Silver Linings: The Unexpected Similarity Between This Thanksgiving and Predictive Intelligence

[dangrady510]

Throughout 2020, the pandemic has presented us all with a unique set of situations each with their own challenges and we've had to adapt, adjust, and continue to live our lives. 

Amidst the many negatives, there have been some silver linings in the business world - opportunities that have been born out of necessity or circumstance, that have had a positive impact and will carry on long after the pandemic is in our rearview mirror.  For some the pandemic has accelerated innovative go to market approaches.  For others, their work-from-home strategies have created efficiencies resulting in faster decision making and increased productivity.  And for others, the thought of "location-less" hiring has opened up new talent pools.

As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches here in the U.S., I've started to think about what will be different this year.  How will we socially distance in times when tradition dictates we come together to spend time with the ones we love?  What, if anything, will be the silver linings be?

Unfortunately, nothing magically wonderful has presented itself.

But I did get to thinking about those who are the (un)lucky hosts of family holiday gatherings and the significant amount of stress and preparation that typically(pre-pandemic) comes with that responsibility:

• Multiple trips to the overcrowded grocery store for that ingredient you forgot(or don't have enough of now because Aunt Joannie has decided to attend),
• Peeling and mashing 17 pounds of potatoes
• Remembering to baste the turkey every 30 minutes so it doesn't dry out
• The extra calories that come with all the "sampling" to ensure everything comes out(or is poured) just right
• Strategizing over the best table setting layouts for the space you have as well as family politics
• Hearing all the critiques about everyone's experience
• Cleaning up

Regardless of whether these benevolent hosts are the type of person who enjoys all of the above or not, this year will likely present a somewhat different experience for most of them, and I wonder what they will do with the additional time and opportunity the scaled back holiday presents.

Much of the process that goes in to hosting, preparing, and executing on a holiday meal is oddly similar to machine learning pipelines.  (You probably didn't see that coming).

You acquire data, prepare it, cook(model) it, test(taste) it, serve it, monitor and gather feedback, and then adjust for the next meal.  Just like with a holiday meal, that's a lot of time consuming activities. 

With ServiceNow's Predictive Intelligence Workbench, we've streamlined the entire pipeline in-platform for our customers.

The workbench includes prebuilt use case templates for things like predicting the category of a ticket or suggesting relevant knowledge articles.

Once a solution template is selected, the workbench steps you through the process of preparing data and training new predictive solutions, evaluating, testing and comparing different versions of that solution, and then immediately adding the optimal version to your business process.

Once deployed, there are dashboards to monitor the deployed solutions performance and more importantly their impact.

Our ServiceNow in-platform approach has always been to treat machine learning solutions as a product and not a project, and in doing so help our customers recognize a quicker time to value than more traditional siloed approaches to data science projects - many of which never get out of the lab.

This approach may be different than how many organizations have experienced machine learning in the past.  And it presents a unique situation to adapt and adjust.

Just like with our holiday hosts, I wonder what our customers will do with this opportunity of additional time.  I wonder what each of their silver linings will be?  Perhaps more time to spend on more pressing work, but then again, perhaps it will be more time to spend [socially distanced] with friends and family in these times when that is more important than ever. 

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Hidden Now Intelligence Gems in the ServiceNow Paris Release 

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