MORNING

9.15-9.45

Arrive & register

Tea, coffee, networking & expo

9.45-9.55

Welcome

Welcome to today's event with SDI's host David Wright

9.55

All you ever wanted to know about allyship…..but never dared to ask

Lucy Grimwade & David Barrow

Author, speaker and ITSM consultants.

Lucy looks at he working world from two perspectives, female and male. Lucy's presentation will centre on two ‘Information Technology’ professionals who over the course of time work across multiple industries and see the same male dominated behaviours across each of them.

Both characters (Lucy and David) will deliver cold hard stats and discuss real world scenarios that they have experienced from their female and male perspectives. Ultimately guiding the attendee down a path that will lead them to question and improve their own behaviours to act as allies to everyone, regardless of gender, self-identification, race or religion.

10.25

Session Coming Soon

Phil Payne

Director of IT Customer Experience, Bidvest Noonan

Coming Soon

10.55

Benchmarking for IT Success: Driving Business Value in 2024

Sumit De & Jack Gaylor

Freshworks

Join Jack and Sumit as they present the initial findings of the annual ITSM Benchmark Report. Learn how benchmarking can drive continuous improvement in IT processes and services. Master critical KPIs and understand how to utilise these metrics effectively. New strategies to boost productivity and explore strategies to enhance employee satisfaction and agent efficiency.

BREAK

11.15

Tea, coffee, networking & expo

Begin your event journey by seamlessly registering and picking up your event materials. This is also a perfect opportunity to mingle with fellow attendees, creating connections that will last throughout the event.

AFTERNOON

11.45

Transforming IT decision-making with human-centric data

Sami Kallio

CEO & Co-Founder, HappySignals

Are you confident you are making the right decisions in the right areas to improve IT operations and outcomes? Understanding employee experiences with IT, making data-driven decisions, and improving IT and services in the right areas are essential for top-performing IT teams. By putting human-centric data at the forefront, you can lead IT with confidence and make decisions that truly matter to your employees and business goals. Join Sami’s session to understand how experience data and insights will enable IT leaders to identify where people are unhappy and lose time to improve IT value for users and drive better business outcomes.

12.05

Roundtable session

Small group discussions on aspects of leadership

BREAK

12.25-13.25

Lunch, networking & expo

13.25-13.45

The growth mindset, enjoying the journey that never ends….

Mehnass Tariq

Service Desk Manager, Yorkshire Water

The importance of recruitment, teamplay, momentum & personal development.

Challenging the status quo is fundamental in developing a growth mindset. You may stumble, you may fail, it may be uncomfortable, you will be vulnerable. But you will get back up and keep going.

Embrace the Journey, Not Just the Destination

13.50-14.10

Unleashing Empowerment & Innovation for Unstoppable Progress

Zeeshan Kazmi

Head of IT Services, Associated British Foods plc

Associated British Foods (ABF), a FTSE 25 powerhouse with 140,000 employees in 55 countries, thrives on a diverse portfolio with numerous food and ingredients businesses. The IT organisation thrives on core leadership values of empowerment and continual improvement. This leadership approach not only enhanced service quality across its global, culturally varied customer base but also significantly increases employee engagement. Enabling leaders to innovate and try new ideas led to Service Desk becoming more intimate with the business and delivering an enhanced quality of service.

14.15-14.30

Leading the Future: How AI Copilots Will Transform Service Desk Management

Helen May & Ikram Aslam

SymphonyAI

As the role of service desk leaders becomes increasingly pivotal in navigating IT Service Management (ITSM) advancements, AI technology is set to revolutionize the field. This session focuses on the strategic implementation of AI copilots and their profound impact on service desk management. We will explore how AI copilots can enhance operational efficiency, drive productivity, and elevate the employee experience. Join Ikram and Helen to discover how to lead your service desk into the future, leveraging AI copilots to achieve unprecedented levels of innovation, effectiveness, and organisational excellence.

14.50-15.05

The three-pronged strategy to build a future-proof IT service desk

Abhinav Kaushik TM,

Senior Technical Consultant, ManageEngine

Every business aspires to turn digital-first and differentiate themselves from competition. However, there are several daunting challenges standing in the way, such as mitigating the impact of a fluctuating economy, fending off waves of cyber-attacks, and navigating through a talent crunch.
The IT service desk, as a business unit, is uniquely positioned to not only address these challenges but capitalise on them to deliver impactful business outcomes such as: improved enterprise productivity, a secure digital environment, and business growth through IT innovations.
To achieve this posture, IT service desk leadership have to design competitive strategies taking into account the latest tech advancements and trends like:
GenAI to relieve technicians from L1 tasks, and provide them assistance and insights when handling critical processes.
IT security-first approach to service management practices.
Workflow orchestrations to design and deploy IT service desk practices across the digital landscape.

In this session, Abhinav Kaushik will outline the roadmaps that will help service desk managers to grow and perfect these capabilities at their organizations.

BREAK

15.10

Tea, coffee, networking & expo

15.05-15.25

Service Desk Leadership Of The Future

Francesca Lukes

CEO, Wanstor

Over the next few years, IT service desk delivery will experience more innovation and change than ever before. Across the ecosystem, there is an ongoing and fundamental re-assessment of what the service desks are there to deliver. The days when their role was about finding and fixing issues are fast disappearing as organisations focus on their wider enabling role, where technology adoption, staff experience and productivity become core service objectives.

In this session, Francesca Lukes, CEO of Wanstor, will explore the trends that will impact Service Desks over the coming years, the impact on the skills and leadership needed, and how service desk leaders can set themselves and their teams up for success to maximise service outcomes.

15.30-16.40

Panel discussion

Small group discussions on aspects of leadership

16.40

Thanks & close