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

Rovo & JSM: Atlassian's Agentic AI-Powered Solution for High Velocity Service Management

- Atlassian's Agentic AI "Rovo" is now free for all Atlassian Customers
- Rovo's agents collaborate with your team
- Rovo extends JSM's capabilities beyond Atlassian's system of work

Rovo & JSM: Atlassian's Agentic AI-Powered Solution for High Velocity Service Management

Alemba Discovery provides real time data to support your ITSM process within Alemba Service Manager, increasing accuracy and reducing fix times. 

Find out how Alemba Discovery, a modern auto-discovery system that sweeps across your hybrid estate 24/7, maps what keeps your services alive and surfaces every zombie cloud instance. By identifying over-provisioned VMs, unused software licenses or forgotten laptops gathering dust in a stockroom, it is a must-have cost management tool. The discovery engine feeds hardware and software asset management information, enabling the reconciliation of what it finds against purchase records in the CMDB to minimise stockroom inventories of hardware and unused software licenses. Surplus devices or software licenses are identified for redeployment, resale, recycling and removal from expensive support and insurance contracts. 

In the cloud, its AI-driven cost management reports analyse utilisation data to flag idle resources. Waste is often found to run as high as 30% of the average organisation’s cloud bill. The result is a continuously accurate CMDB, lower cloud burn, leaner CapEx, and a smaller carbon footprint.  With budgets tight and regulators watching, the real question is: can you afford to be without it? 

In this session we will show you how to:
- Understand what your services depend on, minimising outages and disruption.
- Save money by harvesting hardware and software for re-deployment.
- Control cloud costs, preventing a cloud cost spiral

Alemba Discovery recovers wasted cloud and real assets - can you afford to be without it?

Tired of complex pricing models and over-engineered ITSM platforms? IT Care Center brings clarity and control back to service management with a streamlined, all-in-one ITSM solution. Discover how our single-license model, automation-first design, and enterprise-grade functionality empower IT teams to deliver faster, smarter support — without breaking the budget.

Takeaways:
- How a single, transparent licensing model reduces TCO and budget surprises
- Real-life use cases of AI and automation workflows eliminating repetitive tasks
- Why customers say ITCC is the “ITSM platform they actually use every day”

From Chaos to Clarity: A Unified ITSM Experience

IT organisations have matured from running experiments with AI to practically implementing it in IT operations. Agentic AI has the potential to offload a big chunk of repetitive IT support work that’s too nuanced for traditional automation.

But there are some lingering questions about its practical applications. In this session, you will learn:
- How you can implement AI agents for IT support and what’s possible today.
- How IT leaders can elevate the role of IT and catalyse business growth.
- What IT jobs are likely to look like in the era of agentic AI

AI Agents for IT – Distant future or present reality?

With Xurrent, you gain a comprehensive, user-friendly solution that simplifies Service Management while providing advanced capabilities to boost efficiency across your entire organization – beyond just IT.

Watch our demo to see how Xurrent revolutionizes Service Management, making it smarter, AI-first, more intuitive, and highly impactful.

- See how AI improves efficiency and productivity at the service desk
- Understand the benefits of using modern Service Management across the enterprise
- Learn how ITSM and status pages complement each other during incident response

Discover the Power of Modern Service Management

There’s no doubt that AI can speed things up in ITSM—but the real magic happens when it’s built to support your people, not the other way around. IT teams can realize ROI only when they ensure that AI capabilities empower every service desk persona, from the end-user to the IT process owners.

In this session, we’ll demonstrate how ServiceDesk Plus brings high-value AI capabilities—zero additional cost, fully built-in—to help unlock unparalleled efficiency and experiences to the three core roles in your ITSM ecosystem. Learn how:

- End users get fast, intuitive support through AI-powered conversations and self-service.
- Agents automate the repetitive stuff so they can focus on what truly matters.
- Process owners gain the insights they need to monitor, analyze, and fine-tune workflows.

Modernize your ITSM for the AI era with high-value AI in ServiceDesk Plus

A great user experience is essential to service success. In this session, see how Sunrise helps service teams work smarter, reduce costs, and save time while delivering faster, more consistent support. We’ll showcase our AI-powered Teams chatbot, self-service portal, reporting, integration and automation – all designed to enhance user experience and service quality.

Key takeaways:
- Empower users and deflect tickets with our AI Teams chatbot
- Streamline workflows with smart automation and integration
- Improve service visibility and user satisfaction with self-service and reporting

Better Tools, Better Service, Better Experience with Sunrise

Watch as we pull back the curtain on how Freshservice transforms complex, siloed IT environments into a unified solution—enhancing both IT and employee experiences across your organisation.

In this 25-minute, demo-led session, you’ll see why over 50,000 organisations are choosing Freshservice to modernise their IT service management.

Are you racing ahead with AI, or stuck behind with legacy systems?

IT never sleeps—and with Freshservice, it doesn’t have to. Our product experts will showcase how Freshservice helps you stay ahead by preventing the “check engine light” moments before they happen:

- Cut through complexity with a unified, AI-powered ITSM platform that significantly reduces resolution times—no matter your organisation’s size.
- Reimagine support with conversational AI agents that offer zero-touch, human-like interactions—no code or heavy training required.
- Stay one step ahead with proactive insights that detect patterns and prevent issues before they disrupt operations.

Discover how Freshservice, powered by smart automation and AI, delivers agile, intelligent service operations—without compromising on control or reliability.

Uncomplicated ITSM with Freshservice: Take a fresh look at how AI meets ITSM

Discover how AI-related criteria are incorporated into the Accredited Tool Vendor (ATV) software assessment model and what enhancements are coming to the model in the future.

AI in ATV

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

While your IT team is stuck routing tickets, resetting passwords, and answering the same questions for the hundredth time, AI agents are quietly revolutionising how the smartest organizations handle service delivery. These autonomous systems are a force multiplier, designed to tackle the repetitive work that burns out your best people, freeing them to focus on strategic initiatives that actually move the business forward.

This session reveals how conversational and workflow AI agents operate behind the scenes in modern ITSM environments, delivering enterprise capability without the enterprise complexity. You'll discover how these uncomplicated solutions learn your organization's patterns, handle complex service orchestration, and create employee experiences so smooth that technology becomes invisible.

What you'll see:
• Live demonstrations of AI agents handling complex service requests and orchestrating multi-step processes
• Real examples of IT teams redirecting talent from repetitive tasks to strategic innovation, letting humans do what they do best
• The technical workflows you can deploy in hours, not months, creating seamless, uncomplicated experiences for end users

Behind the scenes with AI agents: How they actually work to automate IT service delivery

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IT Service Delivery

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Behind the scenes with AI agents: How they actually work to automate IT service delivery

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