“In fact, I think it could be very close to the overall corporate growth rate as we look into the crystal ball.”

In context

“Bill McDermott (CEO): Yes. Alex, that’s a really significant set of issues, and I’ll address them head-on. First of all, every great company has a great core business. Because when you have a multibillion core business, that core business has to perform, so you get the leverage on all the adjacencies. Our core business is better than ever, and it’s growing really strong. In fact, I think it could be very close to the overall corporate growth rate as we look into the crystal ball. Then you add on employee experience. You have to remember, this employee experience and the future of work and where people are going to be working and how they’re going to be working, especially exacerbated by a talent war out there, is really a big deal. And CEOs need to retain the people they have now. They better be recruiting and onboarding in a flawless manner because the employees today expect consumer-grade user experiences in the enterprise. And if they don’t get them, they even don’t come on in the first place because they know what’s going on in these companies. The Internet tells them that. Or when they get there, they don’t stay very long because they’re not happy. So the employee experience is front and center. And then on customer service management, the reality is this is just starting because the world is really acknowledged that the customer is not going to come to you the way they used to. You’re going to have to go to them, and you’re going to have to explain to that customer that your brand gets it and you can give them an experience no matter where they’re experience in your brand that has enormous consistency, service value, and yes, even helpful hands in terms of smart transactions through an AI platform like ServiceNow. And then you take the creative workflow. Look, 500 million applications between now and the end of 2023 is more applications than have been built in the last 40 years. So there’s no choice. It’s going to be low code, no code, and the ServiceNow platform is beautifully positioned. Now let me extend to your question on industry and low code. That is absolutely a very astute observation because if you take the low-code revolution and you combine it with industry, we’re now solving business problems that have been out there for a long time. We featured the Celonis partnership where they could do the X-ray and the non-ServiceNow installed environments. We can activate all the changes that are necessary to augment the business process on the Now action layer. And of course, here’s the big thing, all those systems out there have been mass customized. But with ServiceNow, you can carry forward all your customizations with the creative workflow. You don’t need a team of consultants in a truck coming over there for years and years projects and billions and billions. This is speed to market. This is a low-cost rollout of big ideas and business model innovations and better service for the employee and the customer. So it all comes together. And the reason I’m so excited about what we’re doing with the executive team here is we’re all lined up now to take everything we know how to do and scale it across the world in every geo, in every industry and every persona. And I have to thank my partners out there. I mean, they’re knocking down the door to get a bigger piece of the ServiceNow franchise. So it’s all of those things coming together, Alex. Now on M&A, I want to be really super clear about this. We have no targets on the Board for M&A. And the reason for that it is on an organic growth basis. You see the numbers as much as I see the numbers. The cloud economics are in full flight. And we have engineers that love this company, and they love coming to work every day, whether they’re working out of their home or our office. We’re all open. And they come in and they create new things and they have an idea that they can take and they have a dream that they can build. When I listen to other engineers and other software companies that want to come over here tell me they spend 90% of their time integrating the past as opposed to innovating the future, it just reminds me of how thoughtful we have to be on M&A. So as Gina said, we have $5 billion in cash. That’s going to continue to grow exponentially you know that. We’re fueling our organic growth ambitions. We can be opportunistic. But in this guide and this current state of affairs, there is no intent to do any large-scale M&A. And if that were to change, I would be the first to tell you.”