The Service Desk Institute (SDI) has been connecting service professionals across the world since 1988 and is the leading global community for everyone working in the service and support industry. Our mission is to inspire service desks and support teams to be brilliant.

With a passion for providing industry best practice and sharing knowledge, SDI is dedicated to guiding, inspiring, and connecting ITSM, service desk and support communities. A respected, trusted and independent advisor to the industry, SDI has inspired thousands of organisations and professionals around the world to embark on journeys of service improvement and to be the best they can possibly be. For more information, visit www.servicedeskinsitute.com

If you work in service delivery, you probably don’t need another explanation of why self-service, automation, or AI matter — you already know the benefits. 

This session is about how you can make the most of what’s already in place, uncover quick wins that are often overlooked, and keep moving forward with small, meaningful improvements that add up over time. We’ll share practical ways to ease day-to-day pressure, get the most from your data, and build momentum on your path to continual service improvement — whether you're aiming for SDI accreditation or just want to keep making things better. 

What you’ll take away:
•            Simple, proven ideas for improving services using tools you likely already have in place
•            Real-world examples of how AI and automation can support smarter, faster user interactions
•            How to surface useful data that drives improvement and helps you stay audit-ready

Driving Service Improvement: Making the Most of What You Already Know

Okay, so you’ve achieved something exceptional within your service desk (or your people have) and now you want to shout about it (and them) – and rightly so. The SDI Awards 2026 await…but how do you ensure your entry makes the coveted awards shortlist, and gives you the best chance of proudly accepting a shiny new trophy?

If you’ve never thrown your hat into the ring, the SDI Awards could seem a somewhat intimidating and confusing place. While glitz, glamour and lots of the bubbly stuff typically await those lucky enough to reach the final, the initial road that leads to the ‘big night’ of the awards ceremony can seem a long and windy one. For example, with 6 awards categories, how do you make sure you’ve made the right choice? With many stories within your service desk to tell, how do you pick the best (and most relevant) one? And, once you’ve all done that, how do you make sure you tell your story in a way that captures the judges’ attention, and gives you that all-important edge?

Confronted by such awards-shaped dilemmas, you could be forgiven for failing to even reach the stage of downloading the submission brochure! But it needn’t be this way. Today's webinar panelists know a thing or two about winning SDI awards, all having been category winners, finalist or judges in 2025. Allow us to alleviate the head-scratching and make your awards journey as smooth, seamless and enjoyable as possible. Register now for our judges and winners top tips, plus live q&a with them - ask them anything to help turn uncertainty into pure, unbridled awards enthusiasm…

How To Win an SDI Award 2026

Think of your IT landscape as a living system—every signal, click, and alert triggers a cascade of reactions across roles and tools. In this talk, Akshay zooms in on a single 24-hour window to show how interconnected roles in IT and beyond respond, recover, and innovate during an incident. Learn how alignment across teams fuels speed, clarity, and real collaboration in a world where downtime isn’t an option.

Key Takeaways:
• Modern ITSM platforms must deliver 4 core capabilities to drive agile and resilient practices.
• Great incident management starts with designing for everyone’s experience, from developers to end-users.
• Uniting stakeholders on one platform fosters transparency, trust, and next-level performance.

Rewiring the Connected Enterprise: Supercharging Incident Response with Unified ITSM

Everybody is talking about AI, but what role does it play in ESM? Can you trust chatbots to manage your tickets? Can you safely build and train AI to help you secure your data? In this webinar will be answering these questions by showcasing use cases of Ebbot AI in TOPdesk environment . Join us to find out:
1. How AI powered ticket automation can free time for your team to focus on tasks that matter
2. How Chatbots can be built and trained to help secure your data and put safeguards in place
3. How AI can integrate into every communication channel used across your organisation and adopt to evolving business needs

No-Touch Ticketing - Future or Reality?

In service organizations, we often focus on coaching individuals to be more empathetic—while ignoring the systems that make empathy difficult to sustain. This session challenges that approach. Drawing from experience management, emotional intelligence, and continuous improvement, Michael Mattson explores how anyone, from frontline agents to senior-level leaders, can influence a more emotionally intelligent service culture. Through simple, tactical shifts in thinking, action, and language, attendees will learn how to move from friction to flow, from burnout to trust, and from transactions to human-centered service, even without changing the org chart.

Three Takeaways
- You don’t need to “own the system” to influence it. Human-centred change starts with how we listen, reflect, and act—even inside roles with limited authority.
- Policies, processes, and metrics shape behaviour. Emotional intelligence must be embedded not just in people—but in the way work is designed and measured.
- Start with small, tactical moves. Use language, reflection, rituals, and conversations to shift culture from the inside out - one interaction at a time.

System-Level Human Culture: How to Build Emotionally Intelligent Service from the Inside Out

Evolving A Service Management Career To An Experience Management Career

Discover the remarkable journey of the XMO implemented by Vale with their partner DXC

By implementing a well-structured process and solid governance, XMO Vale and DXC have not only achieved exceptional results but also transformed Experience Management from a theoretical concept into a functional and impactful practice. Stay informed about the latest results achieved and see how Experience Management Office is commitment to excellence continues to drive improvements.

XMO Hands On: Vale's Journey to Excellence

Traditional methods of measuring IT performance often fall short in proving the value of IT to the business and gaining trust. HappySignals, a global leader in IT Experience Management (ITXM), challenges these old ways by focusing on two simple yet powerful metrics: happiness and productivity. This approach helps bridge the gap between IT and the business, ensuring that IT teams, partners, and vendors are aligned with metrics that truly matter. The decision to adopt ITXM often arises when organizations reach a pain threshold, realizing that staying in the comfort zone of SLA/KPI metrics is no longer sufficient. Instead, ITXM offers a path to uncovering the truth and addressing root causes, ultimately leading to improved decisions, IT service delivery, and business outcomes. Join Mark at this session where he will share his ITXM experiences and provide a path you can take to make IT better!

ITXM or not ITXM? Decision Making and Starting the Journey

Experience isn’t just what happens. It’s what people say about it. In this session, Tania Benade-Meyer reveals how social media conversations can uncover blind spots in how experiences are delivered, perceived, and remembered. From surprising behavioural insights to small shifts that made a big difference, you’ll learn how to turn online chatter into actionable strategies that shape better customer outcomes.

What They Really Think: Using Social Listening to Decode Experience Gaps

Today’s IT isn’t just about fixing problems—it’s about driving business success. In this session, Camila explores how IT can shift from a reactive function to a strategic partner by aligning with business needs. Learn how understanding expectations and leveraging your own experiences as a client can elevate service, boost satisfaction, and build stronger relationships. Your first hand insight is more than valuable—it’s your superpower in delivering exceptional IT.

Key Takeaways: 
- IT’s role is evolving from troubleshooting to strategic partnership—success is the new metric.
- Aligning with business clients' expectations boosts satisfaction.
- Your own experience as a client is a powerful tool—use it to define and deliver world-class IT service.

Know Your Clients, Grow Your Business: The Power Of Experience In IT Services

The Christie is Europe's largest single-site cancer centre and is the most technically advanced cancer centre outside of North America. We are facing our biggest challenge yet. The NHS is in financial recovery, the number of people being diagnosed with cancer is rising, and people are living longer with cancer (which is excellent but also a challenge for our services). The Christie is embarking on a ‘Future Christie’ strategy to face these challenges head-on, with digital and technology at its core. Learn about what The Christie is doing and plans to do to digitally transform cancer care.

Digital Transformation in Cancer Care

Digital transformation, like any major organizational change, is a journey. To navigate it successfully, tracking and measuring progress is essential. Depending on the audience, key metrics may include organizational change adoption, project performance, product and service quality, overall organisational maturity, and others. 

Join us as we explore which measurements provide real value and how ITIL can support your transformation efforts.

Digital Transformation: Are We There Yet?

The role of IT is evolving from a support function to a strategic enabler of seamless employee experiences. Hear how The University of Strathclyde leveraged Freshworks' Enterprise Service Management (ESM) capability to extend better employee experiences beyond IT, transforming Finance and other business units with intuitive workflows, self-service capabilities, and enhanced reporting.

This session will show you how ESM helps break down silos, improve collaboration, and elevate the service desk’s role within the organisation. Then, see how IT can drive business-wide efficiency and deliver real value across departments, through Freshworks.

Positioning IT as a Strategic Enabler with ESM: Hear from University of Strathclyde and Freshworks

Sally will provide the tools to develop an optimization and automation plan that transforms your Service Desk into a high-performing, customer-centric operation. Providing ways to leverage AI technologies, streamline processes, prioritize initiatives, and measure the impact of their transformation while effectively managing risks and avoiding common pitfalls.

Level Up Your Service Desk: Unleashing the Power of Automation & AI

In a time where technology and digital transformation are evolving at lightning speed, businesses are constantly seeking ways to stay ahead of the curve. But amidst all the innovation, one thing remains constant: the importance of the customer. 

Let's embark on this journey together as I share my personal views and experiences and discover the magic that can happen when digital transformation and customer experience align - and what happens when they don’t.

Customer Centric Magic: When Digital Transformation and Customer Experience Align.

Traditional ITSM workflows have served us well but today’s IT landscape demands more. With rising security threats and growing productivity expectations, it's time to evolve. While embracing this shift requires a cultural change, modern ITSM platforms make it easier by showing what’s possible with security-first and AI-driven workflows that plug security gaps while elevating productivity.

This session explores how ServiceDesk Plus can fast-track your transition to AI-powered and security-infused workflows, highlighted with a real-world challenge of managing major incident collaboration and response.

Takeaways:
- Understand why traditional ITSM needs to evolve to meet the demands of today's IT landscape
- Learn how AI-driven and security-first workflows can transform IT service delivery operations.
- See a real-world example of how ServiceDesk Plus weaves AI and security into major incident response

Re-imagining ITSM workflows with security and AI at the core

Highlighting how collaboration and diverse approaches can drive digital transformation in service desk operations. Showcasing effective strategies for uniting teams to enhance service delivery and maximize value for users.

Bringing tribes and methodologies together, one team delivering value to Age UK

Once seen as a weight dragging the organisation down, getting in the way, and holding our staff back from their purpose and charitable mission, our IT team embarked on a transformative journey to flip this on its head, becoming an engine driving innovation, quality, and efficiency in our staff experience and technology offer to become an ultra-high performing, impactful team. 
 
This session unpacks the journey, the culture shifts, and practical changes in both our people and our technology that turned a once failing IT department into an in-house Technology Services Strategic partner.

From Anchor to Engine: How We Transformed IT from a Burden to a Business Driver

Service Management with our Mind as the Service

Living The Dream: The Incident Free Service Desk

Do You Want Fries With That? Practical application of ITIL-based processes & practices in the real world.

Generative AI - The Service Desk Game Changer!

Making “Shift Left” A Reality

XLA 3.0: The Future of Employee Experience Management

ITIL Rewired: Turning Frustration into Innovation

XLAs In Action: The GEA Group Experience Management journey

AI behind-the-scenes and on the frontline: Innovation is Everyone’s Business

Becoming the Chief Service Officer That AI Needs

Much Ado About …? ITIL v3 vs. ITIL4

From Chaos To Customer Success

Designing Exceptional IT Service Desk Experiences: A Human-Centered Approach

SLA: Supportive Leadership for All – A Neuro-Inclusive Approach

The Road to Value Creation

AI and the Future of Work: What To Do When Your New Colleague’s a Bot

Military Values in ITSM

Habits of a World Class Team

The Driven, High Achiever, The Perfectionist Or The Imposter In the Room?

How to successfully implement XLAs – real life lessons

Breaking the Cycle: Mastering Technical Debt in IT Service Management

The Goes Wrong Show - Top Tips For Handling The Situation When Everything's Going Wrong

Making IT Decisions that Matter Using Human-Centric Experience Data

ITSM & AI - A Question of Ethics

The Future Sidekicks of Service Desks!

Spark25 On-Demand Recordings

Discover how to elevate service desk operations by integrating Knowledge Management and ITIL best practices. This presentation equips managers with strategies to streamline incident, problem, and change management while improving first-contact resolution and reducing resolution times. Learn to align knowledge processes with ITIL frameworks, foster continuous improvement, and boost team efficiency. Packed with actionable insights, this session empowers service desk managers to drive excellence, enhance customer satisfaction, and deliver measurable results.

Enhancing Service Desk Excellence: Leveraging Knowledge Management and ITIL Best Practices

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Knowledge Management

ITIL

Best Practice

Problem Management

Change Management

Continual Service Improvement

Are you an IT service management professional interested in developing your knowledge and improving your job performance? Join the IT service management community to access the latest updates from industry experts. Learn and share insights related to IT service management (ITSM) including topics such as the service desk, service catalog, problem and incident management, ITIL v4 and more. Engage with industry experts on current best practices and participate in active discussions that address the needs and challenges of the ITSM community.

IT Service Management

As an IT professional, many of the problems you face are multifaceted, complex and don’t lend themselves to simple solutions. The information technology community features useful and free information technology resources. Join to browse thousands of videos and webinars on ITIL best practices, IT security strategy and more presented by leading CTOs, CIOs and other technology experts.

Enhancing Service Desk Excellence: Leveraging Knowledge Management and ITIL Best Practices

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