SITS16 – My experience

The following provides a summary of my day at the SITS16 show, held at the Olympia in London on the 8th and 9th June 2016.  I attended the first day, taking the opportunity to attend a number of seminars and visit a number of the stands.

 

I arrived shortly after 9:00 and it was already busy.  With a VIP badge obtained through Global Technology Solutions I was able to bypass the queue and move straight through and directly to the seminar registration area.

 

Armed with my list of seminars I was able to book my first preferences and then head to the first session in Theatre 3.

 

Shift-left: the next gear change for ITSM

Wolter Smit | TOPdesk

 

Although I have talked about shift left with a number of people over the years and encouraged organisations I have worked with to adopt a “shift left” approach, this session still managed to deliver some different views and approaches.

I particularly like the approach of using knowledge articles with every incident / call logged, using a 3 step approach;

  • Linking the article with a call when it has helped solved the issue,
  • Editing an existing article to add more value and relevance to the knowledge article or,
  • Creating a new one if one does not exist.

Another key message was to start small and build, do not expect to have the full set of accurate knowledge from the start and ensure involvement from the people that have and will use the knowledge.

 

Then after a bit of networking, always a major part of these events, I headed off to Theatre 2 for my next booked seminar

 

The new YOU – What an ITSM professional will look like in 2020

Matthew Hooper | LANDESK

 

A fast paced presentation that covered a lot of topics, painting a picture of the past to show the possible future direction and what skills need to be developed as both individuals and as an IT department.

Some key areas to take away were;

  • The need of IT to be part of the business, and in many cases it is the business
  • Security
  • Businesses no longer having their own IT, but IT being a facilitator of services
  • Speed and agility of the business must be matched by IT
  • The traditional ITSM processes need to be adapted (not thrown away) to support the agility and speed
  • Business taking risks in terms of new products and markets and IT must support this by working with them and not seen as inhibitors to them, otherwise they will go elsewhere

 

 

Overall a good couple of seminars that were worth attending.

 

A brief opportunity to catch up with the team at Pink Elephant, who I am currently working with on a contract at ASOS.  As an independent consultant it is good to work occasionally as an Associate of Pink Elephant, with the backing of their consultants and training.

 

So onto the afternoon

 

The next session I attended covered a SIAM implementation at a Finish Bank.

 

How a century old financial institution embraced a SIAM model

Juha Berghäll, Sanna Sinivuori | Service-Flow Corp / OP Financial Group

 

A joint presentation between a vendor and end user customer.  Thankfully we got more of the case study from the customer rather than the vendor trying to sell their products, although overall I felt that there was not a great deal of substance in terms of learning that I got from this presentation.  Agreed I now know a bit more about the bank and the operating model it adopted in regards to multiple suppliers, but I didn’t really find out any examples on the real issues faced.

 

During my next break from the seminars a good chance to visit some of the stands, with varying sizes and approaches.  It was good to see a couple of the independent consultancies represented in ITSM Goodness and Syniad IT appearing alongside some of the bigger companies.

 

My fourth and final seminar was shown in the literature about building a global service desk.

 

Building the global service desk

Suresh GP | TaUB Solutions

Although the presentation was very interesting and excellently delivered, it was more about the two factors that are considered as the key to the success of building a global service desk, these being People and Culture.

Many of the messages and examples given can be applied to any situation when embarking on working with other countries and nationalities, and so from that perspective it was a worthwhile session and emphasised the need to understand and work with people, taking into account their cultural backgrounds and drivers.


Finally to wrap up the day, a bit more networking and visits to vendors stands. 

 

Summary of my day at SITS16

Overall a good day, where the seminars that I attended provided some useful information and messages that I may be able to apply within the various roles that I undertake.  The opportunity to catch up with consultants and vendors is always useful and hopefully some of the contacts made will bear fruit in the coming months and years.