The Service Management speaker seminar programme, consisting of twin workshops, running side-by-side throughout the two day event on 16 and 17 September, has become a highly popular part of the show. Presentations are delivered by industry personnel, relating their various personal experiences.

Visitors to the event are typically sourcing information that will help them improve their business in a number of ways. Many will be considering taking similar steps to those taken by the speakers in their service management roles.

The programme will include managers of organisations that range from utilities to social housing and visitors will be able to glean information helping to avoid some of the pitfalls, identify their own requirements and improve the return on investment of service management systems under consideration.

Presented each day by Service Management editor Dennis Flower and publisher Mark Turner, the theatres will also include workshops by the Mobile Computer Users Group (MCUG) on the afternoon of the 16 September, and the Association for Services Management (ASFM) after lunch the following day.

Many of the issues discussed will be common throughout the service industry, regardless of which sector the speaker is working in, enabling visitors to draw comparisons between their business and those described within the presentations.

Many of the speakers have enjoyed diverse careers and have been employed in senior positions in a variety of businesses. Alan Barnish, warranty business analyst for commercial vehicle giant Iveco, has previously worked for MBNA Credit Card Bank as an HR analyst and occupied similar roles with a large company of solicitors and a local housing authority.

His presentation will illustrate how Iveco ­- with an operation that revolves around a system requiring numerous pieces of paper to arrive in the right place at the right time - has implemented a mobile workforce management system that has shortened payment cycles and vastly improved the service provided to the company’s complex network of dealerships.

Professor Graham R Clark is a senior lecturer in operations management at Cranfield School of Management. He trained as a mechanical engineer with J Lucas (Electrical), graduating from Leeds University in 1970 and then worked as a development engineer with Lucas Aerospace, before returning to full time education at Imperial College, London University to study for a Master’s degree in management.

After 12 years in the engineering industry employed in a variety of roles - including project management, machine shop superintendent and production control manager - he moved to Cranfield in 1986.

Although he has retained links with manufacturing, most of Clark’s time is spent with service organisations, running public programmes on implementing operations strategy and improving operations performance. He has run tailored versions of these programmes for organisations in a range of sectors which include food manufacturing, engineering, telecommunications, financial services, retail, computer and professional services.

Committed to the development of strategic thinking for operations managers and an advocate of the need for them to integrate people and process issues, he has co-authored three books on service management, written numerous papers and articles and is a non-executive director of the Institute of Customer Service.

His presentation, entitled ‘The problem with customer interactions is that people are involved...’, will emphasise his considerable experience in all aspects of the service industry.

Another speaker able to draw on extensive personal experience is Justin Mason, head of maintenance for RM. Prior to joining the company, he held a number of national and international change and sales based roles, including head of change management at Easynet PLC, a subsidiary of BSkyB, where he was actively involved in the development of delivery models for its UK Online and Sky Broadband services, as well as time in Foreign Direct Investment, working with ThinkLondon to attract and develop inward investment into London. Prior to this, Mason was director of professional services for Telenor Business Solutions and enterprise manager at Computacenter PLC.

A leading supplier of educational ICT, the company provides products and services to schools, colleges and universities. For the past 15 months, Mason has overseen the delivering of a cradle to grave service to the company’s customers, from initial call receipt and live diagnostics, to on-site resolution for over 25,000 hardware related calls each year.

Mason’s presentation will focus on the considerable benefits provided by establishing a culture that delivers exceptional customer service. The three main elements of people, culture and knowledge will be explained in full, helping to engender customer loyalty through an improved service delivery.

Nick Chadaway has worked within IT roles in the transport industry for several years and in many varied areas from long-haul freight logistics through to the fast-paced industry of vehicle collection. Now working for United Fleet Distribution Ltd, he has worked with some of the world’s leading providers of mobile technology solutions to introduce efficiency improvements, financial gains and leading-edge solutions.

Chadaway’s presentation will look at the many positive benefits of mobile communications, including increased quality of service, improved speed and utilisation of information, focusing on how to maximise return on investment and raise customer satisfaction levels.

Further emphasising the diversity of speakers within the programme is obtained through the present of Loftur Gissurarson, who has been director of internal control, environment and safety at Reykjavik Energy since 2000 and has had a fascinating career.

Graduating from Edinburgh University in 1989 with a PhD in experimental psychology and methodology in 1989, he has worked as quality director for Reykjavik Water Works, led the board of directors for private company Fossberg ehf and was the chief psychologist and deputy director at the Regional Office of the Affairs of the Disabled from 1996 to 1999.

Since joining Reykjavik Energy, he has established a number of ISO management systems, along with OHSAS 18001 for occupational health and safety.

His presentation will explain how Reykjavik Energy has implemented an optimised scheduling, mobility and location-based solution to become a real-time service enterprise, making decisions in real time by converting location of field engineers and data such as workload, new tasks, and engineer status into actionable, optimised business decisions.