John Hamilton, President
Service Strategies Corporation

Introductory Address: Perspectives on the Global Technology Service Industry
The service industry is a global leader in adapting to changing conditions - and conditions continue to change rapidly. This session will examine the latest trends and challenges that are confronting service organisations. Trends in outsourcing offshore, organisation restructuring, eservices, and industry standards will be presented and analysed in the light of the flattened global economy.

Mergers and Acquisitions – Lessons for the Future
The IT industry across the globe has been subjected to more mergers than most – one Australian Support Centre is onto their fourth name change in 7 years. This session looks at two high profile centres and how they are handling the challenges of system and cultural integration with their previous competitors.

Oracle and PeopleSoft
2 years ago Oracle purchased Peoplesoft. We hear from two key executives, Andrew Pogonoski, Director, Customer Insight & Advocacy, APAC Oracle and David McGowan, Senior Director, Technical Support, APAC Oracle, on the challenges of pulling together different systems and teams into a coherent business strategy.

Symantec and Veritas
Mark Evans, Director of Symantec Technical Support, tells of their story over the same journey in the merger of the security and storage software giants.

Jonathon Ladmore, Senior Support Engineer
Cisco Systems

Problem Solving in Support
Cisco Technical Services embarked on a project three years ago to define and educate their engineering group in problem solving techniques. In this presentation they look at the results achieved and the change management journey embarked on.

Facilitated Workshops
Following our 2006 Support Showcase a number of support executives suggested the concept of a facilitated workshop session for this years Showcase to enable more informal discussion among execs – the following is the result!

Workshop 1: Managing Virtual Teams
Facilitator: Mark Witty, Product Support Manager Enterprise Tools - Global Customer Support, Oracle

Workshop 2: Effective performance metrics for the Support Centre, teams and individual engineers
Facilitator: David Radford, Senior Support Engineer, Rockwell Automation

Andy Westlund, North America Support
Director Mentor Graphics

The Customers First Port of Call: The Web!!
The internet has become an increasingly important avenue for delivering complex technical support. In the beginning, technology was king. Your web guru built a support site so you too could have a self-service channel. Today content is king and your site has evolved into a high-quality knowledge repository. You’ve asked your customers to use the site but the phones keep ringing. How do you get your customers to use your web site first when they need support?

Andy Westlund, North America Support Director, will chronicle Mentor Graphics’ experience meeting this challenge. Hear how Mentor Graphics successfully positioned the web as the best way to access technical support, and understand the regional factors that affected the worldwide implementation. Learn the tactical process changes necessary to make your web support site the first resource customers use.

Ben Stephens, Principal
Service Strategies Corporation

Maarten Tentij, President of the Australian Chapter of the Association For Services Management International

Launch of the Field Service Practices Programme
Join Ben Stephens, Principal of Service Strategies Corporation and Maarten Tentij, President of the Australian Chapter of the Association For Services Management International at the Launch of both the SCP Field Service Standard and Field Service Managers (FSM) Programme. Cocktails will be served in the foyer following the launch.