Schedule

Pre-1: HDI Support Center Director

Course Overview
Gaining senior management support and effectively communicating the pivotal role of the support center is crucial to any support operation’s success. For this reason, the support center director must serve as a support leader and strategically align the support center to the organization.

HDI Support Center Director training focuses on the development and execution of strategic plans that will take the organization to the next level. Participants discover how to realize greater return on investment, develop and maintain formal procedures for increased productivity and consistency, and manage customer perceptions.


What You Will Learn

• Assessment strategies for support center maturity mapping
• How to quantify your support center’s value, calculate and maximize Return on Investment (ROI)
• Twelve step process and decision matrix for selecting technologies and vendors
• The requirements of an effective service catalog
• How to align support strategies with business goals and objectives
• Knowledge management processes that can save you time and money
• Strategies for workforce management, coaching, team building and succession planning
• How to justify a service improvement project with a business case
• SMART methods for determining which quantitative and qualitative metrics are utilized
• Valuable reporting tools: Balanced Scorecard, Morning Report, and Executive Brief

• Seasoned technical service and support leaders who are responsible for an organization’s overall service delivery and provide strategic direction, financial accountability and performance reporting
• Individuals who are preparing for the HDI Support Center Director certification support center managers with more than five years of experience.

John Custy
JPC Group

John Custy has more than 20 years experience in designing, developing, and implementing IT services management solutions, both as a practitioner and as a consultant. He has assisted many organizations in developing their service strategies and translating these strategies into functional business plans, resulting in improved IT services management practices. John is an ITIL-certified service manager and also holds ITIL Practitioner certifications in IT service management.

Pre-2: HDI Support Center Manager

Course Overview
The support center manager is responsible for executing the operational and tactical plans of the support organization while satisfying customer and business needs.

HDI Support Center Manager training explores how the support center’s strategy drives everything the support center does: service delivery, infrastructure implementation, operational processes, workforce management, and support center marketing.

Designed for both new and experienced support center managers, this course helps support center managers satisfy operational demands and build a support center that aligns with the organization, adds value to the business, and delivers on its commitments.

What You Will Learn

• Five characteristic of an effective support center manager
• How to create Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Operating Level Agreements (OLAs),and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in support of a service catalog
• Steps to cost-benefit analysis, total cost of ownership, and calculating Return on Investment (ROI)
• The relationships between IT service management processes
• The difference between and importance of strategic, tactical, and operational planning
• Benefits and challenges of self-service technologies
• Processes for building and managing effective security policies
• Various staffing models and the value of outsourcing
• Tactics for screening, hiring, training, and managing high performance teams
• The metrics, benchmarks, and KPIs essential to your performance reporting

• Experienced technical support professionals who must manage all day-to-day functions as well as master critical performance, benchmarking and customer service strategies
• Individuals who are preparing for the HDI Support Center Manager certification

Rae Ann Bruno
Business Solutions Training

Rae Ann Bruno is an ITIL-certified instructor with more than 15 years of management experience emphasizing process reengineering, employee development, and business alignment of IT services. Formerly the vice president of strategic relations for Previo, Rae Ann consulted with Previo customers on process re-engineering and best practices and trained support professionals on industry best practices. Additionally, Rae Ann has authored many industry articles and white papers. Prior to joining Previo, Rae Ann was the director of IT customer service for Siemens Energy & Automation (SE&A).

Pre-3: Knowledge Management Foundations: KCS Principles

Course Overview
This knowledge management best-practices course will provide support center supervisors, managers, and directors with a set of practical steps for capturing, storing, and successfully reusing knowledge. Participants will learn how to implement a strategy adopting Knowledge-Centered Support^SM (KCS) which creates and maintains knowledge as a by-product of the incident management process.

KCS, developed by the Consortium for Service Innovation, is a methodology and a set of processes and practices that leverage knowledge as a key asset of the support organization. KCS is proven to allow service and support organizations to significantly improve service levels to customers, gain operational efficiencies, and increase the organization’s value to the company.

What You Will Learn

• How to efficiently create and maintain quality, easy-to-find content in the knowledge base
• Ways to motivate support analysts to use the knowledge base and to effectively assess individual and team contributions
• How to articulate the value of knowledge management practices for your organization
• A strategy for sustainable success that minimizes investments in knowledge workflow and maximizes the return
• How to identify and avoid the common pitfalls associated with knowledge management

• Technical support professionals and project managers who want actionable steps to improve time-to-resolve and reduce expense by utilizing a knowledge management program
• Individuals who are preparing for the Knowledge Management: KCS Principles certification

Rick Joslin
HDI

Rick Joslin is the author of the HDI Focus books on Knowledge Management, the Knowledge Management Maturity Model, and is the contributing writer for the HDI Service and Support Handbook. He is a certified KCS instructor and guides organizations with the implementation of KCS. He is also a certified instructor for the HDI certification courses.

Pre-4: ITIL v3 Foundation

Course Overview
This LCS®-accredited course outlines the ITIL® best-practices framework and prepares the participant for the ITIL v3 Foundation certification exam, a prerequisite for all other ITIL certifications. This course provides an understanding of the service lifecycle and processes, as well as the best and common practices for IT Service Management.

Whether adopting ITIL or embarking on continuous service improvement, participants will gain a fundamental understanding of how IT service, support, and delivery can be best organized to align IT with business needs, improve service quality, and reduce long-term costs.

What You Will Learn

• Service Design — Transform business requirements into strategic solutions.
• Service Transition — Manage change, risk, and quality assurance.
• Service Operation — Establish day-to-day business operations and customer expectations.

• IT professionals who want a foundational understanding of the service lifecycle and processes and are interested in IT service management
• IT staff who are actively involved in the provision and support of IT services or have an interest in IT service management best practices
• Individuals preparing for the ITIL v3 Foundation certification

Katherine Lord
Lord Consulting

With six years of hands-on service management consulting expertise, more than ten years of IT management experience, and a variety of certifications and accolades including, ITIL v3 Expert, and ITIL v2 Service Manager (with distinction), Six Sigma Yellow belt, Katherine’s skill set and knowledge turns support centers into value added entities. Katherine is a seasoned ITSM Practitioner with significant consulting expertise in the ITSM/ITIL education and implementation space. As a certified instructor for HDI and part of their global faculty, she teaches all of the HDI certification courses.

Pre-5: HDI Support Center Team Lead

Course Overview
The support center team lead serves as the communication link between the team and the manager as well as the first point of internal escalation for the customer.

HDI Support Center Team Lead training ensures that participants learn how to deliver exceptional customer support, promote process improvement, coach for success, and take charge of the day-to-day operational activities of a team. This course is designed for support professionals who need to develop fundamental management and leadership skills.

What You Will Learn

• Essential Team Lead management and leadership skills
• The importance of Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Operating Level Agreements (OLAs), and understanding priority levels
• The ITIL processes of Incident, Problem Change, Release, Asset, and Configuration Management
• An overview of Security Management and Knowledge Management
• Strategies for managing conflict
• The essentials of People Management: hiring, scheduling, evaluating, and retaining employees
• An eight-step method for effective coaching
• Proven team building and motivational techniques
• Essential performance metrics, quality assurance monitoring, and key performance indicators (KPIs)

• Technical support professionals who must understand support center processes and best practices and master important daily functions such as scheduling, coaching, and workforce management
• Individuals who are preparing for the HDI Support Center Team Lead certification

Pete McGarahan
McGarahan and Associates

Peter McGarahan is the founder and president of McGarahan & Associates. Peter recently served as the Chairman of the IT Infrastructure Management Association, a sister organization to HDI. Pete offers 25 years of IT and Business experience helping IT organizations optimize their service delivery model to support business objectives. His value to the service and support industry and business is his thought leadership. As a practitioner, product manager and support industry analyst and expert, he has influenced the maturity of the service and support industry.

Pre-6: HDI Desktop Support Technician

Course Overview
The desktop support technician is an IT support professional who spends much of their day visiting customers at their workstations or home office, providing technical support to many desktop systems.

HDI Desktop Support Technician training focuses on key support center processes and concepts to improve overall support operations, as well as customer service and interpersonal skills that improve the customer’s experience.

What You Will Learn:

• Proven techniques for improving on-site customer interaction
• How Service Level Agreements (SLAs) impact workflow and prioritization of requests
• Seven key steps for effective Root Cause Analysis
• The ITIL processes of Incident, Problem, Change, Release, Asset, and Configuration Management
• An overview of Security Management and Knowledge Management
• Essential time management and problem-solving skills
• Effective strategies for managing difficult customers

• Technical support professionals who provide in-person support to internal employees, remote workers, or external customers and therefore must develop best-practice skills specific to this unique form of customer contact
• Individuals who are preparing for the HDI Desktop Support Technician certification

Deborah Monroe
Ignite Achievements Int'l, Inc.

Deborah Monroe, President of Ignite Achievements Int’l, is one of few Master EQ Practitioners in the world working specifically to change workplace behaviors and patterns. Deborah works with all levels of executive leadership, management and individual contributors while concentrating on integrating humans and processes for a balanced working environment. Her aim is to create understanding and empathy building a positive bottom line through employee and customer engagement and retention. Deborah is an HDI Faculty Member and well-known speaker at conferences delivering certification courses and exciting sessions with great takeaway’s that are easy to implement.

Pre- 7: The Help Desk Managers Crash Course to Success

Not all help desks are created equally, and when you are a new manager, you have great dreams of being a great leader and building a standout team. You've got your team, and they’re working really hard to provide great customer service to your customers. But you've got limited resources to do it with. Your budget is a little tighter, and you are still expected to do things for your customers that seem impossible. Maybe your new job as a manager isn’t seeming as promising as you thought. GREAT news: you are not alone. Your new position just presents you with a new set of challenges, and you’re probably a bit overwhelmed about where to start. This in depth session will share tips and tools to help you focus on the most important things to do first and get you on the road to success as a new help desk manager.

Learning objectives:

• How to build a strong team
• Effective appraisals and reviews
• Creating metrics that matter
• Delegating for peak efficiency
• Rewards and recognition that don’t cost a bundle (the MUST model for recognition)
• Marketing your help desk
• Improving employee engagement
• Hiring right/Retaining right.

Phil Gerbyshak
Relationship Geek - Make It Great! Institute

Phil Gerbyshak, the Relationship Geek and the author of the book Help Desk Manager's Crash Course, has been working with clients to create great customer service experiences for the past 15 years. Phil's mission on this planet is simple: to help people unleash the greatness inside them, by connecting people to the ideas, people, and information they need to crank it up and take things to the next level. Phil has been writing at Make It Great! Institute since early 2005, where he has shared over 2200 articles on building business relationships management, leadership, customer service, personal empowerment, and personal productivity topics. Since 2007, Phil has also been writing for b5 Media, sharing his management and productivity insights. His work has been recognized as one of the top 50 HR blogs.

He currently serves vice president of information technology at a regional financial services firm in Milwaukee, WI, is president of the Milwaukee chapter of HDI and as Midwest regional director for HDI. Phil is a frequently sought after speaker at various companies and professional organizations. He energizes, educates, empowers, and entertains his audience by sharing the tools they need and helping them find the right questions so they can make it a great day.

Jeff Brooks
Peak 10

Jeffrey Brooks, co-author of “Helpdesk Manager’s Crash Course,” has been working in the technology industry for over 15 years. His expertise is in joining developing organizations with diminutive service organizations and organizing teams able to handle the customer issues in a timely and professional manner. Well-versed in a variety of technologies, from both traditional training models and job-based experience, Jeffrey has received a Masters in computer information systems and an M.B.A.

Putting the customers’ needs first, Jeffrey maintains close ties with his customer base and his employees by joining in the trenches to understand the problems faced by both the install base and the team trying to assist them. Jeffrey currently serves as the President of Charlotte HDI and also sits on the HDI Member Advisory Board. He is also active in other industry organizations and sits on the Board of Directors for the NC LIG of itSMF, as well as on the Advisory Board for several local schools.

Pre- 8: How to Implement a Lite Version of ITIL v3

Since its introduction into the marketplace, there has been great debate over whether implementing full ITIL v3 is worthwhile or necessary. Ironically, very few organizations ever implemented full v2, so why should they be expected to implement full v3? However, there are elements of v3 that have huge benefits even if implemented in a Lite format. Implementing ITIL Lite successfully requires a well thought out plan, but there are some tricks and techniques that can help you in this quest. This workshop is designed to teach you how to successfully implement ITIL v3 Lite (that could also be used as a phase one stage of a full ITIL v3 implementation) following a logical, project-oriented approach.

You will learn:

• Why you should/would implement ITIL v3 Lite
• A simple but effective approach to ITIL process engineering
• The why’s and how’s of categorizing ITIL v3 components
• Arguments to include or exclude ITIL components
• How to decide which processes to include
• Building an ITIL Lite Quadrant chart
• How to decide in which order to implement ITIL Lite components

Malcolm Fry
Fry Consultants

As a recognized IT industry luminary with over 40 years experience in Information Technology, Malcolm Fry serves as an Independent Executive Advisor, and brings an unparalleled breadth of knowledge and experience in IT business and technical issues. Malcolm is the author of many publications on IT service and support, has had numerous articles and papers published, and is regularly contacted as a source of information by technology journalists. His latest publications are 'A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a CMDB’ and a new ITIL complementary book 'How to Build a Service Management Department'. Malcolm was also a member of the v3 Advisory Group and a mentor for the 'Service Operations' book. In April 2009 he was awarded the prestigious ‘Ron Muns Lifetime Achievement Award for IT Service and Support.’

Pre- 9: Support Center Metrics and Measurements

How do you know if your support center is meeting its goals? Do you know how your support center performance compares to other organizations? Do you know what is important to measure? Where should you be focusing your improvement efforts? In this workshop you will learn the answers to these questions.

This course is designed to identify the metrics that every support center should have in place to measure individual, team, and organizational performance. Course participants will be introduced to key performance indicators (KPIs) for support centers and the important types of questions to ask when presented with benchmark data. In this interactive course, course participants will learn which support center metics are important, how to calculate them, and what do to with them.

By the end of this course, you will also learn to:

• Identify which metrics are important for your support center
• Explain the difference between baselines and benchmarks
• Explain what types of questions to ask when presented with benchmark data
• Explain the difference between leading and lagging indicators
• Describe how key performance indicators (KPIs) are linked to organizational goals
• Identify key factors in determining unit costs
• Calculate cost per incident/request
• Develop meaningful measureable objectives for individuals, the team, and the organization
• Explain the value of scorecards and balanced scorecards

Shane Carlson
Cognizant Technology Solutions

Shane Carlson is a dynamic ITIL-certified and Six Sigma-trained IT professional with 10+ years of practical experience transforming organizations with IT service management.

Pre-10: Building the Best Team Soup to Nuts

It’s more than a cliché. Customer service is what makes the difference in business today. As a leader, you’re responsible for putting together the best possible technical support team. But, how do you do that? From hiring to training to development, this session will help you develop a plan and specific strategies to create and keep the best possible customer service team. You will receive a skills matrix, motivational ideas to create a loyal team, and a list of interview questions that help you uncover the skills your need.

• Determine your desired team characteristics and skills
• Analyze what you have and what you need
• Develop a job description that helps you and your HR recruiter find the right candidates
• Create an interview process that gives you 360° feedback on your candidate
• Brainstorm training options that fit your environment
• Focus on performance management skills and strategies
• Keep good performers motivated without a big budget for reward dollars
• Address performance that is bringing your team down

Mary Cruse
Genzyme Genetics

Passionate about customer service, Mary Cruse has led teams for Fortune 500 companies for 25+ years in the airline and healthcare industries. She has extensive experience in both technical and non-technical customer service centers, with an expertise in software implementation, call center design and technology, workflow definitions and design, and people leadership and development. At Genzyme Genetics, Mary leads 5 external customer support centers, supporting the medical community in ontological and prenatal diagnostic testing, with 50 customer service representatives in her centers around the Southwest. Mary carries the HDI certifications of HDA, HDM and Certified Training Instructor as well as the CIAC Call Center Operations Manager Certification. Mary is President of the Los Angeles Chapter of HDI, Chairman Emeritus of the Global Member Advisory Board and past member of the Strategic Advisory Board of HDI.

Pre-11: Congratulations! Here is your BS in Social Media!

Oprah is on Twitter, and you are not. How did this place of shame happen to you? Even worse, how did it happen to your organization? Somewhere on your path to understanding your customers, they got a voice of their own. Not the type of voice that would write a letter to complain, ask to speak to a manager, or even call a company headquarters. This voice is one that lives out in "the cloud" and is stronger and has more ability to change the perception of your company than a multimillion dollar campaign. Oh, and this voice, is just one person, standing in line a bit too long.

This session is about the world outside and inside your organization that is thriving and becoming sentient. Avoiding it's evolution will only make it stronger. Do you remember the first reply to all email you saw, that was just full of anger, joy or frustration? Now multiply that times millions of people on that reply to all.

Social Media, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Digg, Wikipedia, Flickr, Last.fm, justin.tv, WAIT, STOP, WHAT IS JUSTIN.TV? Yes the list of social media reads like a who's who of internet today, but the hype is actually affecting businesses every day. Most organizations block social media sites, but that is not stopping their employees from finding ways to "get social" even from their desk.

You’ll leave this workshop with lots of practical ideas that you can implement immediately upon your return to your place of work and play. Want a certification in social media? Learn when to digg verse when to tweet or how to implement a policy for your employees around security and social media. This ground breaking workshop is your one stop!

We will uncover the fundamentals of social media and look firsthand at how organizations are bridging this divide between their customers and their support organization.

• Understand the evolving role of social media in everyday life
• Focus on how to embrace social media without losing your staff to FaceBook
• Why emails, surveys and polling are the fodder of yesterday's support organization
• How to knock down corporate barriers to the outside world through social media
• When is it ok to encourage your employees to be more visible on social media
• Learn how what tools are available to monitor social media
• Actually learn how to USE the social media tools
• Explore Five real life examples of using everything from YouTube to LinkedIn to assist your organization.
• Step by Step instructions on how to have "The Talk" with Senior Management
• How to create a social media policy for your organization

Chris Dancy
ServiceSphere

Chris Dancy is the founder and Vice President of Sales and Marketing of ServiceSphere, an organization dedicated to the full lifecycle of IT support. ServiceSphere offers unique after-hours support for small IT Desks who want to extend their hours of operations. Previously Chris Dancy joined Touchpaper/Avocent as Vice President of Business Development in March 2007, advocating processed based approach to ITSM through people, process and tools. Chris has over 20 years of experience in IT, and was responsible for enterprise presales support ITIL consulting, best practices support and North American speaking ITSM engagements. Before joining Touchpaper/Avocent, Chris was the Director of Product Development Service Desk Technologies & Desktop Management Strategies at NetworkD.

Pre-12: Mapping Support Processes: Blueprint for Success

The workshop will illustrate how to map out support processes utilizing swim-lane or cross-functional diagrams in detail with exercises to identify weaknesses and inefficiencies and how to avoid them. Multiple process mapping techniques will be explored including functional flow, cross-functional flow, task procedure analysis, value stream map and customer experience maps.

Julie will provide a detailed review of the incident management process that shows how to map all the processes including: call handling, incident management, incident dispatch, escalation, status update, and incident closure. She will depict all key technology interfaces along with the key function of the service desk throughout the incident management process. Julie places a strong focus on developing strong customer advocacy throughout the incident management process to facilitate the rapid restoration of service and ensure customer satisfaction.

The workshop will include the following:

• Introduction to process mapping
• The basics of process mapping
• Choose your method
• Top down flow
• Cross functional flow
• Task procedure analysis
• Customer experience maps
• Support organization structure
• Mapping the functional flow
• Cross-functional flow design
• Mapping multi-channel support flow
• Mapping incident management in detail

Julie Mohr
BlueprintAudits.com

Julie Mohr’s experience includes teaching ITSM and COBIT, consulting, and functioning as a senior member of teams at IHS Support Solutions, Agilita, and Pomeroy.

Pre-13: UP2 - DOUBLE UP YOURS Today by Unleashing your Peoples Unlimited Potential

WHAT’S UP? What do leaders do to help their people really step UP to the plate and swing for the fence? What can you do to get yourself and your people UP and more engaged, more focused, and have more fun at work? What is your teams’ Unrealized Potential? Is it really unlimited and what can you do to help them GET UP and stay UP? And can you really double UP YOURS?

LIGHTEN UP. With a purposeful sense of direction and a strong disposition towards laughing as we learn in this DOUBLE UP YOURS workshop we will explore the many aspects of how to lead UP and take yourself and your team to that elusive next level.

GET UP. Team Up. Huddle Up. Speak Up. Stand Up. Light Up. Tune Up. Give Up. Word Up. Write Up. Look Up. Grow Up. Climb Up. Pull Up. Push Up. Lift Up. Shut Up. Back Up. Listen Up. Get Up. And of course…Get Back Up!!

Life is hard and a lot of people start spending so much time in “DOWN Town” they forget how to get back UP. UP to where they belong and where they were designed to be. Don’t let life get you down… GET UP and Double UP YOURS today!!

Another Wonderfully Creative Workshop from Chief Morale Officer Kirk Weisler that’s sure to be just the leadership pick me UP you need.

Kirk Weisler
Team Dynamics

Kirk Weisler is widely recognized as chief morale officer (CMO) of the support industry. A veteran of the customer service management industry, Kirk has worked to develop and implement a revolutionary strategy, philosophy, and approach to the call center world. Kirk is widely sought after to share his insightful stories and foundational philosophy of culture- and team-building with customer service and support center organizations around the country. In addition to his role as professional speaker and trainer, Kirk is currently helping to build a wilderness treatment and training facility for at-risk youth. His unique and diverse background as part of Outward Bound's professional development team, as a former US Army Ranger, and as an experiential team trainer make him a dynamic, outside-the-box motivator, trainer, and an inspiring and entertaining presenter.

Keynote 1: If You Can't Stand Up, Stand Out

The best way to predict the future is to create it. Mike Schlappi’s message includes humor and motivation as he tells his personal story—a story that began with a tragic shooting accident has evolved into a lifetime of lessons and victories. Although he was paralyzed, his dreams were not. Come learn Mike’s "Bulletproof Principles for Success".

Mike Schlappi

Mike Schlappi has an inspiring message for every American, young or old: “Just because you can’t stand up, doesn’t mean you can’t stand out. Confined to a wheelchair, he is spreading that word to audiences ranging from students to chief executive officers, from rookies to Olympic champions, and from small gatherings to major conventions.

At the age of 14, Schlappi was student body president, had been awarded his Eagle Scout and had expectations of a career in sports as a top American athlete when he was involved in a tragic shooting accident. Doctors told him he would never walk again, but after months of rigorous therapy, he began playing basketball from his wheelchair and went on to become an athletic standout.

Schlappi is a four-time Paralympic Medalist and two-time World Champion in Wheelchair Basketball. The first wheelchair basketball player in the United States to be on four consecutive summer Paralympic teams, Schlappi was honored by the state of Utah in 2000 as one of its Top 50 athletes of the past century. He served on the board of trustees that managed the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake. He is the founder and director of the Wheelchair Sports Foundation, a non-profit organization that serves disabled athletes.

Hoping to inspire others through his experiences, Schlappi hung up his sneakers and transitioned from the sports arena to the speaking platform. His engaging presentations have entertained and inspired thousands of audiences worldwide. Schlappi’s thought-provoking story challenges individuals to succeed despite difficult circumstances by empowering themselves and accepting personal responsibility.

Off the basketball court, Schlappi graduated with a master’s degree in Business Administration and Healthcare from Arizona State University, and on a leadership scholarship, earned an undergraduate degree in Finance from Brigham Young University. Schlappi is also a writer and author of two popular inspirational books which draw heavily on his own experiences and the challenges he’s overcome: Bulletproof Principles for Personal Success and Motivational Leaders.

He has won numerous honors including the American Medical Association’s Special People Award, The Sporting Goods Manufacturer of America’s Heroes Award and the Golden Key Athlete of the Year Award.

Brain Bite 1: Don’t Roll the DICE with your Next Project: Learn the Four Key Factors for Success.

Do you have a critical initiative planned or underway in your organization? Are you worried that it will lose momentum and stall? Learn the four key factors that most influence a transformation initiative’s chances for success. Then learn how to measure these factors for your own project or initiative and how to identify specific changes you’ll need to make to ensure success.

Mark Shell
Booz Allen Hamilton

Mark Shell, is a certified ITIL v2 Service Manager, v3 Expert, ISO/IEC 20000 consultant, and Certified Process Design EngineerTM with over 25 years of experience developing and managing service and support solutions.

Brain Bite 2: Staffing the Service Desk: Employment, Hiring, and Compensation Trends

What’s in store for the technology profession this year? Get a glimpse of the post-recession hiring landscape and compensation trends. Learn why it’s still difficult to attract top talent and how to gear up for smart hiring. Compare and contrast the perspectives of hiring managers and employees on pay, perks, and benefits as effective recruitment and retention tools.

David Willmer
Robert Half Technology

Dave Willmer is Executive Director of Robert Half Technology, a leading provider of highly skilled IT professionals on a project and full-time basis. He manages operations for more than 100 Robert Half Technology locations worldwide. Dave started his career with Robert Half International in 1998, and has since held numerous leadership positions within the company. Dave is a frequent speaker on career and employment issues. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Akron and a Master of Education with an emphasis in Educational Leadership from Ohio University. Dave is a member of HDI’s Mid-Ohio Chapter.

Brain Bite 3: Three Low-cost, High-impact Computer Security Techniques

Computer security continues to be one of the most neglected aspects of IT management. It does not have to be; learn three techniques that will quickly get you started to securing your operation. The techniques;

• Awareness of the threat
• Planning your defenses
• Testing your security
  
  
  Presented by
  
  Robert Last
  HDI
  

  Bob Last has been involved in the IT technical support field as a manager, trainer, consultant and industry analyst for more than 20 years.

  
  
  Link to this session

Brain Bite 4: We’re having a Baby! – 9 Months to Deliver Service Management

Many organizations see Service Management as a drudgery that goes on forever with no clear outcome. This is the step by step parenting plan to help you successfully deliver Service Management in 9 months. We will cover: Vision – Why now is a good time to be thinking about having a baby? Communications - How do we announce the big news? Planning -What all do we need to do to prepare for the baby? Delivery – How to ensure the on time delivery of your healthy baby.

James Bolton
Propoint Solutions

Jim Bolton has more than a decade of experience in architecting IT service management solutions by applying ITIL best practices, ISO process disciplines, and Six Sigma concepts.

Brain Bite 5: The War to Shape the Future of Collaboration: The Changing Face of Email

Your alma mater may currently be in the throes of battle with the intent of shaping the way your organization collaborates in the future. Microsoft, Google, and others are in a race to capture the minds, hearts, and habits of current students and future employees on college and university campuses. Join some of the HDI Higher Education Forum Members for a spirited breakfast debate that spans industries and learn how university campus environments are using and supporting these products.

Panelists: Elizabeth Mathis, University of South Carolina Kelly McLaughlin, Hobart and William Smith Colleges Joshua Tooley, Abilene Christian University Gene Ushinsky, Brigham Young University

Mark Fitzgerald
Boise State University

Mark Fitzgerald manages Boise State University's Help Desk of Distinction. Over the years he has worked closely with four separate technical help desks. At each help desk he met a different audience and unique set of criteria. These opportunities required a different type of training program, ranging from boot camps, testing and certification, and weekly classes. Mark has a passion for teaching both large and small groups. Working for universities has opened up many opportunities for him to teach in both formal and informal settings. He has presented several times at HDI's annual conference, at local chapter meetings, and at HDI's Higher Ed Forum.

Brain Bite 6: Connecting with Support Peers on a Local Level

Are you looking for continued support ideas for your support center once you leave the conference environment? Are you interested in keeping in touch with support professionals who understand your issues and concerns at a local level? Are you interested in learning how to start an HDI Local Chapter in your area? Join Sophie Klossner and find out about the current network of HDI Local Chapters and the steps to getting involved locally.

Rita Pettinaro
N/A

Sophie has been an influential member of the HDI team since 1992. She focused on event planning, content, and coordinating speaker development for the first two years with HDI as well as managed HDI’s human resource department for eight years. In 1999, Sophie became the Local Chapter Membership Director and Chief Member Advocate, working closely with Local Chapter officers and members to maintain open lines of communication, representing members’ needs and issues, and building strong relationships with all of HDI’s chapters, officers and members. In 2009 Sophie became the Director of HDI Membership where she brings her many years of member advocacy and relationship strengths in expanding membership and bringing value to the HDI members.

Keynote 2: Tough Times, Tougher Teams: Leave the Excuses to the Other Guys

Are you managing in maddening times? Yes, but that's unimportant. What really matters is what you do about it. The job of executive management is to bring good answers to bad circumstances, and the very best organizations hold themselves as accountable for their problems as they do for their successes. Their victories are built upon learning from both and growing ever stronger – most especially during tough times. A unique and innovative marketing guru, Stan took his 20 years of experience as the CEO of companies with 5,000+ employees and used it to create his own international consulting company. In this provocative and entertaining keynote, corporate strategist Stan Slap will bust the myth that success can't be influenced in our current circumstances and talk about the tactics required to create the kind of culture that prospers in a harsh business climate.

Stan Slap

Corporate strategist and business speaker Stan Slap is a consultant of choice for many of today's biggest, smartest, and fastest-growing companies. Corporations from Microsoft to Warner Music Group have excelled with his branding strategies. A unique and innovative marketing guru, he took his 20 years of experience as the CEO of companies with 5,000+ employees, and used that expertise to head his own international, and highly-sought after, consulting company called, by a remarkable coincidence, slap.

Since 1985, Stan has turned his hoodlum neurons to creating success for slap clients. He is credited with revolutionizing performance for some of the world’s biggest, smartest, and fastest companies—developing explosive growth strategies and the cultural willingness to implement them. He personally coaches CEOs and the executive teams of many of these companies.

Stan Slap has directed the successful expansion of companies ranging from Patagonia to Pennzoil. He designed the plan that helped Oracle sell their strategic intent to 40,000 employees in 167 countries, and developed employee reengagement plans for HSBC, Europe’s largest bank. He has created winning strategies for companies from Deloitte to Black Entertainment Television. Stan has also developed a number of successful management training programs that have been implemented in more than 70 countries. He is a frequently requested keynote speaker in many of these same countries, in constant demand for major event presentations by Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies.

Mr. Slap’s self-published “off-white papers” are widely circulated in many companies and are required reading in several university MBA programs. His first business video beat out 600 others to win several major industry awards. He is intent on making a profound difference in the world.

Session 101 - Building an Effective Customer Service Strategy

In today’s evolving business climate, superior customer service is no longer a luxury but a necessity for survival. Building an overall customer service strategy has challenged many organizations…and it's not going to get any easier! Companies will continue to be challenged as the ever-changing face, preferences and profile of the customer and the people that serve them span four generations. Each of these generations has particular preferences and priorities that define how “customer service” needs to be delivered to meet their wide range of expectations. As our customers’ technical abilities continue to improve and expand, we need to ensure that our services allow us to best serve them they their way; not our way!

We must develop and execute a customer service strategy that serves both internal and external customers aligned with the Service-Profit chain. There is no ‘one size fits all’ model and all customers are not 'created' equally in terms of how services should be delivered. This session will examine the importance of research, planning, strategy creation and service execution. Charles will cover important foundational customer service concepts which then can be expanded and customized to encompass your ever-changing business environment, customer expectations and team dynamics.

Charles McCann
Oklahoma State University Information Technology Division

Charles McCann is the director of Technology Support for Oklahoma State University and is responsible for the Helpdesk, Deskside Support, IT Labs, and Training. Charles has been working in the Information Technology field for over fifteen years. He began his career as a computer lab monitor in 1988 while he was working on his undergraduate degree in Computer Science. Charles holds a B.S. in Math and Computer Science from Missouri Western State College, a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of South Carolina, and an M.B.A. from Oklahoma State University. Charles is also a certified project management professional (PMP) and help desk manager (HDM). Charles is working on completing his Ph.D. in Management Information Systems, where his areas of research include Customer Satisfaction, CRM, Data Mining, and Process Improvement.

Session 102 - Five Hallmarks of Help Desk Excellence

An effective help desk is easy to spot – you hear, see, and feel it -- in satisfied callers thanking personnel… in metrics that prove speed and successful problem resolution…and in environments where business processes are mapped and followed. While evidence of success is clear, often it’s harder to identify traits and practices that separate great help desks from average ones. The reality is that they come on all shapes and sizes.

Examine core management and operational elements and you will find five hallmarks of help desk excellence. Anna will present how companies might emulate these within their environments, including:

1. What comprises passionate leadership in the help desk environment
2. How ongoing training retains employees and customers
3. What a clearly defined business process is and what value it adds
4. How to incorporate innovation into a help desk environment

Anna Frazzetto
Harvey Nash, Inc.

Anna Frazzetto has architected, implemented, and directed managed services and outsourcing initiatives at Global 1000 and mid-size companies. An outsourcing expert, she developed and implemented technology practices in numerous organizations while holding strategic responsibility for managing data centers, help desks and networking practices.

A recognized leader in managed services and infrastructure management, Anna heads development and implementation of IT solutions for Harvey Nash’s US network. She is a regular industry presenter and was recently named to the HDI Support Center Leadership Certification Standards (HDI SCLP) Committee. Anna holds a bachelor’s in computer science and mathematics from New York University.

Session 103 - Service Desk + Continuous Improvement = Energized Results

Service Desks face the perfect storm of decreasing budgets, reduced capital, shrinking FTEs, and increasing workloads. With limited resources and no change in the foreseeable future, what can you do? Your secret weapon is implementing a continuous improvement program for your staff at the Service Desk. Dan will share how a Kaizen event turned a disastrous system upgrade into a service desk miracle with zero daytime abandon calls. World class companies such as Toyota and others recognize that continuous improvement programs improve quality, raise morale, eliminate waste, and open the door to employee creativity and productivity. Come and learn how continuous improvement can energize your Service Desk.

In this session, you will:

• Understand the basics of continuous improvement
• Learn continuous improvement methods such as Quick and Easy Kaizen and the Kaizen rapid improvement event
• Discover why every employee should be involved in improvement activities
• Review case study data on continuous improvement results at Alverno Information Services Help Desk

• Start a simple Quick and Easy Kaizen or continuous improvement program for Service Desk employees
• Use the “Kaizen workout” technique in your department staff meetings to generate improvement ideas

Dan Lafever
Alverno Information Services

Daniel C. Lafever brings over 20 years experience of IT support and 10 years of process improvement to his current position as Help Desk Manager and “Chief Kaizen Officer.” He has worked for IUPUI, City of Indianapolis, Lock Reynolds Boyd and Weisell, and Alverno Information Services. He has been a catalyst for implementing Knowledge Centered Support, VOIP, Lean Six Sigma, and HDI training to support for over 20,000 users in the Sisters of St. Francis Health Services system. Dan has received Six Sigma champion and green belt training, and is a certified in ITIL Foundation and as a HDI Help Desk Manager.

Session 104 - Building Bridges. The Art of Successful Negotiations

To have control over your life and have a successful career, you must master the fundamental art of negotiation. For most of us, negotiation is the most acceptable way to build bridges that create long lasting relationships. However, negotiations may also be used for reaching a basic agreement, influencing decisions, and taking command of your professional life. Learn the fundamental communication skills that open up the potential for you to become more persuasive and have others more easily accept your vision, your projects, and your ideas. A powerful negotiator is an excellent communicator. In reality, we all recognize that we may not get what we deserve in life, but we know for sure that we will get what we are able to negotiate for.

In this session you will learn to do the following:

• Identify your value as a communicator
• Evaluate your potential as a successful negotiator
• Clearly define the 2 reasons why people negotiate
• Develop your complete potential and resources to gain power
• Identify the 10 psychological secrets for a win-win situation
• Recognize the 3 main sources required to lead a successful negotiation Work more efficiently with people in your immediate environment


Presented by

Guy Cabana
Danec Consulting, Inc.

Mr. Guy Cabana is a world renowned international keynote speaker and trainer. He is President of Danec Consultants Inc. He has designed a course on negotiations and international for the Masters Degree at the University of Sherbrooke and also teaches at the International Research Center for Advanced Management. Mr. Cabana is a gifted speaker with a remarkable ability and talent to attract and maintain the attention of his audience. He is enthusiastic, educational and enlightening. His is an entertaining speaker with an authentic approach and his humorous examples produce memorable results both in personnel and professional lives.


Link to this session

Session 105 - What R U Doing with 4 Generations on Your Team?

If you’re like most companies, you likely have 3-4 Generations on your Support Team: • Gen Y 15-30 yrs old • Gen X 31-44 yrs old • Baby Boomers 45-63 yrs old • Radio Babies 64-75 yrs old. So what are you doing to help them effectively communicate with one another and work as an effective team? Do you refer to Gen Y as “the kids” and the Radio Babies as the “old farts”? How’s that working so far? Got some animosities building? Come hear tips to helping bridge those 30-40 year age gaps. This session will explain how to attract and integrate the GEN Yr’s into your IT Support organization. We will discuss ways to foster their cutting-edge technical contributions with their high energy and new ideas, while training them on the fundamentals of business savvy. We will explore what the rapid ‘Aging of America’ means to your team and what you should be doing now to prepare … so you’re not caught short by the wealth of tribal knowledge exiting en masse. We’ll also explore what the future work teams look like and creative ways to get work done; how it will get done, where it will get done, and with efficiency and quality for your customers.

You’ll learn:

• How to manage these age-diverse teams … managing older and younger workers than you
• How to stimulate and foster creative ideas without cramping the Gen Y style
• What motivates the Gen Ys? How does that translate into incentives on your team?
• What areas are they most in need of some instruction?
• How to best uncover and use the natural skill set of each team member?

Brenda Iniguez
Pink Elephant

Brenda Iniguez is a seasoned IT Support Professional, with over 25 years proven experience in Fortune 100 companies, designing, building, consolidating, and managing their Enterprise Service Management initiatives. In addition, she is ITIL Service Manager certified, ITIL V3 certified, and was selected for the TSO V3 ITIL Live Content Review Group, a panel of 11 worldwide ITIL experts. Brenda is well-versed in the Service Management disciplines and has spent major parts of her career managing and as Executive Consultant with Pink Elephant, VP at Bank of America, Providian Financial, and as Service Management Strategy Director for FrontRange Solutions. She is currently doing Strategic Business work with Pink Elephant. Brenda is active in several professional industry groups, including President of the HDI One Association Board, Chairman Emeritus of the HDI-National Member Advisory Board, Board of Directors for the HDI Strategic Advisory Board, Officers Board of the San Francisco HDI Chapter (Help Desk Institute), Board of Directors of the AZ itSMF LIG, founding member Board of Directors for HDP (Help Desk Professionals), and served on the HDI, ITSM, HDP and itSMF National Conference Committees.

Session 106 - How the Help Desk Saved My Marriage

After years of marriage, Jeffrey Brooks realized that the spark in his relationship had died. He had spent so much of his life working to help other people with their problems and prioritizing career that he had neglected his own family. And then it hit him like a ton of bricks. After attending so many industry events, reading so many focus books, and learning his industry, the answers were right in front of him. The Help Desk that had consumed so much of Jeffrey’s life now had just what he needed to put that spark back into his marriage. Day in and day out he was helping others with their incidents and problems when he realized that the same concepts could be used to light a little romance in his home. Join Jeffrey for this light hearted PG-13 explanation of how HDI, SCC, ITIL, KM, KPI's, Metrics and more can put the bounce back in your relationships. You’ll also discover how many of these concepts can be more easily understood when put into a new context. Note: Jeffrey is not a relationship expert, but does know a lot of acronyms and fancy terminology.

Jeff Brooks
Peak 10

Jeffrey Brooks, co-author of “Helpdesk Manager’s Crash Course,” has been working in the technology industry for over 15 years. His expertise is in joining developing organizations with diminutive service organizations and organizing teams able to handle the customer issues in a timely and professional manner. Well-versed in a variety of technologies, from both traditional training models and job-based experience, Jeffrey has received a Masters in computer information systems and an M.B.A.

Putting the customers’ needs first, Jeffrey maintains close ties with his customer base and his employees by joining in the trenches to understand the problems faced by both the install base and the team trying to assist them. Jeffrey currently serves as the President of Charlotte HDI and also sits on the HDI Member Advisory Board. He is also active in other industry organizations and sits on the Board of Directors for the NC LIG of itSMF, as well as on the Advisory Board for several local schools.

Session 107 - A Recipe for Success: Defining the Elements of a Winning Service Management Program

Many times in the course of beginning an ITSM program, it is difficult to determine not only where to begin, but also (and more often of greater importance) are planning for and executing a series of actions that will drive you and your organization to your stated goals with as little wasted effort as possible. This session will discuss and demonstrate elements that are recommended for a successful ITSM program, regardless of the scope or scale of the effort. Discussion will include: Business Case, Program Planning, Communication Planning, Training Plans, Cultural Change Management, and much more. Detailed real-world examples will be provided and discussed.

Key Learnings / Takeaways:

• Understanding of the key elements of a Service Management program
• Simple approaches to beginning a program of your own
• Lessons learned from others failed programs
• Guidance for managing the program and its various elements
• Information on measuring the results of your program

• Improved alignment of IT Services to Business needs
• Improved communication and training to end users
• Less disruption to the IT and Business organizations during program implementation
• Better alignment of IT Products and Services to Business needs

Shane Carlson
Cognizant Technology Solutions

Shane Carlson is a dynamic ITIL-certified and Six Sigma-trained IT professional with 10+ years of practical experience transforming organizations with IT service management.

Session 108 - If You Work on the Phones, You Must…

This session delivers golden nuggets, powerful wisdom and practice to encourage analysts who manage customer interactions on a daily basis. Success comes when 1. You understand what questions to ask your customers and to whom. 2. You practice using the right words and taking negative ones out of your vocabulary, written and verbal. 3. You display expertise and understand how to use your “vocal tool” to make the most of every customer interaction. Managers will be able to take what they learn in this very interactive, explorative, light and fun session and use it to train and mentor their front line staff!

Deborah Monroe
Ignite Achievements Int'l, Inc.

Deborah Monroe, President of Ignite Achievements Int’l, is one of few Master EQ Practitioners in the world working specifically to change workplace behaviors and patterns. Deborah works with all levels of executive leadership, management and individual contributors while concentrating on integrating humans and processes for a balanced working environment. Her aim is to create understanding and empathy building a positive bottom line through employee and customer engagement and retention. Deborah is an HDI Faculty Member and well-known speaker at conferences delivering certification courses and exciting sessions with great takeaway’s that are easy to implement.

Session 109 - The Human Side of ITSM

Many IT organizations are embarking on ITSM initiatives to improve the overall quality of their service delivery and support and achieve the most coveted 3 “e’s” (efficiency, effectiveness and economy) for everything they do, while ultimately working towards true business partnership. It is often said that the process and technology is easy…it’s the people that can often be the biggest challenge. In this session you will learn how to plan for the common people related challenges, minimize the impact of these challenges and leverage classic organization change management tactics to your advantage.

Katherine Lord
Lord Consulting

With six years of hands-on service management consulting expertise, more than ten years of IT management experience, and a variety of certifications and accolades including, ITIL v3 Expert, and ITIL v2 Service Manager (with distinction), Six Sigma Yellow belt, Katherine’s skill set and knowledge turns support centers into value added entities. Katherine is a seasoned ITSM Practitioner with significant consulting expertise in the ITSM/ITIL education and implementation space. As a certified instructor for HDI and part of their global faculty, she teaches all of the HDI certification courses.

Session 110 - Practical Service Asset & Configuration Management

There is constant industry discussion and hype associated with Configuration Management and the need for a CMDB. Many organizations have tried and expended significant resources to try and create one, only to find that it fails to meet business expectations. Bill will offer a practical approach to Inventory and Configuration Management and the creation of a CMDB that meets the needs of the Service Management mission without turning it into a resource intensive science project. Areas that will be covered include:

• The Service Asset Management Lifecycle
• The Inventory, Asset and Configuration Data that’s really needed
• Process alignment with the CMDB(s)
• Change Mgmt – Business Impact Analysis and Control
• Service Catalog and the CMDB
• Software Assets & Applications Repository
• Service Mapping and Visualization
• Common Pitfalls when implementing a CMDB

• Identify the key functionality of a practical CMDB
• Effectively scoping the Configuration Management project
• Understand the typical business requirements for the CMDB

Bill Irvine
FrontRange Solutions Inc. (HQ)

Bill is a Portfolio Architect with the FrontRange Solutions Global Services team. He is an IT professional with 30 years of experience, specializing in enterprise-level data center management, IT process management, consulting services, sales engineering and IT service delivery and support. Bill joined Front Range Solutions after a wide and varied career. Bill’s main focus at FrontRange Solutions is to provide thought leadership and strategic guidance on the delivery of IT Service Management programs and process consulting for our global client base. Bill is a certified ITIL Service Manager and ITIL Practitioner who was also a contributor to the ITIL v3 Refresh. He has been involved in ITIL and industry best practices since their inception during the late 1980’s.

Session 201 - How to Define and Value Services: the Cornerstone of ITSM

Defining and valuing services are the first two steps in ITIL v3 strategy generation, as well as the first steps in the service portfolio process. You simply cannot adopt ITIL or IT service management without defining and valuing your services. The problem is that ITIL does not tell you how to do this. There is a hint, however, in the complementary guidance buried deep within ITIL. Join Hank to uncover the secrets to IT service definition and learn how to define IT services in hours instead of weeks. Also learn an easy-to-understand method for valuing services that improves business IT alignment.

Key Takeaways:

• Figure out where to start IT service definition (it’s probably not where you thought)
• Understand how to define IT services in business terms
• Learn the secrets of IT service definition, including customer- and resource-facing services and resources
• Get going with service catalog development and service portfolio management in just a few hours
• Understand where IT service value originates (it may not be where you think)
• Learn the secret of IT value creation (business value at risk and the marketplace)
• Determine how to prioritize your IT activities based on service value

Hank Marquis
Global Knowledge

Hank Marquis leads the business service management practice area for Global Knowledge, the worldwide leader in IT and business training. He is responsible for BSM strategy -- integrating ITIL, ISO-20000, COBIT, Six Sigma, and project management into seamless solutions for clients. Hank has more than 25 years of information technology industry experience from both enterprise and vendor positions. He holds advanced certifications in BSM topics, is a senior member of the American Society for Quality, and has extensive experience helping IT executives implement IT governance and operational frameworks. He held operational management positions at MCI, was CIO at e-commerce financial services provider Celexis, served as VP of marketing and CTO at management software company Opticom, and rose to senior product management at Compuware. Hank has helped dozens of companies develop and implement ITSM best practices.

Session 202 - Metrics 101: What to DO with the Measurements You SHOULD be Collecting

Metrics for support organizations often fall into two categories; too few or too many, neither result providing appropriate information to enable good decision-making. Understanding what metrics to measure and how to achieve those measurements challenges both new and experienced managers. Determining the appropriate metrics is essential to managing a support center and leveraging its core function to contribute to an organization’s success. This vital information enables support center management to communicate the value of the organization and deliver the right services at the right cost. To accomplish this goal, support center management needs to understand the different types of metrics: qualitative, quantitative, efficiency, effectiveness, then identify which metrics are Performance Indicators (PI), Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and Key Results Indicators (KRI). Join John, a service metrics authority, as he showcases the various types of metrics needed to consider, the value of their purpose and how to use the right measurements to obtain results.

John Custy
JPC Group

John Custy has more than 20 years experience in designing, developing, and implementing IT services management solutions, both as a practitioner and as a consultant. He has assisted many organizations in developing their service strategies and translating these strategies into functional business plans, resulting in improved IT services management practices. John is an ITIL-certified service manager and also holds ITIL Practitioner certifications in IT service management.

Session 203 - Don't DO That: 50 Things That a Service Desk Should Never Do!

The saying goes, ‘experience is something that you get just after you needed it’. Here, we want the experience before we need it! This session is unique because it starts with NO SLIDES and NO PRESENTATION. This session is totally INTERACTIVE driven by FUN NETWORKING. It starts with a GREAT BRAINSTORMING session of sharing experiences and traumas. Teams will work together to talk about all the things they’ve been through and how we can bring it all together so everyone can avoid making the same mistakes. Then, we will create the slides during the session and download them later so everyone can have the benefit of the combined brainpower! If you like to learn by exchanging views and networking with your peers then this is the session for you.

Malcolm Fry
Fry Consultants

As a recognized IT industry luminary with over 40 years experience in Information Technology, Malcolm Fry serves as an Independent Executive Advisor, and brings an unparalleled breadth of knowledge and experience in IT business and technical issues. Malcolm is the author of many publications on IT service and support, has had numerous articles and papers published, and is regularly contacted as a source of information by technology journalists. His latest publications are 'A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a CMDB’ and a new ITIL complementary book 'How to Build a Service Management Department'. Malcolm was also a member of the v3 Advisory Group and a mentor for the 'Service Operations' book. In April 2009 he was awarded the prestigious ‘Ron Muns Lifetime Achievement Award for IT Service and Support.’

Pete McGarahan
McGarahan and Associates

Peter McGarahan is the founder and president of McGarahan & Associates. Peter recently served as the Chairman of the IT Infrastructure Management Association, a sister organization to HDI. Pete offers 25 years of IT and Business experience helping IT organizations optimize their service delivery model to support business objectives. His value to the service and support industry and business is his thought leadership. As a practitioner, product manager and support industry analyst and expert, he has influenced the maturity of the service and support industry.

Session 204 - Call Effectiveness Monitoring…Scoring for Success

This presentation will provide you the tools you need to shower your agents with praise when they perform successfully… but also the ability to sit down with each of them and work on their weaknesses. The expectations you set with your agents will go a long way towards allowing them to achieve the perfect call. In this session, you’ll be presented with the tools to help turn your team members into quality service agents.

Key questions answered throughout this presentation are:


• How does an analyst know they have successfully wrapped up a call and satisfied the customer?
• What kind of guidance and direction are you providing to your analysts?
• Is the leadership you provided documented?
• Are you providing reasonable and specific objectives?

• Tips on how to manage phone calls
• Teach your analyst how to listen to the customer
• Become proactive during your call and anticipate the customer’s request
• Provide direction and next steps to the customers

• Action plans improving quality of customer calls
• Templates and step by step implementation

Eddie Vidal
University of Miami

Eddie Vidal has 20+ years experience in a variety of areas in Information Technology focusing on service delivery and support for IT infrastructures. In his current position as Manager of Customer Service and Support for the Telecommunications department at the University of Miami, Eddie supports over 35,000 faculty, staff and students. He has transformed the Help Desk from a dispatch environment to a Customer Centric Support Center. Prior to his current position at the University of Miami, Eddie was Assistant Director of Professional Management and Planning Services at Florida International University. At FIU, Eddie was responsible for transitioning the desktop support team to the Support Center, setting computing standards, managing software licensing and creating a Project Management Office. His accomplishments in various organizations include managing multi-million dollar budgets, the construction of a 500 seat call center, creating Service Level Agreements, implementing customer service initiatives, deploying applications, and re-engineering organizations. He currently serves as President of the South Florida HDI local chapter. Eddie has earned certifications for ITIL Foundations and HDI Support Center Manager.

Session 205 - The Lost Symbol: Breaking the Code for Effective Leadership Communication

Communication continues to be the number one stumbling block for organizations trying to accomplish major projects, shift culture or even just effectively communicate and keep alive a clear and compelling vision. While you don’t need to be Da Vinci to be more artful and effective in communicating for results, you will need to know why combing the elements of facts, symbols and emotions makes for more memorable and meaningful messages. Come join us as we break the code and reveal the “lost symbol”.

Kirk Weisler
Team Dynamics

Kirk Weisler is widely recognized as chief morale officer (CMO) of the support industry. A veteran of the customer service management industry, Kirk has worked to develop and implement a revolutionary strategy, philosophy, and approach to the call center world. Kirk is widely sought after to share his insightful stories and foundational philosophy of culture- and team-building with customer service and support center organizations around the country. In addition to his role as professional speaker and trainer, Kirk is currently helping to build a wilderness treatment and training facility for at-risk youth. His unique and diverse background as part of Outward Bound's professional development team, as a former US Army Ranger, and as an experiential team trainer make him a dynamic, outside-the-box motivator, trainer, and an inspiring and entertaining presenter.

Session 206 - 13 to 1: The Story of a Successful Support Center Consolidation at the EPA

This real-life case study focuses on actual support center consolidations that occurred at both EPA and Department of Labor. This presentation will chronicle how Heather successfully consolidated 13 regional support center/help desks into one fully functional, single point of contact support center in LESS THAN SIX MONTHS. The transformation began in April and ended successfully in January when all 13 support desks had been consolidated to a centralized location in Washington, DC. This session will focus on all steps that were followed, including using ITIL methodology and best practices from HDI to achieve highly successful, on-time, on-budget transitions. Heather will provide step-by-step details of the project plan, how to overcome change resistance, marketing the changes to the user community, and damage control strategies when things don’t go exactly as they had been planned. The audience will walk away with an understanding of how to's, SLAs/OLAs, technology utilized, as well as marketing templates and samples that can be used for their own consolidation or streamlining efforts.

Heather Donnelly
MIL Corporation

Heather Donnelly has over 25 years experience in I/T and the Support Industry that spans government, healthcare and commercial environments. Heather is a recognized professional that regularly speaks at local HDI chapters and is a 4th time presenter at HDI’s Annual Conference. Heather recently obtained her PMP and holds ITIL V2/V3 Foundations Certifications, as well as being a Certified Instructor for HDI. Additionally, Heather holds HDI Certifications as a Support Center Manager, Support Center Team Lead, Support Center Analyst, Knowledge Manager, Help Desk Manager, Help Desk Analyst, Customer Support Specialist and Help Desk Professional.

Session 207 - Implementing ITIL: Welcome to the Real World

In 2006, Owens-Illinois recognized the need for improving it’s IT related business processes to improve service levels to their internal customer base. A decision was made to leverage the ITIL framework and a journey began. Based on the experiences learned, and still underway, Jason will be presenting on Owens-Illinois’ high-level IT business processes and some of the detailed transition and operational processes. He will speak to the lessons learned, challenges, risks and roadblocks and the organizational change aspects of the program. Some of the processes that will be discussed are:

• IT Demand and Supply Management
• Incident and Service Request Management Knowledge Management
• Change and Release Deployment Management

Jason Carlton
Owens-Illinois, Inc.

Jason Carlton is the ITIL Program Manager for Owens-Illinois Inc. The Program Manager role at O-I is a rapidly growing role, which spans all aspects of program management including a heavy focus on training and education. As O-I heavily incorporates lean six-sigma within the organization Jason is currently working on his Black belt certification, and is already certified in ITIL Foundations, ITIL Support and Restore, ITIL Release and Control and varied Service Delivery certifications. To supplement this education he brings 2+ years of related practitioner experience to the table.

Session 208 - Connect To Your Customer… Bridging the Gap to Great Customer Service

During this uncertain economy and everyone’s recent initiatives to be lean, it can be a challenge to maintain good customer service. Focused and responsible training can ensure your organization has the tools and the abilities it needs for maximum success. At Fish & Richardson, P.C. one of the biggest trials was the lack of visibility into the value delivered by IT infrastructure and operations. Industry experts agree that a Service Catalog is the ITIL recommended first step in the Service Level Management Process, and a fundamental requirement to a more service-based, demand-driven approach to IT. The challenge at F&R was to do exactly that. Linda will share F&R’s objectives and how to utilize them, including: how to begin the process, collecting statistics, management buy-in and implementation. Participants will also learn how we developed Policy and Procedures, implemented a new Helpdesk and escalation process, and executed a comprehensive restructure of our department. These steps were developed and implemented despite a minimal budget and a 20% staff reduction. This session will focus on the steps needed to implement 1) a basic Service Catalog using SharePoint and; 2) an in-house customer service program based on your company’s infrastructure.

Linda Vega
Fish & Richardson

Linda Vega is Supervisor of IT Office Support at Fish & Richardson, P.C. She received her Associates of Science in 1989 and has been active in the service industry for over fifteen years. Linda has been a member of HDI for three years and is a Certified Microsoft Office Specialist. During her tenure at Fish & Richardson, Linda has developed an in-house best practices training program responsible for training over 50 non-legal staff secretaries who were placed in all of the firm's practice areas. Linda currently supervises over 20 team members, and develops curriculum for software applications. Her recent projects include restructuring of the Desktop Support & Training Team and conducting customer service training throughout the firm.

Mark Orlando
Fish & Richardson

Mark, a communications professional for over 15 years, has been with Fish & Richardson P.C. for the past six years and has extensive experience with streamlining employee communications with the use of SharePoint platforms and various other multi-media tools. With a Master’s Degree in Leadership/Organizational Communications, Mark has been instrumental in helping to develop effective, cost efficient communication channels throughout the firm.

Session 209 - Making Sense of Service and Operating Level Agreements

Service level management is a methodology for establishing agreed upon expectations with your customers and with all the other areas in IT support behind the scenes. While it sounds straight forward, there are many pieces that need to fit together to make it successful. The Service Level Agreement is one of the most visible pieces of the Service Level Management process, yet it is not the first piece that needs to be considered. To be effective, you must collect the customer Service Level Requirements (SLRs) and draft Operational Level Agreements (OLAs). Without these foundation pieces, Service Level Agreements are empty promises. To do this successfully, several fundamental elements need to be in place. Additionally, effective communications and relationship building within IT and with business partners is necessary. This session gets “back to basics” and covers the fundamentals of Service Level Management and provides tips for managing relationships and improving service levels on a continuous basis.

Rae Ann Bruno
Business Solutions Training

Rae Ann Bruno is an ITIL-certified instructor with more than 15 years of management experience emphasizing process reengineering, employee development, and business alignment of IT services. Formerly the vice president of strategic relations for Previo, Rae Ann consulted with Previo customers on process re-engineering and best practices and trained support professionals on industry best practices. Additionally, Rae Ann has authored many industry articles and white papers. Prior to joining Previo, Rae Ann was the director of IT customer service for Siemens Energy & Automation (SE&A).

Session 210 - Implementing Service Desk Software

Attendees who have recently selected new Service Desk software, or who plan to purchase and implement new Service Desk software within the next 12-18 months, will greatly benefit from this session. This session will guide you through a very organized approach to implementing new Service Desk software regardless of the size or maturity level of your organization.

It will also include:

• Discussion of various implementation approach options and how to determine the best approach for your organization
• Walking through a proven implementation methodology, including reviewing sample documents and templates the attendee can utilize within their own implementation
• Understanding and defining the various roles and responsibilities that are necessary for a successful implementation
• How to effectively engage your software vendors consulting services as a Partner to ensure a mutually successful implementation
• A sample implementation Project Plan, Requirements Document, Design Document, Build Document and Deployment Plan will be provided with the session materials

Chris Farver
BMC

As a principal consultant for BMC, Chris Farver focuses on the planning, design and implementation of BMC’s ITSM solutions for enterprise customers. Chris has more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry, having spent the past 15 years in IT support as a practitioner, project manager, support industry consultant and managing large scale service desk consulting and outsourcing operations. Chris is well respected within the support industry and has co-authored several support industry books and publications and regularly speaks at local, regional and national support industry events. He has been a cornerstone in the success and growth of his HDI local chapter community. He has served as the chairman of the member advisory board for HDI and still actively participates on this board as a chair emeritus. Chris was also a founding member of the North Coast chapter of HDI in Cleveland in 1993 and continues to actively serve on the board of this award-winning chapter.

Session 301 - Creating a Successful Sourcing Strategy

Deciding to outsource any function is not easy. Trusting an outsider with internal business responsibilities requires confidence in client service and performance. How do you develop that confidence? What traits and services you should be assessing when evaluating outsourcing suppliers? Anna will present recommendations to help IT business leaders assess potential IT outsourcing and managed service solutions providers including a list of outsourcing engagement requirements and a number of critical evaluation guidelines and suggestions.

You will learn:

• How to vet potential partners thoroughly
• How to weigh traits and services against needs and requirements
• How to determine which processes to outsource and which to manage in-house
• What to do internally to ensure outsourcing success

Anna Frazzetto
Harvey Nash, Inc.

Anna Frazzetto has architected, implemented, and directed managed services and outsourcing initiatives at Global 1000 and mid-size companies. An outsourcing expert, she developed and implemented technology practices in numerous organizations while holding strategic responsibility for managing data centers, help desks and networking practices.

A recognized leader in managed services and infrastructure management, Anna heads development and implementation of IT solutions for Harvey Nash’s US network. She is a regular industry presenter and was recently named to the HDI Support Center Leadership Certification Standards (HDI SCLP) Committee. Anna holds a bachelor’s in computer science and mathematics from New York University.

Session 302 - Keep Training Alive Without a Budget

We all know that one of the first budgets to go in hard economic times is the training budget. Deborah shares her experience in facilitating adult learning to this session to give you ideas to keep training alive, motivate your staff and create competitions that will increase teamwork, buy-in and production with a limited budget. Interaction will help us to hear your ideas of what has or has not worked in your organization.

This session will provide you with:

• A brief understanding of adult learning theory
• Ways to create small exercises in your team meetings to embed the knowledge you want your team to retain
• Ideas for competitions to increase peer pressure for great performance
• Help for continuing your staff’s learning and accountability to what they have learned
• Inexpensive resources to engage your staff
• An understanding of to how to deliver a “Keep It Alive Track” TM

Deborah Monroe
Ignite Achievements Int'l, Inc.

Deborah Monroe, President of Ignite Achievements Int’l, is one of few Master EQ Practitioners in the world working specifically to change workplace behaviors and patterns. Deborah works with all levels of executive leadership, management and individual contributors while concentrating on integrating humans and processes for a balanced working environment. Her aim is to create understanding and empathy building a positive bottom line through employee and customer engagement and retention. Deborah is an HDI Faculty Member and well-known speaker at conferences delivering certification courses and exciting sessions with great takeaway’s that are easy to implement.

Session 303 - How to Create an Actionable Service Catalog

This session will cover best practices in creating an actionable service catalog, including template design, service level management, service request management/fulfillment, service financial management (pricing, costing, chargeback, and accounting), and service demand management. This interactive session will clear up the confusion surrounding the topic of Service Catalog and Portfolio management, helping attendees with practical and tactical advice and tools to provide immediate benefits to their organizations. This session will share real-world examples of both successful and failed service catalog implementations and lessons learned. We will cover action plans for where and how to get started and show quick wins for continued business support and long-term success.

This session’s four key learning objectives are:

• How to avoid common mistakes and pitfalls
• Tips and techniques for building your business case and ROI
• How to set the proper project goals and achieve desired results
• Evaluation and understanding of methods (Do-It-Yourself vs. software, available tools and resources, etc.)

• Empower user self-service and mimic the Amazon.com success/business model
• Ensure real-time interactivity and actionability by your users/customers

Andrew Kramer
PMG

Andrew Kramer has been an IT leader for over 15 years. Though he began his career in finance, he quickly shifted to technology, becoming an engineer, manager, and ultimately the founder and CEO of a successful network management software company. His career spans leading companies, including British Telecom, Hitachi, Cisco, the Federal Reserve Bank, and Bank of America. Andrew is currently VP of Customer Solutions at PMG, the current market leader for the red hot ITIL-compliant Service Catalog market. PMG’s Service Catalog Suite helps customers achieve the ITILv3 vision of continuous process improvement and measurable cost savings.

Session 304 - High Performance Leadership

Why do some support center teams flourish, consistently exceeding goals, and other teams flounder, often falling short of the projected expectations? They use the same technical tools, draw from the same employee pool, deploy the same processes, and serve the same customers, yet some teams consistently produce lower employee turnover and higher customer satisfaction scores. Why? All too often in our industry we are given tools to 'manage' our agents, yet very little training or tools are offered to help us 'lead' our agents. Whatever your type of environment, this keynote will be informative, entertaining and motivating.

Julie Mohr
BlueprintAudits.com

Julie Mohr’s experience includes teaching ITSM and COBIT, consulting, and functioning as a senior member of teams at IHS Support Solutions, Agilita, and Pomeroy.

Session 305 - Martians & Venusians: Managing Diversity in the Workplace

You’ve probably heard the saying that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, or perhaps you’ve even read the book. Truth is, men and women are different, in a number of ways, and managing people is never a black and white situation. Rather we all have to be cognizant of different types of personas and personalities that affect the way we interact with others. Come join Bren Boddy-Thomas and Jeffrey Brooks through an interactive journey that will explore the differences we all face in managing the diverse employee base we are all working with. We will investigate how male managers’ interactions may differ from the interactions of female managers, and how an employee’s gender, region, or any other number of traits, may also impact the management style and outcomes. We will investigate how your management technique can be a means to achieve great effectiveness in your organization, or a hindrance if you are not accounting for your team’s characteristics. We will also examine role-reversal and how it can affect your productivity. This session will provide a very humorous look at management techniques through role playing, constructive argument and even a few surprises.

Key Learning Objectives include:

• Managing people vs. managing processes
• Understanding positive reinforcement vs. stick and carrot
• Identifying the best management technique based upon personality
• Understanding the differences in employees with regard to gender, region, age, etc

• Re-evaluate how you interact with your team based upon the knowledge gained during the session. Are you spot on…or do you need to make some adjustments?
• Review presentation materials, articles and research to gain a better understanding of managing in a diverse environment
• Conference materials will have a number of articles, links and research that support the ideas we will be discussing

Bren Boddy-Thomas
Exchange Bank

Bren Boddy-Thomas is a Help Desk Manager with over 20 years of Customer Service Management Experience and has been in the Help Desk Industry for the past 7 years. She is on the Computer Science Advisory Board with Santa Rosa Junior College, has a HDA certification from HDI, and is on the HDI Member Advisory Board. Bren built a Super Help Desk from scratch on solid Customer Service and is the Single-point-of-contact for her company. With the diversity of the Help Desk she supports, her experience will enlighten and entertain you.

Jeff Brooks
Peak 10

Jeffrey Brooks, co-author of “Helpdesk Manager’s Crash Course,” has been working in the technology industry for over 15 years. His expertise is in joining developing organizations with diminutive service organizations and organizing teams able to handle the customer issues in a timely and professional manner. Well-versed in a variety of technologies, from both traditional training models and job-based experience, Jeffrey has received a Masters in computer information systems and an M.B.A.

Putting the customers’ needs first, Jeffrey maintains close ties with his customer base and his employees by joining in the trenches to understand the problems faced by both the install base and the team trying to assist them. Jeffrey currently serves as the President of Charlotte HDI and also sits on the HDI Member Advisory Board. He is also active in other industry organizations and sits on the Board of Directors for the NC LIG of itSMF, as well as on the Advisory Board for several local schools.

Session 306 - SupportU 24X7: Implementing and Maintaining a Co-Managed Help Desk

Historically the Technical Support Center at the University of Northern Colorado was available to faculty, staff and students 8:00am – 5:00pm M-F. Additional support was not provided for nights and weekends, only an ability to leave a voice message for the next business day. The expanded use and infusion of technology into courses and classrooms established a need to match support with the changing needs of the campus community. The first step was to establish an identity and philosophy for support, which we addressed by transitioning from a Help Desk to a Technical Support Center. Once the framework of the Technical Support Center was in place, it was then expanded and progressed into a 24-7-365 environment where clients could receive multi-tiered technical support, request resolution and/or ticket escalation. This presentation will focus on the research behind and considerations made when selecting to co-manage support, lessons learned during the implementation phase, and insight into the on-going maintenance of the relationship.

Samual Penn
University of Northern Colorado

Sam Penn is the Technical Support Center (TSC) Manager at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) where he leads an on-campus group of full-time and student Customer Support Coordinators and co-managed technical support staff. During his time with the TSC he has helped facilitate the growth of the team and expansion of support into the current 24/7/365 model. He has been working in the UNC Information Technology department since 1997 and has served as a Student Representative, Customer Support Coordinator and Server System Administrator prior to managing the TSC. While obtaining a Masters Degree in Psychology at UNC he was honored as the UNC Graduate/Teaching Assistant of the year. Sam is a member of HDI and is ITILv3 Foundation Certified.

Ryan Rose
University of Northern Colorado

Ryan Rose is the Director of CORE services within Information Technology at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC). The CORE services area encompasses Network Communications, Security, Server Administration and the Technical Support Center. Ryan has been with the UNC Information Technology department since 1994 serving in multiple roles and has since been responsible for the development, implementation and management of the core infrastructure. He also identified the need for technical support processes to be intertwined with core technologies and processes in order to more effectively manage and communicate regarding change practices. Ryan has obtained the CCNA and is a certified PMP.

Session 307 - Implementing Knowledge-Centered Support: The Air Products Journey

Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. is a leading global supplier of electronic materials, hydrogen, helium and select performance chemicals. It serves customers in healthcare, technology, energy, and industrial markets worldwide. The company is headquartered in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Like most companies, the globally distributed IT support desks had a need to lower support costs, improve productivity, and raise customer satisfaction. For Air Products, the result of these demands was found in the implementation of a knowledge-sharing methodology known as Knowledge Centered Support (KCS).

Thus began the KCS initiative at Air Products. KCS focuses on the basic premise of capturing, sharing, and the reusing of knowledge. Starting with the principles outlined by the Consortium for Service Innovation, along with guidance from a certified KCS consultant, Air Products developed their own implementation strategy to move forward with this innovative approach to integrated support

This real-world presentation will take you through Air Products journey and discuss the challenges and triumphs they faced. In this session you will learn how the team:

• Gained necessary leadership backing to transform the KCS strategy into an operational reality
• Used strategic marketing tools to gain the support of level 2 teams
• Developed a knowledge sharing culture in a time of economic uncertainty
• Deployed a technology that supports the foundations of KCS
• Formed and managed a team of individuals with diverse skill sets and backgrounds to reach the desired goals

Asgar Bhallo
Air Products & Chemicals Inc

Asgar Bhallo currently serves as Manager of KCS implementation and adoption within the Information Technology group. Asgar has developed a strategic framework for KCS process usage at Air Products and led the adoption of KCS, achieving maximum efficiencies in utilization of knowledge at the lowest cost.

Session 308 - How to Apply Social Media to Improve Customer Service

This session will focus on using social media tools to examine your customers’ satisfaction. Way back in the nineties we would email a survey; but somewhere along the way, our customers started venting on the internet. Some chose to tweet their frustrations, some chose to just leave the organization through sites liked LinkedIn and, much to our surprise, some became fans on Facebook and YouTube!

You’ll learn:

• Where to watch for customer satisfaction in this new "Social World"
• What resources are required to keep on top of an evolving world of networks and sites
• Steps to engage your customers when you notice satisfaction is not where you expect it to be
• When and how to allow transparency within your support organization against the social web
• How to have that talk with Senior Management, that now is the time for you to be listening outside your normal channels

Chris Dancy
ServiceSphere

Chris Dancy is the founder and Vice President of Sales and Marketing of ServiceSphere, an organization dedicated to the full lifecycle of IT support. ServiceSphere offers unique after-hours support for small IT Desks who want to extend their hours of operations. Previously Chris Dancy joined Touchpaper/Avocent as Vice President of Business Development in March 2007, advocating processed based approach to ITSM through people, process and tools. Chris has over 20 years of experience in IT, and was responsible for enterprise presales support ITIL consulting, best practices support and North American speaking ITSM engagements. Before joining Touchpaper/Avocent, Chris was the Director of Product Development Service Desk Technologies & Desktop Management Strategies at NetworkD.

Session 309 - Customer Service Magic: 10 Steps to Move Service from Woe to WOW!

Batesville Casket outsourced its Information Technology infrastructure including help-desk and desk-side support about 4 years ago to a tier-one outsourcing provider. The out-sourced help-desk support team was viewed by the associates as a poor performing organization and was a huge black eye for the company. The support was so bad that many associates called it the “help-less desk” instead of the help-desk. Learn how Batesville Casket embarked on a year-long journey to transform their help-desk support organization into a world-class customer service organization.

From this session you will discover how Batesville:

• Created a vision of a world-class customer service organization
• Developed processes to enhance the “customer experience”
• Continuously improved People, Process and Systems
• Used metrics to measure success
• Optimized processes that ultimately…WOW’ed its customer base

Woodie Perkins
Batesville Casket

Woodie Perkins joined Batesville Casket in 2004 as Director of Systems Support. In this position, Woodie is responsible for enterprise wide ERP support, deskside, service center, Intel, Business Intelligence, and executive liaison to a tier one outsourcing partner. Woodie is a senior information technology executive with more than twenty years of in-depth business and technical experience. Woodie has led IT infrastructure, application development and enterprise application teams - a business person first and a technologist second. Woodie’s professional experience includes positions as Vice-President, Executive Director, Outsourcing Executive, and Client Delivery Executive supporting companies such as General Motors, Electronic Data Systems, 3Com Corporation, Probusiness Systems, Del Monte Foods, and Wyse Technologies. Woodie has a Master of Business Administration from Indiana Wesleyan University and a Bachelor of Technology in Computer Information Systems from the University of North Florida.

Session 310 - All Aboard! Automated On-boarding and Off-boarding for Today’s Uncertain Economy

The effectiveness of your on-boarding and off-boarding processes provides the employee’s first impression of your organization’s operations, greatly impacting morale and productivity. In this session you’ll learn how to leverage your investment in the human resource management software to create an automated process that provides day one access to critical information technology and corporate assets. Traditional on-boarding processes utilize paper or electronic forms mailed to approvers and can take days or even weeks to complete. These delays and the costly hand processing can be eliminated by using your human resource management software as the authoritative source for employee provisioning automating moves, adds, changes and terminations to save money, increase efficiency and achieve compliance with internal and external regulatory policies.

Learning Objectives:

• Drive day one provisioning of new users for greater productivity
• Automate immediate removal of terminated users for greater security
• Enforce workflow for compliance
• Implement self-service password reset and access requests to save money
• Integrate all of your gaming and hospitality apps for complete business coverage

Nelson Cicchitto
Avatier Corp.

Nelson, a career information technology leader, joined Avatier Corporation in 1995. As Chairman and CEO, he has filed several patents, including the ability to utilize a programming-free workflow system for the identity management industry. Nelson oversees Avatier’s overall corporate and point & click advanced IdM interface product strategies. With over 20 years of experience defining and implementing information technology visions for Fortune 100 companies, in 1995 Nelson commercialized the world’s first delegated administration solution for the Microsoft Windows NT platform. Before joining Avatier, he worked as an independent consultant for Pacific Bell, where he was responsible for rolling out the Standard Desktop initiative to 20,000 employees. Prior to that, Nelson worked at Chevron Information Technology Company, where he served on special projects like traveling worldwide to capture the best practices, he designed Chevron’s first common operating environment, and created Chevron’s X.500 directory standards.

Keynote 3: Creating a Culture of Courage™: The New Leadership Challenge

As companies are demanding that employees take more risks, do more with less, and try to anticipate the future, courage has become a critical and often overlooked element of every leader’s skill set. As the world has become a less secure place and business less predictable, the skills it takes to be a strong, effective leader and build a thriving organization have changed dramatically. We can no longer be averse to taking risks or remain complacent in any organization -- for success depends almost entirely on our ability to make difficult decisions confidently and quickly – about our products, our customers and our employees. While many believe that courage is a quality that leaders are born with, Cindy’s extensive research shows that everyone can build “courage skills” and help create the strong, productive organizations needed to succeed in today’s changing environment. Discover how to create an organization that not only embraces, but thrives on change -- and learns with every decision it makes how can help every leader succeed in this new world order. Creating Courage™ enables every employee and every organization to meet the demands of an uncertain future. This humorous, poignant and highly provocative speech will leave you believing that you can accomplish anything – both in your personal and professional lives!

Cindy Solomon

Cindy Solomon is passionately committed to helping organizations build long-term, profitable relationships with their customers, their leaders and their employees through keynote presentations, executive coaching, leadership training and strategic design. An internationally recognized speaker, writer, executive coach and consultant in the fields of customer service, customer loyalty, employee engagement and leadership, Cindy captivates her audiences with her content rich and provocative message. Cindy is known as one of the most sought after leadership and customer loyalty speakers, and through her executive coaching and strategy work with corporate, public sector and professional association clients, Cindy brings her humorous and compelling insights on the current business landscape, as well as future horizons, to tens of thousands of leaders each year. Her results-oriented view of leadership development and customer loyalty comes from years of working in the trenches during her corporate career in marketing, sales and customer service.

Brain Bite 10: Reducing Support Costs Without Sacrificing Service Quality

Economic drivers continue to challenge budgets and organizations with a renewed sense of urgency to squeeze more value out of services. Support leaders are reevaluating budgets for cost reduction opportunities while evaluating services to determine the cost, benefit and business value. Join Pete McGarahan and Nelson Cicchitto as they share creative ways to cost-effectively enhance service delivery and customer satisfaction. Pete will cover the "shift-left' strategy focused on identifying support costs in the organization and implementing call elimination, call deflection, and cost per incident reduction tactics.

Pete McGarahan
McGarahan and Associates

Peter McGarahan is the founder and president of McGarahan & Associates. Peter recently served as the Chairman of the IT Infrastructure Management Association, a sister organization to HDI. Pete offers 25 years of IT and Business experience helping IT organizations optimize their service delivery model to support business objectives. His value to the service and support industry and business is his thought leadership. As a practitioner, product manager and support industry analyst and expert, he has influenced the maturity of the service and support industry.

Brain Bite 11: Importance of Service Training

Learn how service training can benefit you, your team, and your business. We will discuss the benefits of problem solving and communication skills and how it adds value to your company together with some fun and creative brain bending exercises.

Brain Bite 7: Shaping the Future of IT Support with Remote Support

IT support is faced with the challenge of reducing costs while supporting an increasing number of employees, systems, and platforms. Remote support technology has the ability to solve these issues, while optimizing staff productivity, improving customer service, cutting costs, and increasing security. Join Joel Bomgar, Founder & CEO of Bomgar Corporation, for an interactive session on the role remote support plays in shaping the future of IT support.

Brain Bite 8: Making the RITE Decisions – Every Time

The role of IT is increasingly to deliver management information that is “RITE” - Relevant, Integrated, Timely, and Efficient. But exactly what information does the business need from the IT service department to help improve its performance?

Bearing in mind the opportunities offered by RSS, dashboards, and mobile communications, what is the best way of presenting that information to different departments? When is it needed? How often? And, how should it be used? These are just some of the many questions that need to be answered and will be addressed in this executive briefing.

Vance Brown will lead a discussion on the latest thinking on leveraging data to:

• Enhance corporate decision-making
• Improve the alignment between an organization’s mission and strategic objectives
• Balance the scales of technology and company culture


Presented by

Vance Brown
Cherwell Software, Inc.

Vance Brown is president and CEO of Cherwell Software, a leading developer of IT service management software. Formerly, Vance was president and CEO of GoldMine Software Corporation (formerly Bendata, Inc. and currently FrontRange Solutions®—the makers of HEAT® and ITSM Service Desk solutions, and GoldMine® contact manager). Vance graduated summa cum laude from Wake Forest University with degrees in economics and computer science and received his law degree with honors from The University of North Carolina. More recently, Vance has attended executive programs at both the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.


Link to this session

Brain Bite 9: Why ITMM over ITSM?!

You have your ITIL, COBIT, CMMI frameworks in place. You survey your customers and the service management machine is running nicely. What to do next? ITSM (IT Service Management) will help align your process and your IT organization. What do you do when it is time to move to the next step? How do you change the perception of your IT organization? Enter ITMM (IT Marketing Management) - now it's time to "sell" the service desk and this webinar will help you market your service desk to the rest of the organization.

Chris Dancy
ServiceSphere

Chris Dancy is the founder and Vice President of Sales and Marketing of ServiceSphere, an organization dedicated to the full lifecycle of IT support. ServiceSphere offers unique after-hours support for small IT Desks who want to extend their hours of operations. Previously Chris Dancy joined Touchpaper/Avocent as Vice President of Business Development in March 2007, advocating processed based approach to ITSM through people, process and tools. Chris has over 20 years of experience in IT, and was responsible for enterprise presales support ITIL consulting, best practices support and North American speaking ITSM engagements. Before joining Touchpaper/Avocent, Chris was the Director of Product Development Service Desk Technologies & Desktop Management Strategies at NetworkD.

Kory Smith
Smith Consulting

Kory Smith assists companies in creating value within their IT organizations by helping to improve their ability to provide and manage IT services. Specifically, he provides his customers with IT Service Management (ITSM) consulting and training services. His ITSM efforts focus on providing ITIL certification and awareness training and workshops, ITSM assessments and roadmap development, team-building simulations, ITSM tool requirements and selection, and helping medium- and large-sized organizations understand how to best leverage and implement IT Service Management best practices. The primary goal of all Kory’s projects are to equip his customers in building and implementing actionable ITSM improvement initiatives that foster the alignment between IT’s efforts and the goals and strategies of the business. Kory holds the ITIL Expert Certification and an MBA focused in Information Systems Management.

Keynote 4: The Truth Be Told

This popular keynote address is based on Larry Winget's two bestsellers, Shut Up, Stop Whining & Get A Life and It's Called Work For A Reason. In it, Larry teaches universal principles that work for anyone, in any business, at any time. From sales to customer service, to teamwork and leadership, He attacks traditional business wisdom and offers simple truths in his caustic, thought-provoking, and hilarious style.

According to Bookpage, "Larry Winget’s no-holds barred approach to business is refreshing, and his clear sense of personal integrity is a much-needed refresher in today's business climate." He teaches that business improves when the people in the business improve and that everything in life gets better when we get better and nothing gets better until we get better. His style is confrontational and he won't let you off the hook. Larry’s approach remains that WORK is the key to success: not talking about work, not having meetings about work, not writing reports about work, but WORK.

Larry Winget

Larry Winget is a philosopher of success who just happens to be hilarious. He teaches universal principles that will work for anyone, in any business, at any time, and does it by telling funny stories. Larry believes that most of us have complicated life and business way too much, take it way too seriously, and that we need to lighten up, take responsibility, be more flexible, stay positive, and keep it in perspective. He believes that success and prosperity come from serving others.

Larry’s customers include an impressive list of associations, businesses, and organizations. He speaks around the country sharing his insights and principles in the areas of success, leadership, being customer-focused, and sales. Larry is also the author of several books, video and audio series.

Session 401 - What the CIO Wants You to Know

You’ll value your time with Broadcom Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer Ken Venner as he challenges you to think like a CIO. Ken has been extremely successful at integrating Broadcom’s global IT organization into the business to achieve relevance, respect and business impact. Join Ken as he shares his experiences, insights and recommendations around IT management effectiveness. You will not want to miss this opportunity as Ken clearly and succinctly lays it out for his audience in terms of what it takes to be a successful IT manager in 2010 and beyond.

Ken Venner
Broadcom Corporation

Ken Venner is the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Broadcom Corporation. He is responsible for all business system, computing and telecommunications infrastructure. Ken has served as Chief Information Officer since joining Broadcom in August 2000. In February 2002 he was elected a Vice President. Previously, Ken was Vice President of Product Management and Chief Information Officer of Rockwell Electronic Commerce from 1997 to August 2000. Prior to that, he held a number of information sciences/information technology management positions for over 11 years at Lucent Technologies/ AT&T Bell Laboratories. Ken received a B.E. from the Stevens Institute of Technology, an M.E. from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.B.A. from New Hampshire College.

Session 402 - Performance Management: Rewards, Rework and Replace

In today’s volatile employment market, creating and maintaining a productive, cohesive team is a challenge. After the “honeymoon”, sometimes the performance of new hires can be a surprise. Performance of inherited team members can be just as challenging once the honeymoon is over, it’s time to deal with the “good, the bad and the ugly”. This session is designed to address creative, yet HR approved, strategies on keeping the good, developing the bad into the good and working the ugly out of your organization. We’ll discuss how to define what good performance looks like to your organization, how to communicate this to your team, holding people accountable in a positive supportive fashion and how to address performance that continues to miss expectations.

Learning Objectives:

• Define a process to identify and describe specifically what “good performance” is
• Develop a feedback process for staff to regularly communicate your evaluation of their performance
• Create a motivational environment for good performers to continue to grow
• Create performance improvement action plans (informal) for areas needing improvement
• Understand how the disciplinary process works and how to be effective in its use

• Define good performance and create monthly feedback forms for team members
• Implement monthly 1-on-1 performance feedback meetings

Mary Cruse
Genzyme Genetics

Passionate about customer service, Mary Cruse has led teams for Fortune 500 companies for 25+ years in the airline and healthcare industries. She has extensive experience in both technical and non-technical customer service centers, with an expertise in software implementation, call center design and technology, workflow definitions and design, and people leadership and development. At Genzyme Genetics, Mary leads 5 external customer support centers, supporting the medical community in ontological and prenatal diagnostic testing, with 50 customer service representatives in her centers around the Southwest. Mary carries the HDI certifications of HDA, HDM and Certified Training Instructor as well as the CIAC Call Center Operations Manager Certification. Mary is President of the Los Angeles Chapter of HDI, Chairman Emeritus of the Global Member Advisory Board and past member of the Strategic Advisory Board of HDI.

Session 403 - Bridging the Gap between Incident and Problem Management

This session will review ITIL Incident and Problem Management at a high level and show how Incident Matching and Trending can be used to analyze Incident resolutions to determine if permanent solutions should be investigated through Problem Management. Incident Matching and Trending provides statistics on the amount of Service Desk and End-User time that can be recovered if a permanent fix is implemented. These statistics can also help IT organizations better prioritize production support work by providing statistics that show the impact to the business.

Key Learning Objectives

• Review the concepts of Known Errors and acceptable workarounds. Learn why it’s OK to use workarounds as long as the business impact of these resolutions is analyzed
• Learn how to show the potential to recover both Service Desk time and end-user time by resolving Known Errors through Problem Management
• Learn the importance of post-implementation trending to verify problem resolutions
• Learn how post-implementation trending can ensure Incident Management processes are modified to appropriately handle future incidents

Tony Krasinski
Erie Insurance Group

Tony has 25 years of IT experience in a variety of areas from programming to Service Desk Management. Along with the rest Erie’s IT Service Management Team, Tony has helped lead the ERIE Service Desk through ITIL Incident, Problem, Change and Asset Management implementation. Most recently, Tony led an effort to revise Erie’s Release Management process using ITIL V3 as a guide. In addition to these ITIL processes, Tony has introduced significant improvements in call handling and Agent performance that have led to world class performance by the ERIE Service Desk with reduced head count.

Session 404 - Cataloging our Services: A School District’s Adventure in ITIL

Not sure where to start with your Service Catalog? Wondering how to create a catalog with limited resources? This presentation will provide a case study of how the Arlington, Virginia Public Schools (APS) developed and implemented their Information Services Service Catalog. You will hear about the key elements APS put into place to implement this project; and see samples of the service catalog policy, entry templates, entry review rubric, and process workflows. You will learn about the challenges APS faced, and the fundamentals they needed to put in place to prepare for this important work. As one of a handful of public school systems implementing ITIL across the nation, APS will also share its goals, benefits and lessons learned.

Key questions answered throughout this presentation are:

• How do you get the necessary high level buy-in to allocate resources to a Service Catalog?
• What steps do you take in creating a Service Catalog?
• How do you apply the ITIL framework to public K 12 education?

• describe what is needed to begin this process internal to their organizations
• identify key success factors in implementing a Service Catalog
• apply ideas and lessons learned from the Arlington experience to other Service Catalog projects

Dana Smith
Arlington Public Schools

Dana Smith has worked for 13 years in technology management and professional development in Arlington, Virginia Public Schools. Dana*s team provides training and desk-side support for the district student information system and Oracle ERP solution. Prior to this, Dana supervised the district Help Desk and served as Instructional Technology Training Coordinator for teachers. Dana is the Director of the North TIER Partnership of 15 Northern Virginia school divisions, working with the State Department of Education to provide resources and support that promote the integration of technology across school districts. She has a Master of Arts in Teaching and certifications including HDI Service Center Manager and Knowledge Centered Support; ITIL V3 Expert; and Total Trainer.

Rae Ann Bruno
Business Solutions Training

Rae Ann Bruno is an ITIL-certified instructor with more than 15 years of management experience emphasizing process reengineering, employee development, and business alignment of IT services. Formerly the vice president of strategic relations for Previo, Rae Ann consulted with Previo customers on process re-engineering and best practices and trained support professionals on industry best practices. Additionally, Rae Ann has authored many industry articles and white papers. Prior to joining Previo, Rae Ann was the director of IT customer service for Siemens Energy & Automation (SE&A).

Session 405 - Talking Without Words

Research has shown that words are accountable for only 7% of the communication process. In effect, more than 93% of our messages are transmitted through, postures, tonality, intonation and expressions. We can learn the silent messages of our body to analyze, observe, modify and change to enhance our communications and influence others’ actions and reactions. In this interactive, dynamic, hilarious, and informative session you will recognize your own communicational style and observe and interpret the different gestures of this most authentic language: non-verbal communication.

Guy Cabana
Danec Consulting, Inc.

Mr. Guy Cabana is a world renowned international keynote speaker and trainer. He is President of Danec Consultants Inc. He has designed a course on negotiations and international for the Masters Degree at the University of Sherbrooke and also teaches at the International Research Center for Advanced Management. Mr. Cabana is a gifted speaker with a remarkable ability and talent to attract and maintain the attention of his audience. He is enthusiastic, educational and enlightening. His is an entertaining speaker with an authentic approach and his humorous examples produce memorable results both in personnel and professional lives.

Session 406 - Silence Fails: Five Crucial Conversations for Flawless Execution

An organization’s success is determined by how well people execute on its high-stakes projects and initiatives. However, current execution trends are anything but promising. In this engaging, interactive, and hard-hitting session, Stacy Nelson will share compelling research that helps leaders identify potential failures far in advance, and prevent them by increasing effectiveness at these five crucial conversations. More importantly, Cricket will teach practical, actionable skills participants can use today to substantially improve their organization’s ability to execute on high-stakes projects and initiatives by breaking a code of silence on the five common, yet largely ignored problems.

Stacy Nelson
VitalSmarts

A Master Certified Trainer in Influence, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations, Stacy has extensive experience introducing and teaching these crucial skills to major organiza¬tions including BMW, Nortel, Allstate, the IRS, Massachusetts General Hospital, Loma Linda University Medical Center and Walt Disney Company. Clients continually praise Stacy for his ability to help them achieve hard-hitting results to the areas where they need it the most. A recipient of the Zapara award for excellence in teaching, Stacy consistently receives acco¬lades for his charismatic presentation style and highly effective training design. His experience, coupled with an engaging presentation style, has clients asking for his return again and again.

Session 407 - How to Determine (and Use!) Key Performance Indicators

Measuring services is the third step in strategy generation and the ITIL v3 Service Portfolio Management process. After defining and valuing your services, you have to measure them to know where to improve. ITIL v3 offers some intriguing new insights into the measurement of quality, gap analysis, and establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) and other metrics. Join us to uncover what to measure, how to measure, and why to measure. ?

• Realize that measuring IT service quality requires a very different approach than what you might think
• Understand how quality is truly in the eye (and perception) of the customer, and how to capture that perception
• Learn how to measure IT service quality the only way that matters, and then use those measurements to improve
• Practice gap analysis in class and leave the program knowing exactly how to measure your own services
• Take home reusable templates so that you can measure services and establish appropriate KPIs as required
• Determine how to improve your services based on your KPIs

Hank Marquis
Global Knowledge

Hank Marquis leads the business service management practice area for Global Knowledge, the worldwide leader in IT and business training. He is responsible for BSM strategy -- integrating ITIL, ISO-20000, COBIT, Six Sigma, and project management into seamless solutions for clients. Hank has more than 25 years of information technology industry experience from both enterprise and vendor positions. He holds advanced certifications in BSM topics, is a senior member of the American Society for Quality, and has extensive experience helping IT executives implement IT governance and operational frameworks. He held operational management positions at MCI, was CIO at e-commerce financial services provider Celexis, served as VP of marketing and CTO at management software company Opticom, and rose to senior product management at Compuware. Hank has helped dozens of companies develop and implement ITSM best practices.

Session 408 - Effective Customer Communications

Effective Phone Communications is more than a list of skills to improve your phone support; it begins with a mindset of respect for others and a commitment to demonstrate that respect. Building on that respect is a list of actionable behaviors to make a great customer experience. This session covers skills from the call greeting to the final phrase.

You will learn:

• How to establish a genuine connection with the caller
• Tips for acting professionally to deal with difficult clients
• How to get to the core issue and keep the call on track
• How to follow up and be proactive on action items to build integrity
• How to understand what you can control – and what to do about the things you cannot

• Creating a professional greeting
• How to handle holds, conferences, and transfers
• Avoiding phrases that can cause distrust and ambiguity

Chuck Tomasi
N/A

Chuck Tomasi has nearly 30 years of IT experience. Beginning as a software developer, Chuck has been with Plexus Corp, a 7500 employee contract electronics manufacturing and engineering firm for over 22 years. Seeing a need, he used his software experience to write Plexus’ first ticketing system that saw continued use for 15 years. In 2008, Chuck embarked on a rapid six month project to re-insource, and then manage, Plexus’ Global IT Service Desk. He currently serves as the VP of Communications for the Titletown HDI chapter and the leader of the Fox Cities Managers group.

Session 409 -Where Does the Service Desk Fit into ITIL v3?

ITIL v3 has been around for some time, and enough time has elapsed for the dust to settle after initial reactions to the newer version of the framework. One of the key questions was, and still is, how does the Service Desk fit into ITIL v3? Other key questions include; is it more important or less Important than it was in v2? How does the Service Desk fit into v3? Is the Service Desk more or less influential? Should the Service Desk take an active role in Service Management or adopt a more passive role? In this dynamic, interactive session we will explore these questions while simultaneously exploring the role that the Service Desk plays in v3.

In addition to answering the key “burning” questions, we will look at some of the factors that drive the Service Desk’s focus on delivering fast, high quality, value-added service. We will start by looking at the difference between a Help Desk and a Service Desk and from this foundation springboard to address other questions posed here. If you have a Service Desk plus ITIL v3 or are thinking about implementing ITIL v3 then this session will blow away the doubts and help you to define the role of your Service Desk so that you can contribute fully to ITIL v3.

Malcolm Fry
Fry Consultants

As a recognized IT industry luminary with over 40 years experience in Information Technology, Malcolm Fry serves as an Independent Executive Advisor, and brings an unparalleled breadth of knowledge and experience in IT business and technical issues. Malcolm is the author of many publications on IT service and support, has had numerous articles and papers published, and is regularly contacted as a source of information by technology journalists. His latest publications are 'A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a CMDB’ and a new ITIL complementary book 'How to Build a Service Management Department'. Malcolm was also a member of the v3 Advisory Group and a mentor for the 'Service Operations' book. In April 2009 he was awarded the prestigious ‘Ron Muns Lifetime Achievement Award for IT Service and Support.’

Session 410 - Finding a Remote Support Solution that Really Works

Remote support solutions offer proven value to the success of any support center. They shorten the time needed to resolve technical problems, increase the productivity, and reduce the costs associated with managing and maintaining all systems. The challenge with the various solutions is trying to find one that will fit your needs and provide a great ROI in a reasonable amount of time and provides long term success. In this session you will learn how picking the proper remote support tool can reduce incident-handling time, increase FCR, and increase both agent and customer satisfaction as well as reduce cost. At the end of this session you will be able to do a comparison with the various remote support tools available and tailor it to your needs. You will also be able to sort out and determine a solution to ensure successful implementation.

Mitch Bryant
Norton Healthcare

Mitch Bryant is the Support Manager for the Norton Healthcare Service Center in Louisville Kentucky. Norton consists of 5 large hospitals as well as 70 other locations. Mitch has over 26 years of customer service experience managing help desk services. He has published in the HDI Support World and has a multitude of articles posted on TechRepublic.com, many of which have been included in their professional series books. Mitch is ITIL certified, HDI Gold member and is HDI Analyst/CSR certified as well as a HDI Certified Instructor. Mitch has published an HDI Focus Book titled “Bridging the Gap…to your Customer”.

Session 501 - Creating a Virtual Support Strategy

Support organizations today are challenged to increase team productivity while continuously looking at cost containment and reduction. With limited budgets for technology and resources, support leaders must change their support model in order to meet organizational objectives. Join us for an informative discussion on the changing trends in IT and the workforce. This discussion will focus on how to evolve your current support model into a Virtual Support Center, with your support professionals working from home. We will review the industry maturity of this model, forecasted trends, and challenges associated with the work from home service and support model.

The four key learning objectives for this session include:

• Changes in workforce and company strategy regarding working remotely
• Crucial business case objectives of establishing a remote support team
• Process and technology considerations for remote models of support
• Overcoming challenges to deploying a remote team

Tim Dewey
B Virtual Inc.

Tim Dewey has been an active part of the service and support industry for over 15 years. Tim has been responsible for the Education and Certification business for the former STI Knowledge, and was their business unit head for sourcing solutions for over nine years. His leadership and insight positioned the company’s sourcing solutions in the upper right hand quadrant for Gartner’s Help desk Outsourcing Services three times this decade. He is now President and CEO of B Virtual Inc., the leader in Virtual workforce solutions for the service and support industry.

Session 502 - Service Level Management: A Journey of Baby Steps with Big Results

IT Transformation is no easy task. This session will identify areas that you can turn into quick wins for implementing, maintaining or improving Service Level Management within your organization. Within every organization, there are projects or initiatives where adoption of best practices can assist you in gaining the needed traction to reap the many benefits of Service Level Management. This session follows a BJC HealthCare case study and documents how Service Level Management was formally introduced, subsequently implemented and which currently thrives within the current environment. You will be introduced to the successes and many challenges encountered along the way. You will walk through a detailed gap analysis, 24-month road map, and how culture change was identified and addressed in order to gain the endorsement needed from customers, staff, and management.

Key learning objectives will include:

• Collaborating with other established processes/initiatives within your organization
• Promoting positive culture change
• Endorsement of senior IT management
• Providing drivers needed to sustain momentum

Chris Kientzle
BJC HealthCare

Chris has been an IT professional for 13 years and currently works as Service Level Manager for BJC Healthcare. Her certifications include ITIL Service Practitioner’s Agree and Define, ITIL Foundations, HDI Helpdesk Manager, and Six Sigma Yellow Belt. She is the Gateway Chapter (St. Louis) President and has held previous offices of Membership and Programs. She is also an active member of the HDI HealthCare Provider’s Forum. Chris is passionate about Service Level Management and enjoys sharing her experiences and successes with others.

Session 503 - Eliminate the Big Impacts: Leverage Problem Management

This session will present a practical approach to implementing a problem management process within your organization. It will discuss specifically the benefits that can be derived in building out a solid problem management process and integrated it with incident and change management. It will discuss how our company went through multiple levels of a problem management process to get to the point where we are today. More specifically, the session will discuss the components that should be considered when attempting to build out a problem management process; as well as how the ITSM tool was customized to fit these components.

Some of the key components that will be reviewed within this session are:

• The possible entry points into Problem Management
• Categorization and prioritization of problems
• Assessing problems
• Roles and responsibilities
• Levels of cause analysis
• Criteria for cause analysis
• Key performance measurements for determining the success of the process as a whole

Andrew Abramczyk
Erie Insurance Group

As part of the support industry for close to 20 years, Andrew has been in every type of support position; from front-line to tiered support to mgmt and now to director of a service management organization. His organization supports close to 15,000 internal and external customers. He is part of a key team that has made their service desk world class. In addition, Andrew’s organization has expanded its scope from not only a service desk but also a Service and Systems Mgmt group, responsible for systems monitoring, desktop mgmt, asset mgmt, and ITSM tool administration. He has been the lead or an integral member in implementing several ITIL processes within his organization. He is a certified Help Desk Manager and ITIL foundations certified.

Session 504 - Playing the Leadership Game: How Trivial Pursuit Can Teach You to be a Better Leader

This fun, interactive session will highlight the true characteristics that make a great leader. Only attend this session if you are ready to step up and get involved, self assess your skills and put them to the challenge. We all know what it takes to be a leader…or do we? Is there a profile of a great leader? What do great leaders have in common? Are some people more likely to be leaders than others? Come to this session and find out where you stand on the leadership ladder. Join Sophie Klossner, HDI Director of Membership as she facilitates the “Leadership Game” and gets you to open up, meet new people, test your knowledge, and meet the challenge of this high energy, fast paced, exercise to get you motivated to take the next step on the leadership ladder!

Kirk Weisler
Team Dynamics

Kirk Weisler is widely recognized as chief morale officer (CMO) of the support industry. A veteran of the customer service management industry, Kirk has worked to develop and implement a revolutionary strategy, philosophy, and approach to the call center world. Kirk is widely sought after to share his insightful stories and foundational philosophy of culture- and team-building with customer service and support center organizations around the country. In addition to his role as professional speaker and trainer, Kirk is currently helping to build a wilderness treatment and training facility for at-risk youth. His unique and diverse background as part of Outward Bound's professional development team, as a former US Army Ranger, and as an experiential team trainer make him a dynamic, outside-the-box motivator, trainer, and an inspiring and entertaining presenter.

Rita Pettinaro
N/A

Sophie has been an influential member of the HDI team since 1992. She focused on event planning, content, and coordinating speaker development for the first two years with HDI as well as managed HDI’s human resource department for eight years. In 1999, Sophie became the Local Chapter Membership Director and Chief Member Advocate, working closely with Local Chapter officers and members to maintain open lines of communication, representing members’ needs and issues, and building strong relationships with all of HDI’s chapters, officers and members. In 2009 Sophie became the Director of HDI Membership where she brings her many years of member advocacy and relationship strengths in expanding membership and bringing value to the HDI members.

Session 505 - Renegade Retention: Strategies for a Top-Performance Service Desk

Skilled service desk professionals are instrumental to a company’s success. As the economy improves and these workers have more opportunities available to them, organizations must take steps to avoid losing their top performers. A survey from Robert Half and CareerBuilder shows that about half of employees plan to make some sort of career change once the economy rebounds. During this presentation, Dave Willmer, executive director of Robert Half Technology, will provide specific, innovative ideas for re-engaging, motivating and retaining essential service desk staff. He’ll discuss what service desk employees value most in their jobs and their careers, including compensation, benefits and perks, training, career advancement and work/life balance. He’ll also provide tips for creating the most strategic staffing mix for your organization and hiring top performers.

Key objectives:

• Understanding the employment market as it relates to the current economy and preparing for future changes that can affect your ability to staff the service desk
• Identifying innovative ways to motivate existing service desk employees and keep them engaged as productive, loyal employees who will remain with the firm for the long term
• Evaluating traditional tools including compensation, training and other benefits as part of an overall retention strategy
• Learning effective hiring strategies that can help you build the team you need to lead you into the future
• Evaluating alternative staffing arrangements that allow for the flexibility needed as economic conditions shift

• Applying retention and hiring best practices learned from presenter and shared best practices from session attendees
• Creating a staffing model to maximize your service desk during any economic environment.

David Willmer
Robert Half Technology

Dave Willmer is Executive Director of Robert Half Technology, a leading provider of highly skilled IT professionals on a project and full-time basis. He manages operations for more than 100 Robert Half Technology locations worldwide. Dave started his career with Robert Half International in 1998, and has since held numerous leadership positions within the company. Dave is a frequent speaker on career and employment issues. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Akron and a Master of Education with an emphasis in Educational Leadership from Ohio University. Dave is a member of HDI’s Mid-Ohio Chapter.

Session 506 - The FOUR Crucial Conversations for Financial Agility

Financially agile companies adapt to changing economic circumstances far more rapidly and effectively than the rest of the pack. A study of 1,400 executives and managers attributed their financial agility to the capacity to handle four crucial conversations around fiscal challenges. Your answer to requests around budget cuts and general cost management can mean the difference between fiscal success and failure. This fast-paced, hands-on session demonstrates how these four crucial conversations profoundly affect the resilience and responsiveness of teams and organizations. Firms that handled the following conversations well adapted over ten times faster and weathered downturns far more intelligently than their peers:

1. Debate, Dithering, and Denial—managers drag their feet rather than respond assertively to financial challenges.
2. Undiscussables—enormous efficiencies and reductions are possible but seem politically risky to discuss.
3. Silent Collusion—when leaders fail to follow through on committed reductions, others fail to hold them accountable.
4. Irrational Slashing—executives impose across-the-board reductions or other policies that middle managers realize will create serious downsides the executives may be unaware of.

Stacy Nelson
VitalSmarts

A Master Certified Trainer in Influence, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations, Stacy has extensive experience introducing and teaching these crucial skills to major organiza¬tions including BMW, Nortel, Allstate, the IRS, Massachusetts General Hospital, Loma Linda University Medical Center and Walt Disney Company. Clients continually praise Stacy for his ability to help them achieve hard-hitting results to the areas where they need it the most. A recipient of the Zapara award for excellence in teaching, Stacy consistently receives acco¬lades for his charismatic presentation style and highly effective training design. His experience, coupled with an engaging presentation style, has clients asking for his return again and again.

Session 507 - The End of the Rainbow: Achieving  Integrated Change/Release/Configuration Management

ITIL v3.0 represents a step change in the maturity of IT Service Management thinking, but the old problems still rear their heads. Why can’t organizations achieve the levels of maturity that software vendors promise with the use of integrated ITIL support tools? What can be learned by saying “How can we make it work” and not “How can fit within the defined best practices as our software defines them?” The challenge is knowing when to compromise and when to “Stick it out” This session will provide an overview of practical concepts in the Service Transition area.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how to recognize what is “Good Enough” for a first pass
• Understand how the interdependency between Chance and Configuration Management can become an advantage
• Learn about the concept of Managed and UnManaged CI’s
• Understand the framework relationships between Change, Configuration, and Discovery

Glenn LeClair, CMC
LeClair & Associates

Glenn LeClair is an experienced, “hands on” consultant with an active interest in applying the “Lessons from History” to modern challenges. As a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) he has been an active practitioner in a variety of fields for 20 years. For the last 10 years he has been focused on the domains of ITIL and IT Service Management, is a certified instructor and v3.0 Expert. He is a graduate of Trent University and holds an Honours Degree in Policy Studies. He is a former member of the faculty of Humber College, and an author of several ITIL and IT Governance publications. He is currently authoring a new book in the Lessons From History Series on IT Governance. He is currently and independent consultant in the field of Service Management, and is a former Director of Management Consulting with DMR/Fujitsu Consulting and former Senior Consultant with Hewlett-Packard Canada.

Session 508 - How to Measure the Quality of Customer Service E-mail

Support organizations have many ways to measure the quantity of e-mail agents answer, but few even try to measure the quality of agents’ e-mail to customers. This workshop will help you learn how to go beyond measuring the number of e-mails agents answer per hour to evaluating how well agents respond in writing to customers.

You’ll learn how to gauge your agents’ writing strengths as well as the seriousness of your agents’ spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors. You’ll also learn how e-mail quality (not quantity) leads to first contact resolution. Please bring samples of your agents’ e-mail to customers so you can practice using the Customer Service E-Mail Scoring Tool during the workshop.

Key learning objectives:

• Identify the traits of well-written e-mail to customers
• Measure the quality of your agents’ e-mail using E-WRITE’s Customer Service E-Mail Scoring Tool
• Improve agents’ writing skills
• Develop a writing skills recognition program for your support organization
• Use E-WRITE’s Customer Service E-Mail Scoring Tool to benchmark e-mail quality in your organization

• A set of writing mini-quizzes to use to assess agents’ writing skills
• A collection of customer service e-mails to use to benchmark your agents’ e-mails
• A writing assessment to use to screen agents for writing skills during the hiring process

Leslie O'Flahavan
E-WRITE

Leslie O'Flahavan is a co-founder and partner in E-WRITE. With E-WRITE, she has helped thousands of people learn to write well for online readers. She has developed and delivered customized writing courses for customer service agents, service desk staff, web content contributors, marketers, executives, demographers, county government employees, activists, federal employees, and teachers. She is the co-author of Clear, Correct, Concise E-Mail: A Writing Workbook for Customer Service Agents. A frequent conference presenter, Leslie has addressed groups at the Call Center Exchange, FedWeb, Content Management Network, Institute for International Research, the Help Desk Institute, the Society for Technical Communication, the Association of Internet Professionals, and the Capital PC Users Group. Leslie has also written web content for museums, businesses, and nonprofit organizations.

Session 509 - Arise Ye Service Leaders, The Time is Now!

Service leadership is about doing the right things for the right reasons and making fact-based decisions. It’s about challenging your staff, conventional wisdom and taking care of your customers and the people that serve them. Service leadership is a servant role that defines service as a business and delivers it creatively and innovatively, with a focus on industry best practices. Service Leaders strongly believe in treating every customer like they were their only customer. They challenge the rest of the organization to work with them to deliver consistent, seamless, relevant, timely and cost-effective services. This session’s focus is to optimize your service delivery organization and evaluate yourself, your team and how you deliver best-in-class support. Peter will cover the service leadership characteristics to ensure best practices become standard operating procedures. Join this session if you believe mediocrity is the enemy of greatness. Learn what it takes to create a service culture of accountability and encouragement that constantly measures, continuously improves and delivers over and above performance.

Pete McGarahan
McGarahan and Associates

Peter McGarahan is the founder and president of McGarahan & Associates. Peter recently served as the Chairman of the IT Infrastructure Management Association, a sister organization to HDI. Pete offers 25 years of IT and Business experience helping IT organizations optimize their service delivery model to support business objectives. His value to the service and support industry and business is his thought leadership. As a practitioner, product manager and support industry analyst and expert, he has influenced the maturity of the service and support industry.

Session 510 - Bridging the Gap between Process and Tools

How do you bridge the gap between the vendor tool assumptions/capabilities, and the ITIL Processes in your organization? ITIL Version 3 provides in-depth guidance on what tools you need to support your ITIL processes. As a result, many ITIL implementation projects now incorporate the implementation of underlying vendor tools to provide functionality like the CMS/CMDB, Workflow Automation (Incident/Problem), and Event Management. Meanwhile, vendors develop these tools with many underlying process assumptions. This session will give guidance on how to "Bridge the Gap" and implement ITIL based tools and processes successfully. Customer Case studies will be presented, and a detailed case study with a customer co-presenter will be given.

Participants will learn:

• An understanding of the difference between Process and Workflow
• Methods to map processes to workflow in a practical manner
• How the workflow of Change and Configuration Management overlap

Vernon Palango
InteQ

Vernon Palango is Practice Principal for ITSM Consulting and Training at InteQ in Bedford, MA, where he is responsible for the delivery and design of the overall ITSM practice. He has over 25 years of IT experience as IT Director, Data Center Manager, NSM Consultant and IT Architect. During his career, Vernon has perfected his expertise in the following areas: ITSM (IT Service Management) strategies, ITIL processes, NSM (Network and System Management solutions, Server and Database Architecture, and IT Automation development. Over the past several years, he has managed external customer and IT process consulting engagements utilizing ITSM/ITIL practices. He is certified as ITIL Service Manager (IT Master/ITIL Expert) V2/V3 and is certified by CSME.

Session 601 - Organization Readiness and Cultural Change

This Organization Readiness and Cultural Change Panel facilitated by Peter McGarahan and including industry practitioners, analysts and thought leaders will address organizational readiness in implementing successful change. If there is one constant variable in business and technology – it is change. Yet most people and organizations resist change even for their own good. What are the barriers to properly preparing and introduce change into the organization? How can we best work though them? How can we make change stick? The panel will address relevant topics like best preparing an organization for change, assessing organizational readiness and then funneling that information into the execution of the change plan. We promise this session will keep you on the edge of your seats as we welcome audience participation in sharing cultural change experiences, what worked and what did not work and why! The organizational readiness for any change is critical in how change gets communicated and implemented so the organization can best absorb it into their daily work lives.

Pete McGarahan
McGarahan and Associates

Peter McGarahan is the founder and president of McGarahan & Associates. Peter recently served as the Chairman of the IT Infrastructure Management Association, a sister organization to HDI. Pete offers 25 years of IT and Business experience helping IT organizations optimize their service delivery model to support business objectives. His value to the service and support industry and business is his thought leadership. As a practitioner, product manager and support industry analyst and expert, he has influenced the maturity of the service and support industry.

Session 602 - Project Leadership for Support Center Professionals

"Okay. I've been handed this project. Now what do I do? I've never done this before." Sound familiar? Because of current economic conditions, many individuals are being thrust into roles within their companies that they may or may not be prepared to perform. This session will provide basic skills on how to avoid pitfalls while implementing change in your support environment. You'll learn how to approach a project and where to begin with the five-step roadmap. You'll get practical, everyday methodologies to get the job done on time, on budget, and within specific guidelines.

You’ll also learn:

• Basic project management terms
• How to quantify needs for your team
• How to gain buy-in for your ideas
• How to approach a project and where to begin -- the five-step roadmap
• How to select the right resources
• How to define success criteria for a project team

Mary Cruse
Genzyme Genetics

Passionate about customer service, Mary Cruse has led teams for Fortune 500 companies for 25+ years in the airline and healthcare industries. She has extensive experience in both technical and non-technical customer service centers, with an expertise in software implementation, call center design and technology, workflow definitions and design, and people leadership and development. At Genzyme Genetics, Mary leads 5 external customer support centers, supporting the medical community in ontological and prenatal diagnostic testing, with 50 customer service representatives in her centers around the Southwest. Mary carries the HDI certifications of HDA, HDM and Certified Training Instructor as well as the CIAC Call Center Operations Manager Certification. Mary is President of the Los Angeles Chapter of HDI, Chairman Emeritus of the Global Member Advisory Board and past member of the Strategic Advisory Board of HDI.

Session 604 - Engaging PM Communications Techniques for Bulletproof Support Relationships

This session will cover how using the concepts and PM principles of a Communication Plan can easily be broken down into tangible benefits for your Help Desk operation. Learn how the many things learned as a part of creating and implementing a communication plan can (and should!) be easily reused as active knowledge for use in a knowledge base or for a “Standard Operating Procedures” manual. Too often a project is rolled out and the event is over, ending any opportunity to apply “lessons learned” in a formal manner for your support staff. As a Manager or Lead, if you can get a hold of the communication plan for a project, you will see who the stakeholders were and you can continue the dialog to make sure you get the best quality information from those truly in the know.

Key Learning Objectives:

• Learn and Apply Communication Skills
• Understand when and how to “translate” for your staff and users
• Pick up and cater to your Audience’s Needs quickly
• Enable your staff easy access to background “and foreground” information

• Analysis of Communication Plan v Standard Operating Procedures
• Create a more “projectized” support center using an analysis of bullet #1 and how your current support processes are communicated, categorized and distributed

Julia Forbes
Brown Rudnick LLP

A Project Management and Training professional with over twelve years of experience in medium to large law firms, Julia has managed staff and projects large and small, all with a keen eye to elevating the quality of support and service impact provided to the organization. Julia is an active member of the International Legal Technology Association where she has spoken and contributed to articles.

Session 605 - Recession Proof Your Career

Today, there is no such thing as job security. You’ve got to look beyond the job market and look within yourself. This session will teach you how to recession proof your career by teaching you: How to building your brand Understand who knows you, and what you’re doing to stay front of mind Getting involved in a "Big C" Community and much more!

Phil Gerbyshak
Relationship Geek - Make It Great! Institute

Phil Gerbyshak, the Relationship Geek and the author of the book Help Desk Manager's Crash Course, has been working with clients to create great customer service experiences for the past 15 years. Phil's mission on this planet is simple: to help people unleash the greatness inside them, by connecting people to the ideas, people, and information they need to crank it up and take things to the next level. Phil has been writing at Make It Great! Institute since early 2005, where he has shared over 2200 articles on building business relationships management, leadership, customer service, personal empowerment, and personal productivity topics. Since 2007, Phil has also been writing for b5 Media, sharing his management and productivity insights. His work has been recognized as one of the top 50 HR blogs.

He currently serves vice president of information technology at a regional financial services firm in Milwaukee, WI, is president of the Milwaukee chapter of HDI and as Midwest regional director for HDI. Phil is a frequently sought after speaker at various companies and professional organizations. He energizes, educates, empowers, and entertains his audience by sharing the tools they need and helping them find the right questions so they can make it a great day.

Session 606 - Super Delicious Services: A Roadmap to Service Delivery Excellence

Super Delicious Services was created as a framework that optimizes the IT Operations Service & Support team’s service strategy at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. The framework successfully integrates a company’s strategy with time-tested models including Katzenbach’s Wisdom of Teams, Senge’s Fifth Discipline, the HDI Support Center Standard, ITIL v3, CMM-I, and Knock Your Socks Off Service. The framework is also structured to take advantage of a continuous approach towards building a “roadmap” of service delivery improvements.

The four key learning objectives of this session are:

Build your own roadmap for your team’s vision and mission.

Presented by

Bill Payne
Amylin Pharmaceuticals

Bill is a results-driven Information Technology leader with 25 years of diverse professional experiences. He is an expert in the design, delivery, and support of cost-effective IT solutions that deliver quantifiable business benefits. At companies such as Pepsi-Cola, Dell, and Whole Foods Market, Bill has proven himself to be a principled, supportive, and open-minded leader. His previous roles have included: data communications consulting, messaging systems analyst, managing multiple infrastructure engineering teams, medical information systems deployment, and retail and infrastructure systems management. Bill is currently fulfilling an IT Director role at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, leading the IT Operations Services and Support group.

Link to this session

Session 607 - Service Quality Metrics: Understanding How to Measure Services

IT organizations are infamous for generating reams of reports, yet often these reports don’t tell the story that the support organization is trying to communicate. IT reporting tends to provide detail from a technical IT perspective, often losing the overall organizational viewpoint in a sea of uninformative data. Since the purpose of a service-oriented organization is to provide the IT Services that enable businesses to succeed, it is essential for service organization management to understand the difference between product reporting and services reporting.

Learn what constitutes service measurements; how to identify what to measure, the components of the SERVQUAL methodology, and how to manage and present this information to the business in a way that clearly demonstrates services value and alignment to business goals and objectives.

Key learning/takeaways:

Learn how to measure if customers expectations are being met—and how to calculate the ‘Zone of Tolerance’ for your service offerings

Presented by

John Custy
JPC Group

John Custy has more than 20 years experience in designing, developing, and implementing IT services management solutions, both as a practitioner and as a consultant. He has assisted many organizations in developing their service strategies and translating these strategies into functional business plans, resulting in improved IT services management practices. John is an ITIL-certified service manager and also holds ITIL Practitioner certifications in IT service management.

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Session 608 - From Disdain to Delight: 12 Steps to Creating a Customer Service Culture

This session presents a case study of the transformation of the internal client services function at Medicis Pharmaceutical, a mid-market specialty pharma company, from a struggling, break-fix shop with low internal morale, significant turn-over and a less than stellar internal perception to an organization with exceptional customer satisfaction levels, high employee morale, and efficient operations through systematic execution of twelve steps.

Ralph Loura
Medicis

Ralph Loura is senior vice president of IT for Medicis, where he is responsible for the company's worldwide use of information technology. In this role, Ralph leads Medicis’ information technology team and directs the company’s strategic technology initiatives to build a systems infrastructure that can drive new efficiencies while continuing to support Medicis’ goal of delighting its customers. Since joining Medicis in 2006, Ralph has been instrumental in shaping IT’s direction. Under his leadership, Medicis has implemented SAP across finance, purchasing, supply-chain and HR functions, performed vital systems infrastructure improvements and a series of process improvements designed to enable Medicis’ IT organization to transform its core operations into a strategic competitive advantage for the company. Prior to joining Medicis, Ralph held a variety of IT executive leadership positions at firms such as Symbol Technologies (CIO), Cisco Systems (Director, IT), Lucent Technologies: Bell Labs Research and AT&T Network Systems. He received a master’s degree in computer science from Northwestern University and a bachelor’s in computer science-mathematics from Saint Joseph's College.

Session 609 - Developing an Effective Service Delivery Model

If you are one of the many support center managers trying to gain control of your service delivery model as a result of mergers, acquisitions and other market-based adjustments, this session will answer the ever-growing questions surrounding the type of service delivery model to best meet the needs of your customers. We will examine in detail the elements of successful customer interactions and examine the overall impact to SLAs and cost.

What are the efficiencies gained or lost with these support methods?

This session will provide you with a framework to educate your stakeholders and gain the information and resources you need to be successful. You will learn:

• What first initial contact resolution ACTUALLY means to you and the business.
• Understand the drivers that aid in the selection of the best methodology for customer contact.
• Understand how these service delivery methods affect your service level agreements.
• Understand the financial impact each of these methods offers.

You will understand the financial impact each of these methods and takeaway checklists you can use in your own environment in order to drive standards for success.

Presented by

Rick Joslin
HDI

Rick Joslin is the author of the HDI Focus books on Knowledge Management, the Knowledge Management Maturity Model, and is the contributing writer for the HDI Service and Support Handbook. He is a certified KCS instructor and guides organizations with the implementation of KCS. He is also a certified instructor for the HDI certification courses.

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Session 610 - More Than A Help Desk: Alcoa’s RIM Service Boosts Service Levels

Every company is reviewing practices and processes to find ways to save money and service desks are no exception. In this session, learn how major manufacturer Alcoa worked with partner TechTeam Global to deploy a Lean IT strategy that has that has lowered costs, raised first-tier resolution, and improved efficiency. By deploying a remote infrastructure management service that resolves traditional onsite calls via the help desk, Alcoa minimized field resources and boosted productivity. With the new program in place, Alcoa is on target to boost first-tier resolution by up to 11 percent.

Key Learning Objectives:

• Do Your Homework. Alcoa will share the results of an internal study it conducted to show how realigning its IT support operations could boost efficiency and save money.
• Get Your House in Order. Learn the three steps Alcoa took prior to deploying remote infrastructure management to ensure its success: instituting internal hardware/software standards, centralizing the help desk, and aligning help desk and local desktop support under one organizational structure.
• Have an Open Mind. Alcoa overlooked the lines traditionally drawn between help desk and desk side services when it evaluated service options. And by adding services such as security administration to the portfolio, Alcoa has saved money and freed internal resources to focus on projects that best utilize their time.
• Be Patient. Implementing a plan in stages has enabled Alcoa to minimize risk and establish a true partnership with vendors.

Understand the dos and don’ts of deploying remote infrastructure management, including how to align the help desk, local deskside support, and partner personnel.

Presented by

Allison Koch
Alcoa, Inc.

Allison Koch has more than 15 years of experience with all aspects of IT support for multiple Fortune 500 companies, from desktop support to the help desk. She has worked for Alcoa for five years, and presented the business case to the Alcoa CIO and other executives about vendor change for the service desk. Koch was responsible for running a business unit help desk within Alcoa, and currently manages Alcoa’s vendor managed help desk. In addition to overseeing outsourcing vendor relationships, she is responsible for presenting twice-monthly updates to the Alcoa Global Infrastructure Leadership Team on the status of the Global Incident Management Policy team, and conducting training sessions with the North America Infrastructure Support Delivery (ISD) Organization. She has an MBA from University of Phoenix with a specialty in Technology Management.

Mike Morabito
TechTeam

Michael Morabito joined TechTeam Global in 1998, and is responsible for the Alcoa service delivery model within North America, including Service Desk, Security Administration, Remote Infrastructure Management, and Technical Staffing. At TechTeam Global, he has successfully delivered on key operational and account management assignments across customer bases. His areas of practice include SPOC (Single Point of Contact) Managed Services, which include helpdesk, desk-side technician services, security administration, and server administration; Nationwide PC Refresh and Movement Services; and Technical Staffing. In addition, Michael has experience in launch management, solutions engineering, sales development, and recruiting. Prior to joining the TechTeam Global, Michael managed customer communication campaigns and call center services for Ross Roy Communications. He earned a BA from the University of Michigan.

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Keynote 5: Laugh at Fear: Overcoming the Fears that Block Success

Overcome the Number One impediment to success and achievement: Fear. No one delivers a funnier, more energizing message on clobbering fear than Frank Miles. With hilarious monologues, juggling, magic, and music, Frank illustrates the simple truths that shatter self-imposed limits. Hear his 7 Presentation Points which spell out ...COURAGE ... C oncentrate on the handle -- what you can put in, how you can respond. O pen your mind to the positive possibilities.
U se your mistakes to learn and grow.
R emember not to take yourself too seriously.
A lways keep the stakes in perspective.
G ive thanks for what you have -- don't fret about what you might not get.
E mbrace each choice as a path to a different adventure.

Frank Miles

Comedian Frank Miles, who had thrilled Las Vegas audiences for over a decade with his feats as a juggler and magician, found himself with some unique new material - after being pronounced dead following a hang gliding accident. When emergency room doctors gave him a second chance at life, he learned his first lesson.

After a full recovery, Frank Miles left one successful career and embarked on another. The response has been tremendous. Courage, he realized, isn't facing death - it's facing life every day. "Laugh at Fear" is Frank’s off the wall, hilarious response to his near-death experience and long road to recovery. He delivers a riotously funny and totally unique show that's also a motivational workshop filled with powerful tools for handling fear.

Using comic monologues, juggling, music and magic, he creates hilarious visual metaphors to illustrate the simple truths that free us from self-imposed limits. He also demonstrates ways to confront issues of change and accompanying stress, while reminding them of what's really important in life, and puts them on the road to achieving their goals.

Frank has appeared on numerous shows like Comic Strip Live, Evening At the Improv, MTV's Half Hour Comedy Hour, and HBO's The Larry Sander's Show with Garry Shandling.

Session 701 - Service Management TOP GUN: Learn What the Best of the Best Do

Welcome to ITSM Top Gun – Do you have what it takes to be a 1 percenter? That is, the elite one percent of ITSM practitioners who can prevail against all the challenges to deliver the value that ITIL offers? If so, why not become a 1 percenter and learn the 7 key steps that every ITSM Program is to follow to deliver ITIL’s inherent value to the enterprise. Be the best – these steps have been compiled from the successful and practical ITSM implementations at organizations of varying size. Few organizations successful complete all 7 steps and even fewer get them right. While each step has been successful in its own right, you can only imagine the success available to the organization that embraces all 7 steps, and you are the key to making the difference! This session is program manager / senior sponsor focused and leverages from successful Case Study experiences of how other organizations, like yours, have excelled in the areas of: Program Establishment, Program Governance, Process Design, Technology Alignment, Communications, Learning and Metrics. If you feel that you could improve in any of these areas there will be clear guidelines, tales from the front line and techniques provided that will help you deliver excellence.

Randal Locke
CA

Randal has more than 20 years of experience in IT Service Management. He has been instrumental in the development and delivery of ITIL solutions for large Clients in the Defense, Services, Manufacturing, Financial industries and within the Federal Government. He has performed these Service Management consulting services in North and Latin America and across Europe. Areas of expertise include Service Management/ITIL Consulting, Service Desk process and procedures, Incident, Problem and Change Management, Business Impact Analysis, Asset Management, Network and Systems Management and Business Process Reengineering.Randal is an ITIL Service Manager. Randal has also co-authored an ITIL Strategy book for international publication by Van Haren Publishing called “Service Management Process Maps.” He is also currently a member of the Help Desk Institute (HDI) and the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF) and is a Certified Help Desk Director by HDI/STI Knowledge.

Session 702 - Making the LEAP from Helpless to Helpful

Seven years ago, Highlights for Children had no centralized Help Desk. As part of a major reorganization, a central point of contact was created that has evolved into the Desktop Services Group. Follow their journey as they struggled to determine their place within the Information Systems department, their goals, their methodology, and their acceptance by both user and their own department.

As a part of that journey, they implemented a process of learning, experimenting, analysis, and partnership (LEAP). You will hear how they dealt with the possibility of outsourcing, and how they utilized information from HDI meetings (both local and national) to expand their responsibilities to include training, asset management, and setting software/hardware standards.

Learning Objectives:

• Using LEAP to improve the performance and responsibilities
• Ways to Use HDI as a resource for your Help Desk
• How to better utilize the hardware/software already available
• Tips on creating partnerships with customers

• Learning more about your current tools and processes
• Partnering with your customers

Tom Lewis
Highlights for Children

For 27 years, Tom Lewis has been a member of the Information Systems department. When his company decided to create its first Help Desk, Tom requested the opportunity to manage that group. With the help of HDI and the local chapter, Tom has turned the Desktop Services group into an important cog in the Information Systems department.

Session 703 - Process Design Simplified

Far too many process designs sit on the shelf – never to be used. A good process design engages the stakeholders, identifies the requirements, and enables automation… which leads to efficiencies gained. In his review of his Process Design Approach, David will demonstrate the importance of good process design and give you some tactical and practical tips to use in your organization. David will go over his Process Design Approach and give some suggestions from experience, things to watch out for, tips for implementing tools, the importance of education & governance.

Learning Objectives:

David Mainville
Consulting - Portal

David was the principal architect of Consulting-Portal’s IT Service Management methodology and ITSM services. As CEO David remains very “hands on” and spends a significant amount of his time working directly with clients and project teams in the design and implementation of IT Service Management programs and processes. David has an extremely comprehensive vision of IT service management, one that is based on over 25 years of practical IT experience primarily in the areas of IT support, operations and Enterprise Systems Management (ESM). David’s career started with front line technical roles leading to progressively senior technical and management positions. He has held the following positions: National Manager of Professional Services, ESM Practice Director, ESM Solutions Architect, Senior ESM Consultant, Field Operations Manager and Senior Field Engineer while serving at Millennia III, IBM Canada Limited and Amdahl Canada Limited. David has spoken at IQPC, itSMF Fusion, the SIFMA Technology conference and has had many customer presentations at Consulting-Portal and AMDAHL.

Session 704 - Lighten UP: What Bright Leaders Do

Do you inspire or require to achieve the results you desire? If you would like to do less requiring and more inspiring then this is the session for you! We’ll explore the attributes, actions and impact of the leaders who inspired the best in us. Core principles discussed will include, vulnerability, teach-ability, account-ability, response-ability.

Kirk Weisler
Team Dynamics

Kirk Weisler is widely recognized as chief morale officer (CMO) of the support industry. A veteran of the customer service management industry, Kirk has worked to develop and implement a revolutionary strategy, philosophy, and approach to the call center world. Kirk is widely sought after to share his insightful stories and foundational philosophy of culture- and team-building with customer service and support center organizations around the country. In addition to his role as professional speaker and trainer, Kirk is currently helping to build a wilderness treatment and training facility for at-risk youth. His unique and diverse background as part of Outward Bound's professional development team, as a former US Army Ranger, and as an experiential team trainer make him a dynamic, outside-the-box motivator, trainer, and an inspiring and entertaining presenter.

Session 705 - Get What You Want in 30 Seconds or Less!

30 seconds can be more valuable than 3 minutes 30 minutes or 3 hours. In this session, participants will learn the art of communicating quickly and powerfully in 30 seconds or less. They will understand the reason communication works in 30 seconds and the importance of having a 30-second pitch. Attendees will explore a technique to get someone’s attention, keep their interest, tell a story, ask for and get what they want. Participants will list tips and techniques for delivery. Additionally, they will understand how to adopt the 30-second technique to all their communications including staff meetings and memos. Colleagues will leave with a 30-second pitch of their own and a template to use for future 30-second communications.

Dana Olson
West Corporation

Dana brings nineteen years of experience from various roles in diverse environments including education, insurance, marketing, and information management. She has ten years as an active practitioner managing help desks, three years providing consulting to small and large organizations implementing best practices for help desks and six years of training and process management. Dana currently serves as the Process Manager at West Corporation. She sits on advisory boards and presents at local and national events. Dana acquired her knowledge through experience and continued education. She serves as President of the HDI Nebraska Chapter and as Central Region Director on the Member Advisory Board.

Session 706 - Reduce Support Costs with a “Tribal” Help Desk!

This session will address how to reduce support costs by tapping the expertise of an organization’s end-users. Debora will show how a trained team of expert end-users can serve as a Tier 0 “Tribal” Help Desk. She will share evidence that 88% of these expert end-users will proactively assist co-workers and lower the volume of calls to the official Help Desk. Finally, Debora will share the following 4-step model Help Desk Managers can implement to create a Tier 0 support team within their own organizations.

Step 1. Define problematic desktop applications and needs most appropriate for “Tribal” support;
Step 2. Identify key end-users within each department who can most easily be elevated to a level of expert;
Step 3. Implement skills-gap training and proficiency measures to certify these selected end-users as experts;
Step 4. Motivate the “Tribal” team to look for opportunities to offer Tier 0 assistance to co-workers.

Participants will leave this session prepared to select key end-users within targeted departments and empower them to function effectively as a “Tribal” Help Desk. Participants will also know how to measure ROI and the success of using this model within their own organizations.

Debora Collins
IT Learning Consulting, LLC

Education consultant Debora A. Collins has been a curriculum developer and practitioner in the IT industry for more than 20 years. Her customized training models have empowered thousands of desktop users in organizations worldwide, including employees of Microsoft Corporation. Her specialty is teaching organizations how to reduce internal support calls by certifying their power-users on common office applications. Debora is a Microsoft Certified Learning Consultant, a Microsoft Certified Trainer, a Microsoft Certified System Engineer, and holds an M.S. degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Brigham Young University, Utah.

Session 707 - ITIL: The State of the Nation

The widespread popularity of ITIL has resulted in unprecedented levels of global adoption. ITIL V3 has been with us for almost 2 years, yet there has been very little information available about its uptake…until now.

Commissioned by Hornbill, “ITIL – The state of the nation” was the first international survey of its kind and the results of the research provide answers to many of the questions practitioners have been asking.

• What versions of ITIL have organizations adopted?
• What is the level of uptake of ITIL V3?
• What are the main barriers to adoption?
• Which processes are adopted first?
• Which processes are rarely adopted?
• What are the average levels of process maturity?
• Are organizations realizing the benefits?
• With the benefit of hindsight, what would adopters do differently?

Patrick Bolger
Hornbill Systems Ltd.

Patrick Bolger is Chief Marketing Officer at Hornbill, a leading provider of IT Service Management software. His responsibilities include providing feedback from the industry to ensure that Hornbill’s solutions adhere to best practice, and mentoring customers to ensure they get maximum value from their ITSM initiatives. Before joining Hornbill, Patrick was VP of Technical Services at Integrated Digital Systems (IDS), where he was responsible for systems integration and technical consulting. Prior to this, Patrick was a principal at Digitel, a specialist consulting organization. Patrick is involved with a number of strategic partnerships and groups that influence the service management industry, including the Help Desk Institute (HDI), Service Futures Group and the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF). He is a popular speaker at industry events and contributes opinion and editorial pieces to a number of industry publications.

Session 708 - Pushing the Envelope: Driving Satisfaction Improvements Using CSI Data

CSI Reports focus on support center results, by survey question (i.e., service dimension), and compare these results to average results for industry-specific and all CSI participants, as well as support center performance compared to organizational goals. While this type of reporting is helpful to fledgling support centers, it does not reveal how a veteran or mature support center ranks amongst the highest performers in the CSI database, or provide insights into which service dimension is most important to the customer as they rate the overall service experience. This session will demonstrate how SSM Integrated Technologies (SSMIHT), the IT/CES service and support division for SSM Health Care, has been able to use benchmarking, correlation analysis, and action planning tools to drive improvements in customer satisfaction.

You will learn the following:

An action planning template for improving customer satisfaction that utilizes CSI data and CRM tools.

Presented by

William Odman
SSM Healthcare - IHT

With over 25 years of IT experience, half of which have been in health care, Bill Odman currently manages the IT needs and upcoming EHR deployments for SSM Health Care's hospitals in Centralia and Mt. Vernon, Illinois, and Maryville and Jefferson City, Missouri. Since 2005, he has managed SSM Integrated Health Technology's (SSMIHT) customer satisfaction feedback process. SSMIHT began utilizing HDI's Customer Satisfaction Index for this process in July, 2008. Bill holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, and recently completed his Masters of Business Administration where his thesis research explored the link between customer and employee satisfaction at SSMIHT.

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Session 709 - Challenges and Best Practices for Managing a Virtual Team

In 2010, a growing number of support centers will have to adapt their style of team management due to the networking of regional offices and work-from-home agents. Managers and supervisors who will have to deal with this reality need to rethink how to mobilize and coach team individuals without human presence.

This session will address those challenges by presenting:

• Successful steps to build a virtual team
• Required fundamentals in remote management and coaching
• Key features and competencies of a virtual manager
• Best practices to train and coach team members
• Tips for team bonding of a virtual group

Pierre Marc Jasmin
Triad Services, Inc.

Cumulating over 16 years of knowledge in human resource management and customer relationship for the call center environment, Pierre Marc Jasmin is president of Triad Services, a consulting firm he founded in 1996. Triad‘s consultants have realized more than 200 mandates and 50 benchmark studies, analysing and comparing operational practices of 50 major North American and European call centers. For 7 years, Pierre Marc has been on the board of directors of Contact Centre Canada. He often acts as speaker for seminars and conferences in America and Europe and also contributes articles for a variety of specialized journals in the call center industry.

Session 710 - Hardware Independent Imaging for PCs

This session will describe how MedCentral uses hardware independent imaging to deploy computers. This allows MedCentral to have one base image regardless of hardware platform for the purpose of deploying PCs. Attendees will learn about the value, creation, strategic implications and cost justification for having one base image.

Andrew Fournier
MedCentral

Andrew Fournier currently manages the IS Support Department at MedCentral Health System in Mansfield, Ohio. MedCentral Health System is a non-profit organization composed of two acute-care hospitals with a combined total of 351 beds and is the largest medical community located between Columbus and Cleveland. Andrew and his team are responsible for supporting over 1500 desktop and laptop computers as well as their associated peripherals. Andrew holds a master’s degree in Information Systems Management and as IS Support Manager he is a key figure in aligning technical support strategy with organizational goals and implementing innovative methods of support delivery.

Session 801 - Build your Technology Roadmap to Success

Customer support, whether internal or external, relies heavily on technology for success. But there are so many technology choices, vendors, and sourcing options! Limited budget, resources, and time compound those many choices and the challenges to make sure it all works together. Whether determining how to use existing technology most effectively or planning for changes or new technology, support organizations face many critical decisions. So how does a support organization determine which of the many things that land on the “wish list” should really be on the “to do” list? And how do you ensure effective planning and the right commitment to change? This session will provide the framework to ensure your success.

Learning objectives include:

• Understand the importance of strategic planning in today’s world
• Review a framework for building a plan and how to apply it to your world
• Discuss key tradeoffs of different sourcing options
• Understand some of the “hot” technologies to consider in your plans

• Build a plan that will enable your operation to meet its goals
• Define ways to use current technology better, as well as filter through the many technology choices

Lori Bocklund
Strategic Contact, Inc.

Lori Bocklund is President of Strategic Contact, an independent consulting firm focused on helping companies optimize the strategic value of their technology and operations. Strategic Contact helps companies develop and execute plans tied to business goals. Lori is a recognized industry leader and published author. She has experience with a broad spectrum of systems, applications, and operational environments. Attendees of Lori's seminars and courses appreciate her enthusiasm, energy, and humor. She has a great ability to use her technical and industry knowledge, along with her excellent communication skills, to make today's complex technology environment more readily understood.

Session 802 - The Mechanics of Empowerment and Delegation

Leaders no longer have to struggle with the apparently opposing forces of alignment and empowerment. Individual contributors can resolve their perpetual frustration with the lack of autonomy in the age of accountability. Through the use of a simple framework and two easy-to-employ techniques, teams and organizations will find themselves in the enviable position of gaining everyone’s best contributions towards a set of agreed upon goals. This empowerment framework provides a vocabulary for situational role clarity. This role clarity is further enhanced by a progressive hierarchy of leadership activities and a proven technique gaining rock-solid alignment while promoting empowerment. The framework is also suitable for use as a performance management tool.

The four key learning objectives of this session are:

• Learn and be able to describe to others an empowerment framework divided into four “Empowerment Zones”
• Learn to recognize different barriers to empowerment, and understand the key behaviors for empowerment
• Learn and use a simple coaching and leading technique that erases ambiguity
• Adapt a planning and performing mechanism that constantly increases alignment

• Begin to use two techniques that enhance your leadership activities
• Incorporate the empowerment model into your team’s vocabulary

Bill Payne
Amylin Pharmaceuticals

Bill is a results-driven Information Technology leader with 25 years of diverse professional experiences. He is an expert in the design, delivery, and support of cost-effective IT solutions that deliver quantifiable business benefits. At companies such as Pepsi-Cola, Dell, and Whole Foods Market, Bill has proven himself to be a principled, supportive, and open-minded leader. His previous roles have included: data communications consulting, messaging systems analyst, managing multiple infrastructure engineering teams, medical information systems deployment, and retail and infrastructure systems management. Bill is currently fulfilling an IT Director role at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, leading the IT Operations Services and Support group.

Session 803 - The Warning Signs of Failure: ARE YOU WATCHING?

Organizational failure is common (NASA, FEMA, Enron, JetBlue, the foreclosure crisis, Wall Street), but it does not have to be. There is a large and growing body of literature on failure that explains why organizations fail to perform and how to prevent them from failing. Preventing failure is not just a matter of having good leadership, well-defined processes and good technology, but resides in practicing good organizational management.

At the conclusion of the presentation, you will:

• Understand the four principle causes of failure
• Learn how to practice the concept of predictable surprise and how it impacts organizational failure
• Show how every employee in an organization can play a role in preventing failure by using after-action reporting
• Identify a set of tools and techniques that an organization can use to prevent failure

• How to assess potential areas of organizational failure
• How to present one’s assessment to senior management

Robert Last
HDI

Bob Last has been involved in the IT technical support field as a manager, trainer, consultant and industry analyst for more than 20 years.

Session 804 - Healing What Ails You: How Internal Process Improvement Gains You IT Credibility

Referencing the ITIL® methodology we know that the primary goal of the Incident Management process is to restore normal service operations as quickly as possible, thus minimizing the adverse impact on business operations. Most service desks therefore focus on time-to-resolution (TTR) as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI). These statistics are accepted as fulfillment of our control processes, but do we recognize the opportunity these numbers present? It is easy to establish where you are; the challenge is determining where you could be and devising a way to get there. The presence of unmanageable factors in a support environment must be acknowledged. But what about the MANAGEABLE ones -- the ones that lie within your grasp within your own organization? The potential for process improvement results from capitalizing on those variables within our span of control. And by improving your own internal results, you improve your credibility with the departments to whom you escalate, thus creating a better opportunity to solve even the most critical issue more quickly. The service desk of Hospital Corporation of America employs a model for improving processes and promoting a goal of continuous improvement throughout the department. This presentation discusses the application of that model to improve performance on TTR of critical-severity incidents but the strategy could be implemented for any metric in any industry.

Learning Objectives:

• Review the ITIL® continuous improvement model
• Apply this model to the Time to Resolution KPI
• Evaluate measurements to build understanding and question conclusions
• Monitor processes and results to identify a course of action

• Utilization and customization of a business improvement model
• Developing commitment toward improvement by fostering accountability within your organization

Tony Jones
HCA Inc. (Metroplex)

Tony Jones is the Assistant Vice President for Client Support Services at Hospital Corporation of America, based in Nashville, Tennessee. With 19 years of experience in Service Desk, Tony is responsible for the operational management of the enterprise service desk for one of the largest, privately owned healthcare companies in the nation. Tony and his leadership team provide enterprise system support for 221 applications to 173 HCA hospitals, 91 outpatient Surgery Centers, and the facilities of 4 other large Healthcare companies. Tony serves as the chairperson of the Service Desk Leadership Council which provides direction and oversight to HCA’s division based service desks. He has been a member of HDI for eleven years. Through Tony's leadership, the maturing adoption of ITIL standards into the Service Desk environment within HCA has been accomplished. Tony has a BS in Biology and in Medical Technology from the University of Evansville and an M.B.A. from Bellarmine College, in Louisville, Kentucky.

Session 805 - Building the Service Desk Training Plan

This session explores ways to overcome the challenge of training service desk personnel. Finding the time, money and the “right training” is a constant struggle. This session will walk you through building an effective training plan.

Participants will:

• Learn a systematic way to Identify training needs
• Discuss various training delivery methods
• Understand the importance of defining expected results of the training BEFORE the training
• Discuss ways to measure success

Rae Ann Bruno
Business Solutions Training

Rae Ann Bruno is an ITIL-certified instructor with more than 15 years of management experience emphasizing process reengineering, employee development, and business alignment of IT services. Formerly the vice president of strategic relations for Previo, Rae Ann consulted with Previo customers on process re-engineering and best practices and trained support professionals on industry best practices. Additionally, Rae Ann has authored many industry articles and white papers. Prior to joining Previo, Rae Ann was the director of IT customer service for Siemens Energy & Automation (SE&A).

Session 806 - Titanic Lessons for IT Projects

R.M.S. Titanic was considered by many, including its designers and builders to be an unsinkable ship. With redundant safety systems that used the latest emerging technologies of the day, the ship was considered so safe that it did not even need a full complement of lifeboats. Yet, a collision with an iceberg put an end to the ship on its maiden voyage and led to the deaths of thousands of passengers and crew. The sinking of Titanic is one of the worst maritime disasters ever.

This presentation analyzes the project that designed, built, and launched the ship, showing how compromises made during early project stages led to serious flaws in this supposedly "perfect ship." In addition, the presentation explains how major mistakes during the early days of the ship's operations led to the disaster. All of these disastrous compromises and mistakes were fully avoidable. Paying attention to how historical projects and emerging technologies of the past solved complex problems of the day provides some very valuable insights into how to solve today’s more challenging business problems. Learn how the lessons learned from Titanic’s disaster can be applied to IT projects today. In modern IT projects, we often have situations where we believe that we have designed, built, or launched a "perfect" solution. The presentation juxtaposes the Titanic story and modern IT projects so that we can learn from the disaster how non-functional requirements can get overshadowed by functional requirements, the executive sponsor can unwittingly compromise the project, and how project over confidence can invalidate some project stages. Entertaining and full of intriguing historical details, the presentation helps project managers see the impact of decisions similar to the ones that they make every day.

Glenn LeClair, CMC
LeClair & Associates

Glenn LeClair is an experienced, “hands on” consultant with an active interest in applying the “Lessons from History” to modern challenges. As a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) he has been an active practitioner in a variety of fields for 20 years. For the last 10 years he has been focused on the domains of ITIL and IT Service Management, is a certified instructor and v3.0 Expert. He is a graduate of Trent University and holds an Honours Degree in Policy Studies. He is a former member of the faculty of Humber College, and an author of several ITIL and IT Governance publications. He is currently authoring a new book in the Lessons From History Series on IT Governance. He is currently and independent consultant in the field of Service Management, and is a former Director of Management Consulting with DMR/Fujitsu Consulting and former Senior Consultant with Hewlett-Packard Canada.

Session 807 - Leverage COBIT to Better Integrate the Service Desk with the Business

Analyze how COBIT can help your organization integrate the Service Desk with the Business and drive higher value to the organization. The concepts of COBIT and DS08: Manage Service Desk and Incidents will be explored and used to develop an approach to bring the business back into the Service Desk’s core focus. In this session, learn about the core concepts of COBIT including mapping business goals to IT goals, establishing Outcome Measures and Performance Indicators, applying the management guidelines, assurance guidelines and the implementation toolset. This session will combine the COBIT and ITIL frameworks as an approach to integrate the Service Desk with the Business.

Julie Mohr
BlueprintAudits.com

Julie Mohr’s experience includes teaching ITSM and COBIT, consulting, and functioning as a senior member of teams at IHS Support Solutions, Agilita, and Pomeroy.

Session 808 - Culture Shift: Moving People Forward

Culture Shift – Moving People Forward™ Customers are more demanding than ever and often choose to do business based on the level of service that they receive. Research shows that the number one reason customers give for dissatisfaction is employee indifference. So, how top companies create a culture that supports employee engagement to develop people who love to service customers? In this workshop you will discover how top companies develop a culture of service – to provide a consistent “top-box” customer experience.

Learn how to:

• Recognize your current culture to understand what people are really saying about their experiences – as an employee and a customer
• Clearly articulate and model a value-driven culture into your business
• Make the culture come-alive inside the company values, vision and goals – especially at the frontline
• Develop a culture of compassionate leaders and with strong employee engagement skills
• Create a one-year momentum calendar that serves as an action-plan for shifting people forward

Bob Furniss
Touchpoint Associates

Bob brings over 25 years of experience as a speaker, consultant and leadership coach. He draws on his early experience as a customer service agent and frontline manager to help companies improve their customer experiences – especially in the areas of contact and support centers. Bob’s company, Touchpoint Associates, offers strategic consulting and leadership training. He has helped some of the top companies in the world re-align their customer service strategies and improve their bottom line.

Session 809 - A Proven Success: Service Management, ITIL, and Lean Six Sigma

This session will discuss and outline ‘Lean Six Sigma’, and how it can be used as a complementary framework to ITIL, and managing your ITSM capability, processes and projects.

Learn how to develop answers and solutions for these classically challenging questions:

• Why does defining a standard approach drive success?
• How does your IT organization transpose and prioritize business demand into project work?
• Do you have unconstrained demand flowing in from the business?
  
  Key Topics and Takeaways:
  • Why Lean Six Sigma instead of other project methodologies?
  • Developing the Strategic Roadmaps
  • IT Demand and Supply Management
  • IT Demand vs. Business Demand
  • High Level IT Service Management – How does this all fit?
  
  
  Presented by
  
  Malcolm Fisher
  Owens-Illinois, Inc.
  

  Malcolm Fisher is the Global Manager for the IT Service Desk for Owens Illinois (O-I), based in Per, Ohio. With over 20 years experience in the industry, Malcolm is currently accountable for the IT Service Desk, with the global responsibility to provide 24x7 first and second level IT Services and Support to the O-I business. He has been involved in O-I’s ITIL journey from the start, and is an active member of the Change Advisory Board at O-I. O-I has adopted Lean Six Sigma framework, which is driving process improvements and efficiencies across the business. Malcolm is a certified HDI Support Center Director, LSS Green Belt, Master Novell Engineer and is also ITIL v3 certified. Malcolm is an active member his local HDI chapter and also the Support Centre Leadership Forum.

  
  
  Link to this session

Session 810 - Methods to Build Confidence and Self-Esteem for Support Center Excellence

The success of your Support Center is based largely on the people you have presenting themselves to provide the excellent service your clients deserve. No matter how fast technology moves in your company, it is down to your people to provide a stable and supportive portal of sanity that people can call on. The confidence and self-esteem you can develop in your people will give your staff absolute control of the support process and will ensure your clients get a positive experience when they call. They can then positively affect their team, their work environment and their new team members. Once your environment is ripe for delegation, you can raise your operation to new levels on the creativity of the empowered team.

Key Objectives:

• Discover how to uncover the passion in your staff through the process of "Reverence".
• Learn how to test the understanding of your existing staff through their participation in training and bringing in their new colleagues.
• Learn to empower your staff through education and the development of self-esteem.
• Learn how to put your Helpdesk on fire by turning over the process keys to your most dynamic team players. Specific Action Ideas / Tools and Templates
• Build in “development” time into your Support Center schedule.
• Involve your staff in the hiring and training phases of recruitment.
• Engage your team in communication exercises.
• Empower your team to sing their success.

Michael Wilson
BDO Seidman, LLP

Michael Wilson has spent the last 10 years in direct hands on experience in exploring various Desk Side and Helpdesk support methods. The Helpdesk group he manages at BDO Seidman LLP enjoys a very low turnover rate due to an emphasis on education. He has brought his experience to this firm from a variety of sources and roles including National Semiconductor and NCR in South East Asia, and Vishay InterTechnology and the Bank of Brazil in the UK. The method and emphasis on education was obtained through training and people development programs in NCR for sales and quality training programs in Vishay InterTechnology to obtain BS5750/ISO9000 quality certifications. Michael holds a degree in Computer Engineering and is ITIL V3 Foundations certified.

Keynote 6: Get Switched On!

In difficult economic times, people tend to make excuses, focus on what’s not working, and become disillusioned—a disengaged team is not good for your bottom line. But it doesn’t have to be this way! “Switched off” employees can turn a small morning upset into a bad day, which evolves into a bad week, then a bad month, etc. Smart companies know that when their employees are “switched on” – for every phone call, every meeting, and every appointment – it pays big benefits. In this exciting and dynamic presentation, “Get Switched On!” Chip shows you how to help your team recapture the power of momentum.

It starts with a compelling vision and a clear game plan for the future. What’s working? What’s exciting? Painting a picture in which employees can see themselves making the vision a reality goes a long way to getting your team plugged back in and switched on! Chip challenges each person to take a hard look at their attitude and results. Do they brighten the work place when they walk in for the day—or when they leave? The goal for the session is to have each person pursue their work with renewed tenacity, high morale and contagious energy.

“Get Switched On” generates incredible energy in your people; they, in turn, can attract and generate the energy to increase sales, energy to enhance customer service, energy to compete for the future. In “Get Switched On,” Chip shows you how to regain the performance potential that a switched-on team can create.

Chip Eichelberger
Get Switched On!

For the past twenty-two years, Chip Eichelberger has been an achiever in the only place that counts—the trenches. After earning his BS from the University of Oregon, he was an award winning salesperson for Jantzen Sportswear. In 1988 he joined world famous author and motivator Anthony Robbins and quickly became the top field sales leader and trainer in his six years there. He is co-author of 10 Secrets of Marketing Success, creator of the acclaimed tape series Gaining the Edge, Double CD sales tool – It’s Not What the Market is Doing, What are You Doing? and the Get Switched On! DVD. He just republished the classic book THINK – Applying The Success Principles of 1918 Today.

Chip pioneered new markets in the United Kingdom and Australia for the Robbins organization as the principal international point man before launching his solo career. He has a magical ability to generate enthusiasm, contagious energy, and results that will last well beyond his program. Your audience will be energized to begin their time focused and inspired to get the most out of their time together or leave with the inspiration to implement a specific game plan to take action on.