2009-11-25 Agent at Home with Rob Perocchio

The "Agent at Home Program (AAH)" is an Accenture initiative designed to make use of home-based agents connected through broadband access, call routing systems and computer technology to produce a virtual help desk. Sometimes known in the Help Desk or Contact Center industry as 'home-shoring, many North American organizations been using home based agents for several years now. The AAH program will provide an opportunity to reduce operational costs by lowering facility related costs and providing a reduction in Service Desk specific tools (call routing, ACD, monitoring, etc). Staffing related costs such as agent retention, training and attendance will also be reduced by an estimated 35%.

2009-05-07 Recession Proof Your Life with Phil Gerbyshak
May 7th, 2009 conference in Ottawa

Driven to bring results to your business, Phil has developed an enlightening and stimulating PLAN for business people and entrepreneurs looking to watch their dreams take off. This distinctive method of pushing beyond your barriers has helped countless people live their lives with passion and focus. Phil has a charming and delightful personality, which brings warmth and personal interaction with his audience. When Phil speaks with your organization, you will feel as though he was chatting with you one-on-one.

2009-05-07 Navigating the Metrics Maze with Eric Zbikowski
May 7th, 2009 conference in Ottawa

Today's service desk technologies and reporting packages make it easy to capture copious amounts of performance data. Most service desk managers can tell you everything from last month's average speed of answer to yesterday's average handle time. But what does it all mean? More importantly, what does it tell us about how to manage and optimize service desk performance? In this session, Eric will demonstrate definitive cause-and effect relationships between the most commonly tracked Key Performance Indicators (KPI's), and discuss how these insights can revolutionize the way your manage your support desk

2009-05-07 Knowledge Management in IT with Michelle Popovich
May 7th, 2009 conference in Ottawa

During this session Michelle will share her knowledge of the help desk as it pertains to self-service and knowledge management. RightAnswers offers a solution which enables companies to successfully create, manage, and use knowledge to reduce costs and deliver better service. The result of the implementation of these products and services is a dramatic reduction in help desk calls, improved first call resolution, and a significant reduction in call volume.

2009-05-07 Help Desk of the Future with George Spalding
May 7th, 2009 conference in Ottawa

There is a lot of talk in the industry regarding ITIL V2 & V3. You are a Service Desk manager and you are not sure of what to do with ITIL or how it impacts your Service Desk. George, recognized as a leading industry expert in ITIL and Service Desks, will walk us through ITIL V2 and V3 as it pertains to the Service Desk and what you should do to prepare for ITIL and the challenges you will face and concur.

2009-05-07 End-to-End Service Delivery & Control with Brian Lett
May 7th, 2009 conference in Ottawa

EMC has a complete end-to-end IT Service Management and Automation Solution that helps you understand and control your infrastructure, and provide excellent delivery of service. The solution delivers a cohesive ITIL-verified strategy that allows you to discover, integrate, federate, automate, and control your IT environment. Learn how EMC’s IT Service Management enables organizations to:

• Standardize and automate processes, putting you in control
• Connect information silos for greater visibility of the IT infrastructure
• See the entire ecosystem Deliver service levels end-to-end

2008-05-15 Synergizing the Generations by Brenda Iniguez
May 15th, 2008 conference in Ottawa

What does the face of America’s workforce look like? … in five years? Got about a third of your workforce heading for retirement soon? Do you have age gaps of 20-30 years between team members? This session will discuss some tips to attract and integrate the GEN X and GEN Yr’s into your IT Support organization. We will discuss ways to inspire their proactive 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 in mass.

2008-05-15 Staffing Strategies by Katherine Spencer Lee
May 15th, 2008 conference in Ottawa

Technical support directors and managers are constantly being asked to do more with less. But how do you keep supporting centre staffing costs low while still delivering outstanding customer service to end users? It’s all in the staffing. In this session, Katherine will examine how the 21st century help desk is evolving into a full-service support centre, and how directors and managers need to balance the need to keep costs and headcounts low while still delivering world-class support.

2008-05-15 Quality Business Processes Modeling by Dave Gray
May 15th, 2008 conference in Ottawa

Any Organization’s Service Delivery capability, in support of a common Business Vision, is an integration of various ‘models’ working together, such as an Organization’s Business Model, Organizational Model, and Process Model. IT Organization’s who are looking to implement a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) using Web-Services are also beginning to understand the significance of documenting their Business Processes. The "Requirements for Quality Business Process Modeling" presentation will introduce the latest process modeling graphical notation, “Business Process Modeling Notation” (BPMN), which has been designed to bridge the gap between Business and Information Technology groups. The presentation will also briefly introduce the additional elements required to give insight into the expected behaviour of the process prior to implementation of the process.

2008-05-15 Lifting Mountain by Guy Cabana
May 15th, 2008 conference in Ottawa

A very powerful conference that gets people thinking about their personal and professional lives. People leave this session with the desire to take action and be accountable for their dreams and aspirations.

2008-05-15 Investing in the Most Important Customer by Rich Hand
May 15th, 2008 conference in Ottawa

How can you motivate your team to provide a positive experience for your customers if you ignore your own need to stay motivated, informed, and engaged? Join Rich Hand, Executive Director of Membership at HDI as he shares his life examples and escapades from his new book, “My Life; Ignored! Life Is Too Short To Ignore Yours!” to help you take charge of motivating the most important customer; YOU! Rich will help you improve your outlook on life by showing you what he has “accomplished” even though most of his efforts have been, well ; ignored! If you are looking for a little “pick-me-up”, some humour, and you are willing to shake off conformity, this is the session for you.

2008-05-15 Introduction to conference by Steve Worth
May 15th, 2008 conference in Ottawa

Opening address by Steve Worth, President HDI Ottawa.
         Investing in the Future 

An opportunity for you, the Service Desk Managers and staff to stay informed of current trends, network with industry leaders, vendors and practitioners and better understand where “investment in the future” can make a difference to your customers.

2008-05-15 Emotional Intelligence by Kristin Robinson
May 15th, 2008 conference in Ottawa

We’ve all come to believe that intelligence, or IQ, is an important factor in our success. Amazingly, recent research suggests just the opposite – that intelligence, as measured by one’s IQ, has little to do with success in business. Rather, it is a person’s Emotional Intelligence, or EQ, that accounts for up to 85% of a business person’s career success. Think about some of the most successful people you know – they may not have an ivy league degree, but most likely, they are adept at understanding their own emotions and reading the moods of other people around them. The good news is that, unlike IQ, you can improve your EQ with conscious effort! This workshop will not only introduce concepts of emotional intelligence, but will also provide you with practical steps to improve your emotional intelligence and that of your support center.

This is a two-part metrics presentation. In March Bob conducted an interactive session to discuss the basics of metrics, what needs to be measured from an operational perspective, and how to use metrics to move the service desk to the next level. What makes sense to measure for my desk? How do I move toward standardization? Where does this thing called a balanced score card fit? Bob presented pointers to good metrics and metrics principles.

Roberto Perocchio (Rob) a Manager with over 15 years of experience with special project or group management activities as well as multilingual qualifications (fluent English, French and Italian). Rob has spent the past 10 years working within the technology support or help desk operations sector. He has experience working with federal institutions, large corporations, and small business. Rob is actively involved in Operational Leadership with an emphasis on productivity, supervision, coaching and mentoring of over 50 individuals. Rob currently manages the Accenture Infrastructure Outsourcing Ottawa Service Desk, part of their North American Delivery Center Organization.

Security is a cross-functional responsibility. There are incidents that are obvious (theft of equipment, virus infections) but there are classes of incidents that have security implications. A database corruption that requires recovery from back up re-enables previously suspended account access. Network traffic analysis study commandeers a switch span port thereby disabling the IDS that was using the span port to detect network attack signatures. Service disruption on a server. Sys admin disables/uninstalls host IDS or AV agent software. Syslog servers failed backup. Compliance requires syslog storage for 180 days on line and 7 years off-line. Audit discovers two years later that the logs have been overwritten and no evidence is available. Arnaud and John presented security solutions.

The discipline of "Process Modeling" invokes various emotions from business, IT and service desk staff but not for the same reasons. Beginning to 'capture' a process on paper is critical if an organization wishes to understand their process (the 'devil' IS in the details) in order to determine where process re-engineering improvements can be made for process effectiveness and efficiencies. David presented his unique process creation and documentation solution.

Come and listen to issues and solutions on service desk security and intrusion. Lt(N) Paul LaHay has just successfully completed his thesis on "Using Spyware to Conduct Surveillance in Private Networks". He has spent a few years digging the underworld of spyware and intrusion technologies. He had a Q&A session on current intrusion and protection issues. Come and find out how vulnerable and "securable" your help desk centre can be.