiceNow, acting as a master organizer for content, speakers, and schedules.
TPN directed content management of several hundred individual digital files. ServiceNow established session naming conventions for the digital content, and provided these to TPN from several sources across the world. TPN collected, cataloged and created a taxonomy and metadata for content including speakers, titles, dates, event category (isolated individual internal group content) allowing for client to build the library for potential future broadcasts.
PRODUCTION SERVICES
TPN recorded, created, and delivered all virtual content for ServiceNow’s Knowledge22 event, from several hundred speakers virtually over Zoom, an established video conferencing tool and software solution in use across ServiceNow and their customers.
Media Production assembled and edited each digital file to create high-quality virtual sessions for on-demand viewing.
TPN created a master session grid and tracker for each session. Originally created as an internal tool, this tracker became an asset for ServiceNow.
TPN deployed a team worldwide to four locations to record content onsite at Knowledge22, and edit this content for consistency across the event and brand.
TPN developed a new process for reviewing videos, using Frame.io, allowing several team members at ServiceNow to leave comments and make editorial requests.
TPN guaranteed a fast turn-around to ServiceNow, in support of a strict schedule, delivering edited, produced, ready-to-publish files on schedule. Deliverables included customized creative — lower thirds and title slides.
SPEAKER MANAGEMENT
TPN created a bespoke virtual presentation resource deck — a list of recommendations to help enhance each session capture and the overall streaming experience. This, paired with TPN’s hands on approach to help facilitate the process from beginning to end, ensured a seamless virtual recording experience and high-quality deliverable. ServiceNow intends to use these deliverables at their annual sales event.
Prior to records, TPN’s production team set expectations in the recording invites and shared best practices and tips for success with speakers directly — such as advising speakers what virtual backgrounds worked best to keep the focus on the presenter and the content.
TPN created an automated workflow to schedule speakers from around the world, utilizing a low-code platform solution. Working across time zones and date lines, this customized solution created flexibility and autonomy for speakers to schedule their presentation at a convenient date and time. This tool identified and solved for “red flags” with scheduling such as speakers booking multiple time slots or cancelling records without notice.
The Results
TPN dedicated creative services, video production and pre-recorded over 500 sessions and speakers to deliver a file format available for on-demand viewing, on-time and in some instances, before deadline.
TPN built a system for the future, using naming conventions, and an organized review process to assist in consolidating the process and saving time and budget.
ServiceNow has gratitude for TPN’s ability to be flexible and create continued solutions for a virtual event turned hybrid. The scope of work changed significantly from the original plan, and TPN acted as the comms center for all teams across ServiceNow, directing and managing the event content.
TPN provided ServiceNow with a comprehensive set of integrated services, laying the groundwork for future events and virtual content strategies.
