How Ateko, Bell, and ServiceNow are Rewriting the Digital Playbook
with Tom Sweeney and Jenna Odessa
In this exclusive interview, Jenna Odess (Group VP, Americas Partnerships and Channels at ServiceNow) sits down with Tom Sweeney (VP of Sales at Ateko) to discuss Ateko’s unique origin story and their game-changing approach to enterprise tech.
Learn how Ateko test and refine ServiceNow implementations at massive scale, how they are utilizing AI workflows to deliver rapid ROI, and what the future of outcome-focused consulting looks like.
Transcript
Tom Sweeney: Hi, my name’s Tom Sweeney. I’m the Vice President of Sales for Ateko, and I lead the ServiceNow go-to-market strategy.
Jenna Odess: And I’m Jenna Odess. I’m the Group Vice President of the Americas Partnerships and Channels business here at ServiceNow.
Jenna Odess: So Tom, let’s jump in. I’ve got a few questions for you, and I’m so glad you were able to join us today. Tell us a little bit about the brand that is Ateko and the vision you have for the company.
Tom Sweeney: Can do. It’s a bit of a two-part story, I’ll give you. I think the brand is relatively new. We actually celebrated our one-year anniversary yesterday.
Jenna Odess: Which is really exciting. Congratulations!
Tom Sweeney: Thank you. But the genesis of the company is really, we’re owned by Bell Canada. And Bell Canada has made a strategic decision to transform their business from traditional telecom to more of a tech services company. We often refer to that as Telco to TechCo internally. And as part of that strategy, instead of building from scratch, Bell went out and made some acquisitions of some purpose-built ServiceNow partners, and that’s really the genesis for what is now Ateko.
Jenna Odess: Wow, what a fantastic story and love that we’re able to share it with all of our customers. And I know you guys, Bell is also a customer. Maybe tell us a little bit about the Bell and Ateko relationship.
Tom Sweeney: 100%. The relationship between the two is actually, like, fundamental to our go-to-market strategy. I think it’s important for us in a couple of key areas. One, yes, Bell is a strategic customer for ServiceNow, which affords us just a unique relationship between the two organizations, which is really beneficial. But from an Ateko perspective, we get to operate as an implementation partner and an operator for Bell. And so, very much like ServiceNow likes to use their own products for the “Now on Now” story, we’re using ServiceNow at Bell as customer zero all the way through. So we refer to it as our inside-out approach, but it gives us a proving ground to build skills for our team, talk about transformational outcomes, and most importantly, it’s lessons learned that we want to take out to the field with a lot of our customers.
Jenna Odess: Yeah, and I’m seeing that firsthand, actually, the way you’re using this inside-out story, the Telco to TechCo, like I’m seeing it play out with many of our customers, not just in Canada but around the Americas business. So, I love that. I love what you guys have built and I love the direction you’re going in.
Tom Sweeney: Appreciate it. We get a ton of support from Bell, too, which is great. We’re obviously here at Knowledge, we’ve seen our Bell counterparts out talking about the success they’re having with ServiceNow, and so it really lets us bring that operator story, which I think a lot of customers are looking for.
Tom Sweeney: And as a ServiceNow partner, I think the value that we bring to the ecosystem is that ability to connect real business problems to outcomes that customers are looking for. And we really use that Bell relationship to help tell that story.
Jenna Odess: Yeah, you’re leading with proof. You’re leading with proof that is meaningful to your business, and then you’re able to go and tell that story and that’s really compelling and believable. So I love that that’s the way you guys are going to market, and alongside ServiceNow because we do the same thing.
Tom Sweeney: 100%. And ServiceNow has been a great partner. I think some of the areas that Bell has really focused in on have been very innovative in terms of how ServiceNow has approached product roadmap and collaboration with Bell. And so we’re really seeing this really nice trifecta between ServiceNow, Ateko, and Bell and building really unique solutions that we can all jointly take to market and replicate with other customers. It’s amazing when you take great product, a great platform, great subject matter expertise, proof of winning, and put it all together, and go to market together. It can be a really compelling story. Very much is.
Jenna Odess: I love that. For those that don’t know, the PLA is a product line achievement. It’s essentially the highest designation a partner can get in an area of specialization. So you got it in Telecommunications, go figure, it’s exactly where you’ve got this great depth of expertise.
Jenna Odess: Um, so I love that you guys were the first to get that. Help me understand in terms of the AI era that we’re living in right now, things are changing so quickly. The ServiceNow platform, the ServiceNow AI platform is, you’re using it inside out, right? Help me understand how you’re imagining your delivery to keep evolving to keep pace with the new AI world we’re living in?
Tom Sweeney: 100%. I think, when we look at how do we deliver outcomes for customers, it’s obviously taking advantage of ServiceNow capability, first and foremost, on platform. So what can they get? How can they use it? And how can we turn it on as quickly as possible for them? I think where the ecosystem is at for partners is really like a shift right now. And it’s really, how are we going to use AI to deliver better outcomes, faster, more repeatable, for our customers? And so, we’re already on a journey where we’re experimenting with some tools ourselves internally, but we’re also looking to partner with ServiceNow with things like build agents that we can use and get access to better knowledge articles that we can use that to translate customer requirements and pre-built user stories to be able to deliver outcomes substantially faster. And I think we’re going to see this shift where the customers are getting fatigued with longer implementation projects to really looking for quick ROI. And so we need to be able to adopt AI in delivery of those solutions to be able to get the customers using it even faster than we already are.
Jenna Odess: Yeah, I think customer value is a top-of-the-house conversation happening across all of ServiceNow and I’m guessing with all of your customers as well. How fast can we get customers to value with this AI platform? And so I think the way you’re thinking through things, outcome-based, really driving ROI as quickly as possible, even iterating on use cases, like picking a single solution, a problem you’re trying to solve for, a solution to solve it, implement it, get it live, and then go pick the next one and the next one. All of a sudden you’ve got this really iterative, fast-moving process, and I’ve seen this in a lot of the methodology Ateko is going to market with. So I love that about you guys.
Tom Sweeney: Yeah, and we’re really trying to use the advancement, when you talk about rapid delivery of AI agents or AI workflows, we feel like if you get one right, it funds the next one for our customers. And so how do we help them get something that’s great, prove it out, and then move on to the next? And it just becomes this repeatable process where we can help them expand. I would say we’re also trying to do it very intentionally. And so when we look at some of the tools we’re building, it’s around employee productivity for our staff. And so if you think of a fairly mundane task like filling out a time card as a developer, how can we use an AI agent to do something like that, which just lets us connect with customers in a much more realistic way when we’re talking to them.
Jenna Odess: Yes, putting the humans to the more meaningful work, really, is what it is. I love that. So Tom, what could clients accomplish by working with Ateko and using ServiceNow? What’s special about this partnership that’s to the value of our customers?
Tom Sweeney: I think what’s special, and I would actually add Bell to that fold in particular, is there’s just so much good that comes out of the partnership with Bell and the work that they’re doing. I think a lot of people don’t realize that Bell is a 140-year-old plus customer. There’s a ton of tech debt, there’s a ton of acquisitions that have gone on. It’s a super complex environment.
Tom Sweeney: And when we talk about what we’re doing with Bell, what they’re transforming, every single customer has the same challenge right now. And so I think, one of the things that’s unique for us is we’re able to connect with customers on a very different level. It’s not a technology conversation, it’s really outcome-focused for a lot of them. And then two, our partnership with Bell is exceptional. They have deep relationships with a significant amount of customers. They trust them, they already deliver services to them. And so we’re finding ways to embed ServiceNow at the core of all of those conversations to either augment services that Bell is already providing to their customers, think service bridge between like a wireline customer that’s consuming Bell services, or we’re using ServiceNow Field Services to win contracts out in the market to access things that we wouldn’t normally see in terms of procuring software and implementation. And so, we’re just able to craft really different go-to-market strategies and partnership with ServiceNow, Bell, and Ateko that we just wouldn’t have access to if we didn’t have that level of partnership.
Jenna Odess: So it’s like a tri-partnership and really it’s all kind of feeding each other, lifting everything up, and building a stronger go-to-market strategy because we’re able to take advantage of all the learnings. We’re also able to learn from you and learn from the Bell story, and I love that about this partnership because we’re able to grow alongside you guys as well.
Tom Sweeney: 100%. And the thing that’s really interesting is, I think a lot of people forget about the ability to scale. And one of the things that I found coming over to Ateko and working with the Bell team is the ability for Ateko to scale, but also for ServiceNow to scale on the platform, which is very unique with the organization. It is substantially complex. When you think about teams in the field, it’s 10,000 plus workers daily, different time zones, multiple products. It’s just a very, very scalable solution that’s been delivered. And I think a lot of partners struggle with scale and delivering that with customers. And so we talked earlier about execution. For us, a big focus is not just doing one project great, but it’s how do we grow and scale with our customers as they scale their business with ServiceNow as well.
Jenna Odess: Yeah, I’m sure your customers, I’m sure the Bell customers value that Bell is on ServiceNow as well. Like the way in which that is playing out for the end customer, the end user, the experience being stronger, more… Oh God, my brain. Sorry. I lost that one. We’ll let it be. I’m not sure what I was trying to say. It was something around the end-user experience being improved essentially.
Tom Sweeney: Yeah, for the Bell team?
Jenna Odess: For the Bell customer. 100%. Like, yeah, I guess what I’m trying to say is the Bell end customer, because of the work you’re doing at Bell with the ServiceNow implementation and the ServiceNow platform, is going to have an experience that is that much better. And then that becomes the story that just continues to help bolster the Bell business as you continue to build a larger go-to-market strategy with those customers.
Tom Sweeney: Yeah, the Bell proof point actually really connects with customers, I would say in two key areas. One, Bell is transforming their business in the sense of, “We need to increase revenue, we need to reduce costs where we can, we need to operate more efficiently, we need to reduce tech debt.” Those are all problems that everybody has. And so, it’s a connection point between customers in that fashion.
Tom Sweeney: But they’re also delivering services that are more connected to their customers. They’re competing with CX right now at a level that we’re not seeing from a lot of other organizations. And so, we’re seeing Bell consume ServiceNow and deploy it in the sense of offering service management to their customers, but that entry point is going to be some type of ServiceNow interface. They’re going to sell their customers other tools in their portfolio and they’re going to do order orchestration on ServiceNow.
Tom Sweeney: And so they’re getting access to ServiceNow on the customer side that they don’t even know is ServiceNow. And we’re able to just connect those two worlds much more seamlessly.
Jenna Odess: I love those embedded stories and I love that you’re calling it a proof point, the Bell proof point. And it’s almost like a pay-it-forward moment, right? Bell is learning how to improve their own experience, establishing a proof point, and then passing it along to customers. I mean, it’s really an incredible story.
Tom Sweeney: And the passing along is a real value. I’ve had a great time here at Knowledge. I’ve been sitting in on all the Bell sessions and they’re just going to customers saying, “We made this mistake, we made the wrong decision. This is what we learned by going through it. We over-configured over here.” So, they’re really adapting and telling customers what they need to hear on this journey. And for us as Ateko, having done the work, we’re able to bring those lessons learned to a customer and help scale all of our implementations.
Jenna Odess: I’m so grateful for the partnership that we have with Ateko and Bell. It really is a fantastic “better together” story. It’s a lot of fun.