Peter Marquez: Evolution, Ecosystem, Responsive, Rovo | Work 20XX Ep37

Peter Marquez: Evolution, Ecosystem, Responsive, Rovo | Work 20XX Podcast with Jeff Frick Ep37
English Transcript

Cold Open:
In three, two, one.

Jeff Frick:
Hey welcome back everybody,  Jeff Frick here coming to you not from the home office coming to you from Anaheim, California to check in on the Atlassian Team ‘25 event. Excited to have somebody who's kind of out in the front lines with customers trying to integrate some of the stuff, and he's Peter Marquez, the Chief Customer Officer of ServiceRocket. Peter, great to see you.

Peter Marquez:
Hey, great. See as well. Nice to meet you. I've heard a lot about you.

Jeff Frick:
Yeah, absolutely
So you've been involved in this ecosystem for like a decade now?

Peter Marquez:
Yeah.

Jeff Frick:
What kind of strikes you this year and kind of how things have evolved over the last little while.

Peter Marquez:
Well, I think evolution is the big term here. I continue to see change, not just with Atlassian in their offerings, what they're bringing to market, but also customers are evolving to their concerns are elevating the role that Atlassian plays in their business is so much more important. That means the conversations we have the problems we help customers solve are so much more important, critical to the business.

Jeff Frick:
A lot of people are still on this cloud migration journey.

Peter Marquez:
I'll be really clear about that is that, Atlassian has a huge number of cloud customers. It's growing so fast. It's a critical part of their business. They've been successful over the past 20 years. And so they're very large organizations that built very strategic parts of their business around this technology. And, you know, it's hard to turn a battleship.

Jeff Frick:
What do you think's going to be reception to the push for AI? What is it?

Peter Marquez:
Rovo?

Jeff Frick:
Rovo, Rovo. That’s it

Peter Marquez:
Yes, yes. Well,

Jeff Frick:
What do you think?

Peter Marquez:
I think it's huge. The big announcement this week is that Rovo will be included in licenses right now. So prior, it was if something you had to pay for. So now it’s rolled into the platform, this is going to lower the barrier to entry. And the key about AI is that the more you use it, the more value you create. And so this just blows the doors off any of that barrier to entry. And now customers can say, ‘Great. Let's go ahead and start to use this.’ Let’s experiment, let’s demonstrate to our leadership the difference it can make. So it's really exciting.

Jeff Frick:
What are you finding are kind of the biggest challenges?

Peter Marquez:
The top level issue right now is that one of Atlassian’s strengths has always been people love that technology. And so it's a bottom up technology that means folks buy it. A lot of cases, you know, you can go to a huge company, name your favorite huge company, and you might find that the first person to buy that paid for it with a credit card themselves. And so what that means is that it's been woven into their business. So it's been bottom up. And when you do things bottom up, what happens is that it's a little bit of a wild west there. And after 15 years of lots of different people doing lots of different things, it's like sedimentary rot, you know, you just have, oh, this is what we did 15 years ago is was important then this is what we did 10 years ago it was important then But it's all part of the structure. So the biggest issue we have right now is how do we help customers as they make this migration, to plan out what's the proper governance for our organization? And the bottom line there is you don't want to make it so strict that people don't want to use the tool, but you don't want to make it so loose. You know that it's the Wild West.

Jeff Frick:
It's a pretty passionate ecosystem. Talk about the Atlassian community and what that's meant for you at ServiceRocket.

Peter Marquez:
Yeah. Well, first, I think it's a very welcoming community. And so I was ten years ago, I was new to it. And, I just had a drink and a conversation with the first guy I met. Who didn't work for ServiceRocket. That was my entry into this community. And, he was helping run the user group in New York City at the time And, I've seen his business grow from just being a small consultancy to now they're a gold partner for Atlassian, so it's great to see the development people committing their lives building not just their careers, but enabling their families around this ecosystem. So when we talk about ecosystem it’s not just businesses, we know each other. We've seen each other's families grow and develop. So it's really personal.

Jeff Frick:
So they also seem to be making some pretty significant moves. It's a little bit of a change in the weather, right? Went from two CEOs to one CEO.  And we've got behind us this new Atlassian F1 car, Atlassian Williams I think

Peter Marquez:
Yeah

Jeff Frick:
Which is pretty interesting. There's a lot of tech companies who've invested in F1. I think it's great exposure.

Peter Marquez:
Yes

Jeff Frick:
There are not very many companies that have their logo on the very, very top line, that have their logo across the chest of the racers jacket versus down on his sleeves and legs.

Peter Marquez:
Yes.

Jeff Frick:
And there’s also been a lot more acquisitions over the last several years to in terms of Trello and Loom. How do you see Atlassian kind of changing corporately as they continue to grow and evolve from two guys in Sydney, you know, getting started with with a replacement for open source bug tools. And look where they are today.

Peter Marquez:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know what? It makes so much sense because as the tools become more important, strategic, you know, the guys at the corner office have become they've had to mature as well. And the businesses have matured. How we sell has matured. The people that we're selling to the problems we’re solving are just bigger. Right. And so that has enabled the company to mature as well. And challenge all of us in the ecosystem to up our game. You know, we're no longer selling to admins. We're talking to ‘C’ level people every day. And that's, that's a totally different game. Really exciting one to.

Jeff Frick:
So what do you tell people who are not familiar with Atlassian that are coming in cold turkey? Maybe it's a new hire or maybe it's a customer that's got a different, you know, tech stack and you want them to consider this. What do you tell them is kind of the essence of Atlassian?

Peter Marquez:
Oh, yeah. You know I think the biggest part of that is we want to talk about two things. The Atlassian platform itself. And the story has always been one of agility, you know, and responding to the customer and the customer's development. The product we have today is not the same product we had ten years ago or 20 years ago. And that's because customers have told us, And have told Atlassian, this is what we need to do. We love what you do and how you do it. Help us solve this problem. Help us solve this problem.

So I tell people who are new to the space if they're working for ServiceRocket we have to listen really well, and then we have to really pay attention to what our customers are saying. Share that with Atlassian. Understand Atlassian’s perspective, their messaging, repeat that back to the customer. And be an important part of that loop, that communication loop. I think it breaks down if you have a point-to-point discussion and you don't have that third party, that one has rapport with both and can say, ‘Hey, Atlassian, you know what?’ maybe you should think about this a little bit differently or say to the customer, ‘Hey, you know what?’ I know it's hard, but this is exactly what you need to do. And here's why.

Jeff Frick:
And what about ServiceRocket when you go into a new customer, not really familiar with the space, maybe it's not a familiar ecosystem. What's the ServiceRocket advantage? I know you guys have been in this for a long time. What's kind of the ServiceRocket angle that gives you something a little bit unique versus all the other options that people have out there?

Peter Marquez:
I think the biggest thing that we have done over the past year and a half is that we've determined that we've had to up our game as well and not just be transactional and say, hey, here's some great software, why don't you buy this? Or, hey, why don't we help you implement this? We have to be with the customer day to day. And so we're working to create Atlassian Centers of Excellence in our largest companies and some of the smaller companies as well. And what that means is that they have a job to do every single day. They can spend a lot of time and energy becoming masters of Atlassian, or they can partner with us so we can provide them with the materials they need, provide them with the support they need augment their staff when necessary. Provide the advisory so they can focus on making business decisions.

You know, I was on a podcast last year, actually, and it was all about, how do you support, how do you work very closely with the CEO? And I always say, listen. Don't go to CEOs with problems. Go to CEOs with options. Right? They're set up to make choices. And I think we have to do the same thing with customers. We have to lay it out and say, here are the strengths. We need you to make a choice, not ‘Hey, here are the problems’ right.  Here are your options.

Jeff Frick:
Right. I love that. So we’re getting to the end of our time. What have we not covered? What, what do you wish that I asked you that I didn’t ask you?

Peter Marquez:
Wow. What a

Jeff Frick:
That I want to make sure we cover.

Peter Marquez:
What a great What a great question. Oh, man. You did a very good job. One thing I do want to mention is that, when it does come to ServiceRocket, we talk about a couple of things. One is, a few years ago, we started going with this slogan ‘We have your back.’ Everyone says that. We really do. And but that was just shorthand for what we really believe. And that is, we want to be extremely consistent. Our commitment to be the most reliable partner to our customers, to Atlassian and to each other here at ServiceRocket. You know, so to our Rocketeers. So if we're reliable, we don't always have to be right. But we always want to be present. We always want to be available. We want to learn from our mistakes very quickly. And then be that person that people turn to when they have a question, when they have a challenge, and just when they want to have some fun.

Jeff Frick:
Right. I love that.  We don't have to be right, but we got to be present. That’s a great parting thought So, Peter, thanks for, for spending few minutes. I enjoyed and congrats on a great show.

Peter Marquez:
Thank you so much. It was fun.

Jeff Frick:
All righty. He's Peter, I’m Jeff. we’re at the Atlassian Team ‘25 show. It's an Anaheim, California.
Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening in on the podcast. Catch you next time. Take care.

Cold Close
Oh,
Awesome.
All right.
It was fun.

Peter Marquez: Evolution, Ecosystem, Responsive, Rovo | Work 20XX Podcast with Jeff Frick Ep37

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