A two day long ITSM Conference here in London went pretty well. Together with my colleague Helen Iron, we were excited to participate in this industry major event for the first time. We’re proud of the fact that our first experience was not limited to attending the Conference as delegates, but representing BPMonline as exhibitors.
Before I start sharing my impressions and observations, let me say just a few words about this amazing event. itSMF UK Conference and Exhibition is the premier ITSM event of the year, which combines a number of educational sessions with a bustling ITSM exhibition. Celebrating its 21st birthday, this year's event promised to be the best yet.
The annual conference and exhibition are organised by IT Service Management Forum (itSMF), the independent and internationally recognised authority for IT Service Management professionals. It brings together the leading consultants, Service Desk solution providers and IT directors from various industries. The organization's work is aimed at promoting the process approach to IT management, exchange of experiences and development of new technologies and recommendations to improve the efficiency of the Service Desk.
This year’s event gathered delegates from more than 20 countries; hundreds of professionals, leading IT solution providers and consulting firms’ representatives came to the Conference. As I have already mentioned before, for the first time BPMonline was among this year’s exhibitors, showcasing its award-winning process-based BPMonline Service Desk solution.
First of all, it is worth saying that the whole event was organized at the highest level, and the program was very concentrated – 6 different sessions at a time, each consisted of speaking slots, master classes, showcases etc. Conference visitors varied from small companies, searching for a comprehensive and multi-functional Service Desk solution, to transnational organizations, striving for deep analytics of the IT market and willing to be aware of the latest trends and technologies in order to find “new” ways of optimization and automation.
We’re happy to say that our stand (A15) attracted interest from potential customers, partners and the press. No wonder, all of them emphasized on the obvious benefits of the consolidation of the two approaches – ITSM + BPM. Once again we had a chance to realize that we’re on the right track of development, as our platform and products create exceptional value for customers, combining the benefits of IT management best practices and a full cycle of business process management.
During the 1st day, I visited different sessions and participated in a number of discussions, pursuing a single goal – to figure out what are the industry’s latest trends and to determine the next most popular issues of concern to IT professionals. At the end of the day I identified four of them:
- How to reduce the cost of IT?
- How to increase the level of processes automation and neutralize the influence of the human factor?
- Is the ‘Problem Management’ process necessary and what is the ‘proactive’ approach?
- How to increase the level of trust between business and IT?
The use of social networks in the Service Desk and the company in general was vividly discussed. Among major trends - Mobile, Cloud (SaaS), Social, Agile, DevOps etc.
The second day impressed with the number of sessions where the key trends in the organization of work of the Service Desk units were discussed. Special attention was paid to the development of interactive self-service portals that would help reducing the influence of the human factor (technical support team) to the process of service. Among other interesting issues were discussions of development perspectives of ITIL, search for new practical recommendations for the improvement of customer service within companies, regardless of industry and size.
In order to summarize, it is worth saying that we’ve enjoyed a lot working with the itSMF and consider recent event as a good platform for the key ITSM players that allows following latest trends and participating in creation of new technological approaches.
