Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Come learn how EMC has leveraged key reward and recognition programs, employee development, process innovation, and change management practices in their journey to drive exemplary customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and bottom-line financial contributions within the business.

Presentation Abstract:

This session will focus on people, the technical support organization's most important asset as a direct customer-loyalty enabler. It will cover key management and leadership techniques, reward and recognition, and processes and applied systems and tools that have been used at EMC to drive exemplary results, as recognized by the achievement of winning the SSPA Best Support Staff Practices award.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

This panel discussion presents attendees with a unique opportunity to hear from and interact with education services executives who are successfully navigating the challenges of the current economic climate. This session also will provide a preview of the additional sessions on this, TSW’s first, Education Services track. These sessions are targeted at helping those responsible for education services understand optimal business models and revenue growth strategies.

Presentation Abstract:

What are the most common challenges facing education services managers and executives today? What are the responses that have been the most effective in confronting these challenges? This panel discussion, involving a collection of education services executives from several prominent technology companies, will address these questions. The panel also serves as the kick-off session for the education services track that is taking place at TSW for the first time ever.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Is reducing time to value important to you in today’s “lean IT” conditions? If the answer is yes, come see how CA helps its customers achieve this objective using “Go-Live with CA.” This session will explain how CA ensures timely execution and enables a seamless transition to production followed by proactive monitoring and, ultimately, success.

Presentation Abstract:

In our current economy, customers are looking to maximize their dollars and ensure that when they do spend, they spend wisely and get a quick return on their investment. To meet this challenge, companies need to be agile in the delivery of their implementation projects and get customers into production quickly, efficiently, and successfully. Support can play a key role in helping achieve this by working with our services and partners teams. Using the “Go-Live with CA” program example, learn how support and services/partners can work together to ensure timely execution of implementation projects and enable seamless transitions into production for customers. Learn how proactive monitoring of key stages throughout the implementation life cycle ensures that deliverables are met and projects are on time. Finally, find out how lessons learned are applied to continually deliver excellent value to customers.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Looking for a PSA system to automate your services business or simply want to learn how to operate your services group more efficiently? PRTM is a global management consulting firm that advises Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies, including leading services companies. Hear straight from the source how they successfully implemented OpenAir’s PSA solution at PRTM and what they learned in the process to help streamline their own internal operations. This session is for those who are looking for the latest in operations science as it is applied to the services world today.

Abstract coming soon!

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Today’s economic and business environment demands increased commitment by leadership to improve, adapt and overcome many obstacles facing customers and partners. In his presentation, Dillard Myers will discuss Cisco’s key service principles for generating revenue, cutting costs and optimizing processes that have made service the leading customer loyalty and customer satisfaction driver at Cisco.

Presentation Abstract:

How do you manage a nearly $5-billion parts inventory, deliver six hardware replacement options from two-hour to next-business-day delivery in 120 countries, and work 250,000 service requests a quarter, while improving customer satisfaction with demanding customers and complex equipment? That is the challenge facing Cisco every day. This presentation will explore how Cisco is managing the customer experience through the introduction of smart services that can identify equipment problems before the customer is even aware of them. It will cover the use of the latest Web 2.0 technologies, such as video and online collaboration to speed case resolution. Attendees also will learn how Cisco listens to customers in many different ways, analyzes the data, and then converts it into actionable items to drive continuous improvement of the customer experience and generate stronger customer loyalty. This presentation will highlight Cisco’s three-point process for improving productivity and reducing costs to support day-to-day operations and future needs.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

In this tough economic climate customers are leaning on their hardware and software suppliers to reduce the costs for maintenance and support services. How are these vendors responding to that pressure? And what do executives see as the future growth prospects for their maintenance and support related revenues? You might be surprised at how the respondents to this landmark survey answered these and other service related questions.

Presentation Abstract:

Michael Israel, senior research director for AFSMI and SSPA, will discuss the results and analysis of the survey these associations conducted during the summer on maintenance pricing practices. The associations receive more comments and inquiries on this topic than almost any other. Members and those considering membership will find the results and analysis of this survey extremely informative and very relevant, especially in this economic climate where many maintenance and support organizations are facing increasing pressure from their customers to reduce pricing for maintenance and support services.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

By attending this session, you will understand how use cases from previous projects can be abstracted into generic best practice knowledge libraries. Further, you will also see how leveraging such knowledge libraries can significantly accelerate architecture and design for a transformation project. This session also demonstrates an approach to designing a service oriented architecture by mapping business processes to system capabilities that support them.

Presentation Abstract:

This case study demonstrates the value of Knowledge Libraries in reducing the time to market for IT Transformation. Through a real life example, we show how critical architectural decisions can be made quickly, and consensus achieved with business stakeholders while key technology decisions are still outstanding. The case study also demonstrates the use of a set of system agnostic industry best practice use cases and process definitions to create a foundation for a service oriented architecture. This capability based business architecture enabled validating of business requirements and providing a basis for selecting and finalizing the application architecture where there were gaps, while at the same time enabling design to progress in other areas.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Discover the success mantra of the world’s leading enterprise software companies with KPIT Cummins’ test-proven support services. Our value-added business models help you achieve more for less.

Presentation Abstract:

We all have witnessed the catastrophic effects of global economic turmoil across industries. The upside is that it has compelled organizations to turn leaner for the better. The constant decline in the IT spending of customers is posing a serious threat for enterprise software companies who bank on maintenance revenues as their strategy for sustainability. Here again, they are pressurized by the high cost of operations constantly eroding their margins. The emergence of innovative business models in such a scenario comes as a sigh of relief. However, the effectiveness of these models is still a question for many. KPIT Cummins invites you to explore the various business models and their transformational benefits while building a superior customer experience. Specific examples will exhibit the right strategy of adoption for each model, the key success factors, and the modus operandi, thereby attaining business agility.

Presentation Abstract:

Customer support has entered the next generation with customer needs increasing due to the more advanced and mobile technologies available. Customer support operations face a tough mission – to support new consumer technologies while securing and optimizing their support operations as consumer demand continually increases.

Join Bomgar, the leader in next-generation enterprise remote support solutions, and PlumChoice, the leader in next-generation online customer support, at the Technology Services World Expo Theater #1 Tuesday Oct 20th @ 1:40PM-2:20PM for an exploratory voyage into the new frontier of customer support.

Learn strategies for:

• Controlling customer support costs
• Maximizing security in supporting mobile customers
• Optimizing processes and staff in the face of new technologies
• Supporting multiple OS & different devices

May your business live long and prosper well into the next generation.

Presentation Abstract:

Knowledge access technologies enable greater levels of self service for technology customers, even when dealing with complex solutions and large implementations; such technologies also enable higher levels of contact center efficiencies, including higher rates of first call resolution and shorter overall call duration. Both results increase levels of customer satisfaction and trust, which in turn lead to increased up-sells and cross-sells, as customers understand their provider’s commitment to ensuring success with its products and services. At the same time, intelligent search solutions enable the convergence of disparate knowledge management systems, product information repositories, customer service solutions, email and desktop content, through unified access via a single, faceted search interface. This session will trace the evolution of a leading technology provider’s use of enterprise search from a single departmental implementation to supporting all call center and extranet content, and present Key Performance Indicators which will help participants to develop their own business cases to support such implementations.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

The AFSMI and SSPA benchmark survey yields an extraordinary amount of financial, operational, and customer satisfaction data about our members maintenance and support operations. Member companies use this data to compare themselves to other organizations of similar size in similar industries. It’s been a while since the questions in this survey were updated. This breakout session will outline the steps that are underway to update the benchmark survey and survey tool to bring it completely up-to-date to include the data that is most important today to both hardware and software support organizations.

Presentation Abstract:

The status of the comprehensive refresh, redesign, and update of the AFSMI and SSPA benchmark survey, database, and survey tool will be reviewed. The benchmark database is in the process of undergoing a significant redesign and upgrade. We will also discuss the new survey tools being considered for this purpose.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

In today’s economy, old ways of doing business must be changed, and there is no area more vital to focus on than customer service. Customer service is a strategic system; it is not a cost center. The strategy starts as the product is being developed and continues until the product is no longer used. The profitability of the product will be negatively impacted if any part of the “total system” is omitted, or if it is not understood that service is a profit center and should be added or subtracted from the business profit center.

Presentation Abstract:

Customer Service starts at product concept and continues trough development, production, delivery, customer training, use - until it is no longer used. Profits are effected if the process is not followed. This is a great chess game!! Those who play the best game will satisfy the customer, have greatest profits, have happy customers and will truly enjoy the game.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

This case study debunks the myth that world-class partnered technical support is only for large companies with hundreds of customers. Mirapoint will talk about how they have successfully debunked this myth and leveraged MindTree’s framework in cost-effectively supporting their customers without sacrificing their core activity of developing innovative solutions.

Presentation Abstract:

Building and growing a competent technical support team for complex products in the face of an ever-growing customer base is a daunting task for any product company―more so for SMBs. At the same time, handing off customer-facing activities to a partner is a difficult decision fraught with significant risks. A few questions SMBs battle with are:

• Does the partner understand and have the capability to support my savvy customers who are using technically complex products?
• Can the partner help transform the technical support function with the latest trends, such as collapsing layers of support and adoption of Web 2.0 technologies?
• Can the partner help the SMB through the journey of support maturity levels of Reactive -> Organized -> Demand Reduction -> Value Added Support?

Can an SMB achieve this support nirvana by retaining focus on its core business and on a shoe-string budget? Most of the SMBs do not think about these questions, as they feel they do not need and/or cannot afford a full-time tech support arm. Engaging a partner is not an easy choice for an SMB, as the partner always wants volume business to provide affordable services. This is not true anymore. Tech support is not just for large companies. This case study debunks the myth that world-class partnered technical support is only for large companies with hundreds of customers, large budgets, and high call volumes. In fact, it is often more productive for SMBs to look at partners to offload their support requirements. Mirapoint will talk about how they have successfully debunked this myth and leveraged MindTree’s framework to cost effectively support their customers without sacrificing their core activity of developing innovative solutions.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

How can a major corporation support 300 products with less than 100 support staff? Come find out how “The Power of Pods” can help an organization leverage its most powerful asset: its people. Using the latest trends in social media, virtual teams, and distributed management, Greg Johnson and Jesse Hoobler will provide a new perspective on “doing more with less”.

Presentation Abstract:

Companies often ask that their employees do more with less - improve the customer experience to build loyal relationships that stand the test of time. In order to create a better customer experience, the managers in PBBI Global Technical Support have started by looking to their employees. Attend this breakout session to learn how PBBI Support are using self-managing teams, empowering employees through social networking and increasing their agent’s skill base without expensive training. Come hear how PBBI Managers are:

• Moving away from the traditional tiered support model by experimenting with self-managing teams affectionately referred to as pods. These small groups of individuals own the entire support experience for the customer.
• Using some of the latest web 2.0 technologies to create virtual communities that connect all of their team members worldwide – breaking down some of the barriers they have encountered with traditional communication channels.
• Having individuals create 15 minute training sessions around customer scenarios allowing the support team to disseminate expert information to their peers. This self investment creates reusable content which is customized to the business.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

How many times in your career, have you been able to hear first hand specific tips on how to effectively sell your ideas to all levels within your company from over 15 top leaders in our field. Roslyn had a rare opportunity to interview some of our top woman leaders and found out what makes them tick! You are going to walk away from this session with a couple ideas that could make the difference in your next communication.

Presentation Abstract:

We are all sales people regardless of our role in our corporation and no matter how much experience and knowledge I think you would agree we can always benefit from learning from others in our field. Roslyn Jones, Vice President of Global Education Services for Informatica Corporation has personally interviewed some of the top Services leaders from Cisco, HP, salesforce.com, BMC, and more to find out what they have learned in their many years in the business world. Roslyn has taken this assignment very seriously and is excited to share trends and unique examples to help us effectively communicate at all levels.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Why attend the SaaS panel session? This is the best place to come and hear from, and interact directly with, leading SaaS support executives on how to deliver world-class support in an SaaS environment. This panel will address any topic on the minds of the broader community.

Presentation Abstract:

Stephen will be leading a panel discussion with support executives from a number of leading SaaS organizations. They will discuss a wide variety of SaaS support related topics including how to attract and retain the best people to work in an SaaS environment, what technologies are really being used in SaaS organizations today (e.g. what are they using for knowledge management, what have they learned around best practices, what tools you use to engage directly with customers), how do they see support changing over the next few years and what that will mean to your organizations and business. This is always a very interactive session with the audience, so please join to engage with this community.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

The twist on this Las Vegas slogan has never been truer with the pressures of today’s market demands. Every interaction you have with your customer becomes part of a total experience that either helps build or destroy your brand.

Presentation Abstract:

Learn from industry-leading experts how they have implemented and utilized knowledge to significantly improve the customer service experience. Whether you’re providing technical support for mission-critical networks, or assisting field technicians in the repair and maintenance of complex gaming machinery, the requirement for fast access to accurate answers is becoming increasingly important.

InQuira customers, Juniper Networks and IGT along with industry partner DB Kay and Associates join forces in an interactive panel discussion. Join us to learn the trade secrets and best practices.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

This session will cover how to streamline support operations to reduce costs using technologies that include virtualization, real-time business intelligence, knowledge management, and proactive support. Combining all of these not only reduces the tickets coming into the support center but solves the issues with higher efficiency.

Presentation Abstract:

Informatica has reduced the time to close cases significantly in the last few years by leveraging technology in all support operations. In this session you will learn how we use technology in different areas like collaboration, global lab infrastructure, knowledge management, virtualization technologies, cloud computing and getting real-time insight into support operations. In-spite of growing complexity of the products Informatica support operates at by delivering more with less resources using these technology initiatives.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Companies engaged in a Service Implementation can learn from others who navigated turbulent waters. This presentation from Coherent, a Hi-Tech Laser manufacturer in Silicon Valley, describes their service transformation plan with the 'Top Ten' tips and tricks to help extract maximum value from their implementation. Learn from the industry leaders who have successfully made the transition and bring back a few secrets of success for yourself.

Presentation Abstract:

Most companies today are struggling to hold revenues and margins in the down market. Some leaders in manufacturing, however, have resorted to bolstering their in-house and field service delivery to their installed base and competitors' base to be able to better monitor the customer user experience. Selecting the right or best application software package to address this strategy can often be a daunting and harrowing experience. This case study will cover the service transformation from product emphasis to service focus and the decision process adopted by this market leader with a "10-step process" to ensure their success. Attend this session and learn how your company can also benefit from owning the end customer user experience with the right tools in place.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

If you’ve struggled with how to analyze knowledge management user data from many different sources and translate that into something valuable, come see how Avaya is developing an aggregated approach to track, report, and support the effectiveness of each KM user through use of an innovative scoring methodology.

Presentation Abstract:

Through a partnership with eVergence, Avaya has teamed up to define and implement an innovative approach for measuring participation in its knowledge management program. By normalizing across eight key data points similar to a passer rating or football "quarterback rating," they have created an aggregated approach to defining the value of each and every KM user. This has aided in enhancing the overall value of each user by supporting not only contribution of content, but also peer feedback and harvesting of the most valuable content possible. This presentation will look at the algorithm methodology, how it was created, and how it was implemented into an on-demand report for an organization of over 6,000 associates. It also will discuss communication to the end-user community and the resulting impacts on their KM participation as well as how this can be customized for nearly any size implementation.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

This hands-on workshop provides the opportunity to bring real-world issues, problems, and concerns directly to a group of peer service mangers. Using “group think” techniques, all attendees will provide feedback to the “hot seat” participant. Why hire a consultant when you can get the collective brainpower of 50 experienced service managers by simply bringing your issues to this session?

Presentation Abstract:

Bring your current issues, problems, and questions about the challenges of servicing customers for SMB-size companies. Take your place in the front of the room in the "hot seat" as you collect feedback from all attendees that is specific to the issue that you are trying to resolve. This "group think" session will provide unique perspectives where anyone can add input.

Presentation Abstract:

SAV NETWORK is implementing a brand new technology to support technical teams across the world under a concept known as VAM (Video Assisted Maintenance) - a high definition video system. The new system will allow an on-site technician to link with maintenance experts to obtain technical support using WiFi or 3G or satellite telecoms.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

This session will give attendees a unique insight into the career paths and career decisions made by these women service leaders. Some of these professionals came up through the services ranks, while others are cross-discipline trained. Each has a distinctive and compelling story regarding services and advancement within their respective companies.

Presentation Abstract:

Ever wonder “what did that person do to become a leader in their company?” And then wonder “what are the critical things I need to do to develop my professional skills and visibility within my company and my industry?” Or “how do I meet other women leaders in services?” "Women in Services: Profiles of Success" features leading women in services who have achieved leadership positions with some of the industry’s leading companies. Sharing their success factors and the path they took is invaluable to others looking to expand their areas of responsibility and leadership within their organization. This panel also provides the unique opportunity for women in the industry to meet other women leaders.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

In these tough economic times, having the endorsement of a third party can make a significant difference when renewing service contracts, competing for new business, and delivering on SLAs. SSPA’s Organizational Development Program provides a unique opportunity to demonstrate your commitment to customer support excellence and gain a competitive advantage. Get all your questions answered and hear directly from Symantec, Taleo, and HP as they describe how the program’s best-practice criteria, methodology, and structure, coupled with SSPA industry experts, helped them drive toward top-quality support services.

Presentation Abstract:

Three industry-leading organizations—HP, Symantec, and Taleo—moved closer to their goals of delivering support excellence in 2009. Leveraging the SSPA Organizational Development Program best practices and feedback from independent support experts, they enhanced their organizations’ operational efficiency, quality, and consistency. These three executives provide an open view into how they have developed a leg up on the competition and differentiated their customers’ support experience.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

This session will cover the elements of a customer experience management (CEM) strategy and its value proposition. Attendees will learn how to develop satisfied, loyal customers, how to reduce customer churn, how to discover the “voice of the customer,” and how to maximize life-time customer value with a customer-centric culture. Presented will be the knowledge and tools necessary to position an organization to be synonymous with customer service excellence, as well as information on how to retain and grow the customer base.

Presentation Abstract:

This session will define customer experience management (CEM). It will look at the identification, design, management, and measurement of all the interactions a business has with its customers to ensure that they continue to buy from and recommend the organization to others. It will cover the challenges your business faces today, why CEM is important to these areas, how a CEM strategy is part of the enterprise strategic plan, how implementing a CEM strategy yields major benefits, the elements of a CEM strategy, and the roadmap for getting there. As a part of this session, Netezza, a global leader in data warehouse appliances who has revolutionized and simplified analytics for companies drowning in data, will provide a case study in building customers for life. Netezza has won, for the second consecutive year, the prestigious NorthFace ScoreBoard Award from Omega Management Group Corp. The award recognizes those companies who by vote of their customers have achieved a 4.0+ on a 5 point scale for the given calendar year. The rating (4.0+) is clear evidence of continuously exceeding their customers expectations. Participants will be able to determine strengths and weaknesses at customer touch points, and understand how to leverage the strengths and address areas of weakness, reduce customer churn, discover the “voice of the customer,” maximize lifetime customer value, establish a customer-centric culture throughout the company, and motivate employees to “go the extra mile” for customers.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

If you believe that “change” is the only constant in technology, then you’ll want to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to understanding how social media—the biggest change agent for culture and communication since the advent of the Internet—will impact your services business. Organizations who can respond quickly to this shifting landscape by leveraging agile business models and dynamic business processes are uniquely positioned to win.

Presentation Abstract:

Even six months ago, hearing “Twitter” and “customer service” in the same sentence would make most technology service executives grimace. Today, there is more shrugging than grimacing—it seems that everyone is talking about social media, but few of us understand how it fits into a business model. When you consider that two-thirds of the global Internet population visits social networks, time spent on these sites is growing at 10 times the rate of the global Internet, and that social networking is now more popular than e-mail, one thing is clear: being in social media means being where your customers are. Being in the social media space is all about engagement. In fact, for some companies, it's the number one initiative that cultivates the company's most valuable asset: customers. This session will explore leading examples of technology companies that use social media to great effect in servicing and engaging their customers. We’ll delve into the ROI of social media and give you compelling data to help advance your customer experience initiatives. Finally, we’ll outline a simple how-to guide that will get you started down the path of least resistance in structuring your social media tools, people, and processes.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

So often in the Services business C-level executives have unrealistic expectations about Education revenue growth and margin attainment and this session will share a few examples how to set expectations that are based on your companies goals and objectives. When determining margin targets it is important to know how to compare apples-to-apples and not be set up for failure and compare yourself to other companies when it may not be a true comparison.

Presentation Abstract:

Roslyn has been in the Education business for over 25 years and participated on a board of Education professionals consisting of over 70 companies. She is going to share with you some key take-a-ways to help plan for 2010 and to set clear and realistic expectations to senior management and your team. Predicting and forecasting the education business during these macroeconomic times is a challenge and Roslyn will share some recent information that could assist in your planning processes.

Presentation Abstract:

As EMC has expanded its product breadth and market coverage, and reactive support effectiveness is a given to be competitive and relevant. Its customers expect, and EMC has recognized, that support leaders are those who anticipate problems and institute proactive, preventive measures ahead of any impact to customers' IT and business operations. To meet this challenge, EMC has created a support process and supporting application called the Early Warning System. This presentation will cover how the Early Warning application is being deployed and put into operation by support personnel and the process and "play books" that make Early Warning a benefit to EMC and its customers.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Supporting an appliance introduces an unusual set of challenges for an organization. When the customer has an issue, there are few easy problems that KB and community can resolve. There are, however, some simple steps that do not require significant investment which have proven to be beneficial in terms of customer satisfaction, ensuring that skilled technical staff is able to do more than deliver good technical solutions, thereby protecting maintenance revenue.

Presentation Abstract:

Netezza is the founder of the data warehousing appliance concept. With an appliance, customers expect a different level of service and need far fewer skilled staff to support it. This presentation discusses the challenges of supporting a product where all the problems are difficult, little can be deflected by the KB, and the skill levels of the customers are low. Netezza has built an award-winning support organization that provides immediate access to experienced second-level engineers. The term “appliance” hides the true complexity of a product and the associated skills required to support it. This presentation covers how the basics are still used to manage the support organization, but also discusses other issues that have to be addressed in order to continue to scale and succeed.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Complexity in the networks deployed today starts with the decisions network designers make with regard to physical layer infrastructure (e.g., fiber and copper cable management). This session will cover the value-added services that hardware product vendors deliver to assist their customers with designing, deploying, and optimizing their cable management solutions.

Presentation Abstract:

This session will provide information about the types of value-added services offered by hardware vendors in the telecom industry as well as how these services are leveraged to generate product revenues.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Revenue from educational services―as a discretionary spend―is typically one of the first to be impacted when tough economic climates occur. Attend this session to learn some of the strategies that have been deployed at one organization to assist not only in stemming falling education revenues, but also have resulted in growing the business.

Presentation Abstract:

The last 18 months have been a tough one for education organizations as the economy has shrunk and training has seen its revenues fall or flat at best. Some Education organizations, however, have continued to thrive and grow despite this. In this session Linda Moss, VP of WW Educational Services will share some of the strategies implemented at BMC as the Education department has gone about reinventing itself. The session will share experiences of how addressing Sales and Marketing strategies, re-evaluating Education Offerings as well as working more holistically with other elements of the Services organization can contribute to ensuring that Education is seen as providing value and can assist in continuing growth and success for training for ‘for fee’ Education organizations.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

This session will cover the relationship of interconnected processes and how they can drive decisions for managing your business. Attendees will learn how to use a portfolio approach to better manage projects, improve ROI, and justify investment in resources, as well as gain an understanding of the benefit of scale, and the leverage gained, by utilizing a standard model globally.

Presentation Abstract:

In today’s challenging times it is critical in establish efficient operational teams focused on driving business results through effective cost mgmt, process development/maintenance, and business level planning/measurement.

First step is getting to “one” operational state out of multiple integrated companies/teams. We’d like to share an approach we’ve taken.

Moving from org charts to system views

• Integrations and quality improvement management

Changing the project management approach

• Organize for project lifecycle
• Recipe for success – repeatable engagement approach
• Portfolio management discipline driving projects

Consolidating onto a single global delivery infrastructure and operational focus

• Standardizing on a single delivery process model globally
• Starting with the web portal and case management platforms
• Driving standardization in all other infrastructure and processes
• Phone backbone, software distribution (new, update, & patch), etc.
• Rapid integration of acquired assets (90-180 days) of close
• Keeping the wheels on during change
• Organizational change management
• Integrate then improve

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

In this economically challenging time, technology services providers must make decisions on how to best invest for the future while maintaining service levels today. Supporting services that are running on the cloud will be different than supporting those of the past. This session will help you balance this investment looking forward.

Presentation Abstract:

This session will discuss how dynamic infrastructure, cloud computing, and the increasing use of virtualization and automation impact support, monitoring, operations, and general serviceability of cloud-like infrastructure. As data centers continue to grow larger and become more complicated, what techniques can and should be used to see the important events and issues that impact service levels? Is that server going down "architecturally" significant or should it fail in place? How does this impact organizational issues and operations? What are some of the patterns being used to support large-scale dynamic systems and how can you implement them in your data center or support organization? How do we develop better products and services to help us see the "forest through the trees?"

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

There has never been a better time for SSPA members to take full advantage of the knowledge and experience contained within our research response team. But first, everyone needs to understand what the research team offers and the best methods to access this information. Improve service efficiencies, reduce trial-and-error, and shorten your learning curve by using the research team to help solve complex service management issues.

Presentation Abstract:

This panel discussion comprised of the SSPA research team will provide an overview of all research services offered through the Association membership and then allow the audience to fire-off questions about current industry issues and trends.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Customers are blogging, posting, and tweeting about the problems they are facing and the questions they have. Lois Townsend is responsible for determining how HP should use social media to answer them. With more than 290 million customer interactions last year alone, this is no small task. She will give the top 10 lessons HP learned in the last year for you to take back and apply to your support organization.

Presentation Abstract:

Social media has changed the rules of customer support. Customers now spend more time in online communities than they do on email. And this isn't a U.S. phenomenon. Two-thirds of the world's Internet population visits a social network or blogging site.

For every customer that picks up the phone to get help there are thousands more that first turn to online communities. And, this creates an enormous opportunity.

To take advantage of this opportunity, HP launched a new, online community - the HP Consumer Support Forum. HP expected the Forums to improve the customer support experience and reduce costs. It didn't anticipate the power that listening, conversing, and collaborating with customers would have on its customer support operations.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Headcount is the largest expense for support centers and typically accounts for 60% to 70% or more of budgets. In addition, the cost of staff turnover is phenomenal; there is the “hard cost” of hiring replacement staff and training them, as well as productivity loss in getting them “up to speed.” New developments have transformed staff motivation from art to science, and research has confirmed that 20% productivity improvement and 50% reduction in turnover can be achieved by support centers that utilize these key methodologies.  Attend this session to learn how to achieve similar results.

Presentation Abstract:

Every organization has a few stars that out-perform everyone else. These people have positive attitudes, are highly motivated, and understand how to deliver great service. They are focused on the key objectives and require very little management. We all wish we had more people like them, right? What if we really could “clone” them? What if you could condition your agents―not unlike Pavlov's famous dog―to respond like those “model” agents? What if there was a way to have all your agents clamoring for their performance stats and anxious to meet expectations? What if you could increase overall performance by 20% or more? It may sound like wishful thinking, but this is no longer a dream. Research shows that the right combination of performance reporting, presented in the right way, can actually condition agents to want to perform better. This session will teach you how the right performance measurements, presented in the right way, that are tied to the right rewards will turn all your agents into top performers.

Presentation Abstract:

This panel will discuss the details of the Service Research & Innovation Institute's (www.thesrii.org) key strategy / road map for driving "Service Innovations" by focussing on major service industry verticals (health care, financial, energy, telecom, government, education, retail, etc.) as well as major horizontal domains (technology platforms, business process/tools/models, service operations, etc.).

This panel will include speakers from IBM Research, HP Labs and other key Service Research organizations around the world.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Customer adoption is difficult at best. The rise in popularity and use of social channels― from Twitter to Facebook to YouTube―has turned the one-way road connecting you to your customers into a series of multi-way highways with numerous intersections. As service providers, you need to be able to identify and participate in conversations related to your products and brands wherever and whenever they occur on the social Web. In this session, you will learn how Webtrends’ services department has proactively, and reactively, engaged with their customers through the implementation of specific monitoring techniques across various social media channels.

Presentation Abstract:

Web 2.0 technologies continue to become more ingrained in people's everyday activities, and the scope of conversation that occurs among consumers and businesses will only increase with that growth. We are currently at a juncture in the business world that presents a whole new outlet to monitor and field customer feedback, and organizations who are not actively participating in some sort of social monitoring/outreach and measurement within their service operations will be at an extreme disadvantage. Service operations need to begin utilizing the innovative social technologies available to transform their organizations from a reactive one to preemptive one. When the service arm of any organization, big, medium or small, is actively participating in this type of outreach, teams are better equipped to prioritize efforts on specific areas of concern; effectively reducing costs and increasing customer satisfaction. Webtrends began implementing social media within their service operations early in 2009, and have been on the bleeding edge of adopting web 2.0 solutions to effectively monitor conversations which occur about and around their product offerings and services group. In this presentation, Dave Canelis, vice president, Global Services, Webtrends, will outline the benefits to picking up the chatter occurring outside traditional conversations, and show how this form of monitoring can be adopted within both SMBs and larger enterprises.

Why You Need to Attend This Session:

Why attend the SMB panel session? This is the best place to come and hear from, and interact directly with, leading SMB support executives. This panel will address any topic on the minds of the broader community.

Presentation Abstract:

Stephen will be leading a panel discussion with support executives from a number of leading SMB organizations. The panel will discuss what SMB organizations did to get through the downturn and what they are doing now to ensure they are positioned for continued success. They will discuss a wide variety of topics including how to attract and retain top talent in a tough job market, what technologies are really being used in organizations today (e.g., what are they using for knowledge management and what they have learned around best practices), how they see support changing over the next few years and what it will mean to your organization and business. This is always a very interactive session with the audience, so please join to engage with this community.