ACTIONHUB PEOPLE: Q&A with Angela Meredith
Meet Angela Meredith, the visionary founder of ActionHub, as she shares her journey of creating a specialized boutique agency focused on the ServiceNow platform. Gain insights into the ever-evolving tech landscape, the challenges and opportunities in diverse industries, and her advice for aspiring female entrepreneurs in the male-dominated tech industry. Join us as we explore Angela’s unique perspective and the extraordinary work of ActionHub.
Can you tell us what inspired you to start your own advisory boutique agency, ActionHub, specifically focused on the ServiceNow platform?
Having spent years hiring tech service providers and consistently favouring boutique-sized firms, I noticed a pattern. Initially, the service quality was outstanding; the provider was highly responsive, and there was a dedicated customer success team leading the way.
However, as the business expanded, service levels would often decline. Managed services would gradually become basic and transactional, with a noticeable lack of valuable advice and guidance on more efficient approaches.
That’s where ActionHub comes in. We’re tackling the challenge of maintaining the responsiveness and offering practical guidance that boutique firms are known for, even as we continue to grow.
How has the technology landscape evolved over the years, and what trends do you see shaping the future of the industry, especially in the context of ServiceNow?
Right now, the hype cycle is centred around GenAI. The new features introduced in the ServiceNow Vancouver release are not only cool but also super useful. Features like incident, case, and chat summarisation are going to be huge time-savers for agents in various departments.
It’s also great to see the GenAI capabilities being integrated into the platform, allowing customers to use their own secure big language models.
The ServiceNow platform is still the heart of customers’ digital plans. Workflow automation, especially across different departments, is bringing in fantastic efficiency gains and delivering top-notch user experiences.
The shift toward using Service Portal and Employee Center as a modern intranet experience has been rapid and widespread. SharePoint isn’t the go-to choice anymore, and it totally makes sense since your people, service catalogue, and knowledge articles are already right there in the platform.
As a female leader in a male-dominated tech industry, what challenges have you faced, and what advice would you give to other aspiring female entrepreneurs looking to make their mark in the field?
Just like any other business, tech companies led by women face a bunch of challenges. Some of these challenges are tied to the fact that the tech world is male-dominated. It’s interesting because on the one hand it creates some hurdles, but on the other, it gives us a chance to do things a bit differently.
Take marketing, for example. Tech services companies often get stuck in this ‘hardcore tech talk’ mode. But we saw an opportunity to mix it up with a fun, retro-style video. It’s a bit risky as not many tech folks market this way, but it lets us show our customers what we’re all about and what makes us stand out.
When it comes to overcoming challenges, you need to be more proactive in asserting your expertise and the value you bring to customers.
You’ll also find different ways to build trust with your customers – whether it’s being more transparent in your billing or being open to having difficult conversations when customers are asking for requirements that might not be in the best interests of the platform. It’s all welcome and might set you apart from the competition.
In terms of some advice, just know that you won’t have everything figured out from the start. You’ll overthink stuff, make some mistakes, and bump into obstacles. But start somewhere and just keep at it. Just do it!
ActionHub focuses on ServiceNow, a platform that's used across various industries. Can you elaborate on some of the unique challenges and opportunities you've encountered while working with customers from different sectors?
Even though industries have their own unique needs, some challenges are the same for everyone. One of those challenges is keeping up with all the changes in the ServiceNow platform. It’s tough for in-house teams to always know what’s in the latest releases, discover cool partner apps, or keep tabs on the buzz in the community.
That’s where we come in – we make friends with other partners who have nifty apps that can help our customers. We don’t make money from this, but we think it’s a bonus for our customers because we’re active in the community and at global events.
ServiceNow is a treasure trove of opportunities for doing things better and smarter. The trick is staying on top of what’s new. For example, they’ve added cool stuff like the Upgrade Plans and ATF Test Generator. These are a big win for everyone during upgrades.
A lot of folks have shied away from building automated test suites because they’re a time and money drain. But the Test Generator now makes that a breeze, creating tests from your actual data.
And the Upgrade Plans? They save a ton of manual work and reduce the risk when moving changes through the system during upgrades. Check them out.
In your experience, what are the most common challenges that businesses face when implementing or optimising the use of ServiceNow, and how does ActionHub help address these issues?
With any system or platform, one common headache is nailing down what the customer really needs. Whether it’s part of a big implementation project or just tweaking a catalogue, you’ve got to do more than just hear the customer out. You’ve got to think about how that request fits into the bigger picture – the whole process or function.
And it’s not just that; you’ve also got to anticipate what the customer might need next because that shapes how you build the solution. Plus, there’s always the chance that the customer might have other ideas they haven’t voiced. We call this “listening” and it’s a big part of how we do things here at ActionHub.
Another thing that can trip us up is delivering solutions that aren’t consistent or lack quality. Whether it’s the customer discovering problems right away during their tests, spotting typos in notifications, or seeing fields that aren’t lining up right – these issues can make the solution look shaky and give users a bad experience.
That’s why, at ActionHub, we’ve built in a “polishing” stage in our processes. It’s the moment when we step back and think about how the end user is going to see and experience the solution.