Sector spotlight: AI and ITSM in Higher Education
AI is opening up vast new opportunities for organisations across the board, but it has a distinct role to play in our universities. AI-based tooling can enhance decision making and support underlying administrative tasks in a whole variety of ways in areas such as change and incident management, while the emerging generation of chatbots offer greater productivity to academics, students and operational staff alike. This sector spotlight, sponsored by Freshworks, focuses on three universities that are taking AI in new and very exciting directions.
Reach Out @ University of Glasgow supported by RO:bot – Mark Temple, University of Glasgow
Hear from Mark about UofG’s approach to breaking down barriers between services, making them more available and approachable for students. Reach Out spans multiple service areas, but presents one identity, leveraging a baseline of knowledge across the services, together with AI-enabled self-help and live chat delivered via the Reach Out Bot (RO:bot). All geared towards reducing signposting, and enabling quality student support, whether face-to-face or out of hours.
Trends, patterns and timelines: using AI to support decision making – Andy Ferguson, University of Birmingham
This session describes work undertaken at the University, using bespoke tooling that has been integrated with ServiceNow. The AI-driven functionality has offered a huge boost to service management productivity, taking on many underlying tasks that would be too time-consuming or complex for manual intervention. Among other things, the tooling assists the team to:
- analyse large volumes of incident data to extract trends and identify missing problem records
- compile summaries of priority incidents, detailing what went right and wrong and using pattern recognition across datasets to uncover issues that human analysts might miss
- assess individual change records by evaluating whether submissions are complete, well-structured, and likely to be approved or cause disruption
- use AI-drive transcription to transform post-incident reviews, with AI generating timelines, actions, and recommendations to support decision makers.
Andy also touches on some of the sustainability and ethical considerations surrounding AI use and discusses the importance of cultural readiness and communication when introducing AI technologies, as perception can significantly impact adoption.
Selecting chatbots and conversational tools to support the academic community – Ian Teasdale, University of Oxford
ChatGBT, Copilot, Gemini… The list goes on, but which tool is the best? At the University of Oxford, the view is that they all have their merits. This session describes the work undertaken by the service management team to provide staff and students with the right tools to support their research and communication – comparing the strengths and weaknesses of each solution.
Mission Control: giving AI agency (without losing control) – Sam O’Neil, Phil Mayes, Adrija Kundu, Freshworks
AI promises efficiency and scale, but many organisations feel caught in a false binary, either letting AI run unchecked, risking chaos, or holding back entirely, missing transformative value. This session introduces the Mission Control framework, a three-layer architecture that empowers AI with agency while maintaining strategic oversight and governance. Attendees will explore how to:
- Move beyond the AI hype to operational maturity
- Apply governance controls such as confidence thresholds, audit trails and escalation rules
- Deploy autonomous workflows with measurable results, from ticket deflection to cost savings
- Balance human expertise and AI-driven decision-making for sustainable transformation
With real-world examples, interactive polling and actionable guidance, this session demonstrates how to unlock AI’s potential safely, turning service operations into a responsive, intelligent engine without losing control.
Panel discussion
We’ll round off the event with a discussion between speakers and attendees, covering related questions and issues.
Delivery Platform
This online event will be delivered using the Zoom platform.
PeopleCert ITIL CPD Points
itSMF UK members will automatically earn 4 ‘Professional Education’ ITIL CPD points for attending this event – more details available here.
How much does it cost?
Places are available to itSMF UK members and non-members for FREE.
