Biography
Chris Bedi joined ServiceNow in 2015 as Chief Information Officer, later expanding his title to Chief Digital Information Officer to reflect the evolution of the role from IT management to digital business enablement. He came with senior IT experience at Priceline and Juniper Networks, where he had built the operational technology leadership background to take on the CIO role at one of the fastest-growing enterprise software companies in the world.
At ServiceNow, Bedi's role is unusual in the best possible way: ServiceNow makes the Now Platform — a workflow automation and digital transformation platform used by thousands of large enterprises. Bedi runs ServiceNow's own internal IT and digital operations on the Now Platform, making him simultaneously the company's CIO and its most visible internal proof of concept. His team builds workflows, automations, and AI-powered experiences on the platform that ServiceNow then shares with customers as reference implementations. This creates a virtuous cycle: Bedi's IT challenges are real enterprise IT challenges; the solutions he builds are tested in a demanding real environment; and those solutions become demonstrations of what customers can achieve. He has been a prominent voice at Knowledge (ServiceNow's annual conference), CIO forums, and executive roundtables on the subjects of workflow automation, employee experience, and AI in the enterprise. He is also a consistent advocate for the CIO role as a driver of revenue and business innovation, not just operational efficiency.
Core Philosophy
The CIO must be the company's first and best customer. Bedi's philosophy at ServiceNow is that internal IT is not a separate function from the business — it is the proving ground for what the business sells. Running ServiceNow's platform internally, at scale, for a demanding global enterprise, produces insights that no customer advisory board or beta program can match. The CIO who actually uses the technology they sell is the most credible voice in any customer conversation.
Employee experience is the new customer experience. Bedi has been an early and consistent advocate for treating the employee technology experience with the same design care as the customer experience. His argument: in a knowledge economy, employee productivity is customer experience. Slow internal tools, clunky workflows, and fragmented systems directly damage the quality of work that reaches customers. IT's job is to make every employee's digital experience as good as their consumer experience.
Famous Quotes
"If I am not my company's best customer, I have no business telling other companies how to be my customer. The CIO must eat first."— Chris Bedi
"Employee experience is not HR's problem. It is IT's problem. Every bad digital experience your employees have is a tax on their productivity — and yours."— Chris Bedi
"The question I ask about every IT project: does this make our people faster? If yes, do it. If not, why are we doing it?"— Chris Bedi
Notable Achievements
- Chief Digital Information Officer at ServiceNow (2015–present)
- Runs ServiceNow's internal IT on the Now Platform — creating living proof-of-concept for enterprise customers
- Built workflow automation and AI-powered employee experience programs used as customer reference cases
- Regular keynote speaker at ServiceNow Knowledge conference reaching tens of thousands of enterprise IT leaders
- Named to Constellation Research's Business Transformation 150 list
- Prior CIO/senior IT leadership roles at Priceline and Juniper Networks
- Consistent advocate for CIO as revenue driver and business innovator, not cost manager
- Advisor on enterprise digital transformation and AI adoption strategies
Lessons for the CIO Suite
Bedi's rule: if you sell technology, use it yourself — aggressively and at scale. Internal use generates insights that customer conversations cannot. And it is the most credible form of product advocacy that exists.
Employee digital experience is not a nice-to-have. In a knowledge economy, slow tools are a productivity tax that shows up in product quality, customer experience, and employee retention. Measure it and fix it like you would a customer-facing problem.
Bedi's workflow automation focus: the highest ROI IT investment is automating the repetitive, manual, error-prone work that consumes your best people's time. Find it, automate it, and redeploy the time to work that actually requires human judgment.
Bedi frames IT investments in terms of revenue impact — faster time to market, better customer experience, higher employee productivity. CIOs who frame all investments as cost reductions are in a losing negotiation. Change the currency to revenue.