XLA26: Turning Experience into Value

09.30 – Registration & coffee/tea
10.00 – Event opening
10.10 – Presentation 1: Turning experience into action: Common improvement areas as told by millions of people! (Mark Bewick, HappySignals)
10.40 – Break
10.55 – Presentation 2: XLAs in the wild – The unfiltered truth of cutting through the noise (James Dicker & Sharron Taylor, Johnson Matthey)
11.30 – Presentation 3: XLAs in action – See everything that matters! (Neil Keating, XLABS)
12.00 – Lunch & Networking
13.00 – Presentation 4: Business process monitoring – Improving customer experience (Alexandra Smith, CapitalOne)
13.30 – Presentation 5: From ambition to creating legacy – Introducing the XLA Institute Maturity Model (Robin Marchand, XLA Institute)
14.00 – Break
14.15 – Presentation 6: Let’s build an XLA – A practical guide to designing experiences that matter (Charlie Whitehead & James Block, Computacenter)
14.45 – Presentation 7: 
15.15 – Panel Session
15.45 – End of day & networking drinks
16.30 – Event close

What if your next ITSM improvement wasn’t based on assumptions, but on the lived experience of millions of employees? In this session, we’ll reveal the three most common friction points across global IT organisations, drawn from millions of experience data points. You’ll see where service desks consistently lose productivity and satisfaction, and how leading brands have turned those insights into measurable wins.

We’ll go beyond theory with real-world examples from enterprise customers who used experience data to:
1. Understand where and why your users are frustrated
2. Reduce ticket reassignments and speed up resolution
3. Recognise automation opportunities and let humans handle those tasks that actually need human touch

With insights from the 2026 Global Experience Benchmark report, you can expect practical guidance, proven frameworks, and actionable steps you can take immediately: whether you’re chasing XLAs, improving DEX, or simply trying to make ITSM work better for humans. 

Mark Bewick is an IT leader with over 25 years of experience spanning multiple industries, including financial services, media, and travel. Throughout his career, Mark has been recognised for his effective leadership style, communication skills, ability to solve complex problems, and for delivering on commitments.

With a keen eye for improvement opportunities, he collaborates effectively with global internal and external service providers at all levels within their respective organisations to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. He is engaged in strategic programs to ensure that deep-rooted improvements are realised and made; Mark specialises in aiming high and keeping things simple.

XLAs aren’t about reinventing IT Service Management.  They are a no-bulls$t way of telling the truth about what user’s experience – and build a narrative your CIO and leadership team will support.  We started with four simple pillars and learned the hard lessons fast.

This talk is a real-world execution story, not theory. We’ll share the practice playbook we used to implement, run and course-correct XLAs in a live organisation that is 200 years old, using tools and data we already had, and without leaning on vendors to do the thinking for us.  The biggest shift wasn’t clever metrics; it was a culture change and silo busting.

James Dicker is a global IT Service & Operations leader at Johnson Matthey, accountable for enterprise-wide IT Service Management, Service Delivery and Support across a large multi-country estate.  He specialises in turning ITIL practices into real-world execution, experience-led services, operating model design, and continuous improvement, focusing on practical changes that optimise costs and enhance day-to-day user experience.

Sharron Taylor is a Senior Engineering Partner with over a decade of experience in service management, having worked in the field since 2012. She helps teams streamline processes, modernise ways of working, and build reliable, customer‑focused services. Sharron is known for her practical, people‑centred approach and her ability to bring engineering and service teams together to create real, meaningful improvements. She’s passionate about continuous improvement, collaboration, and making work feel simpler and more sustainable for everyone involved.

As organisations move beyond traditional performance metrics and embrace Experience Level Agreements (XLAs) to measure what truly matters to the business, there is a need to make XLAs simple, scalable, and actionable.

In this interactive session, we’ll show how XLABS Global’s years of real world XLA experience have been distilled into a complete XLA Library for both IT and HR, enabling organisations to move from managing service delivery to creating measurable business value through experience in weeks, not months. You’ll see a live XLA in action within our Experience Management Centre, demonstrating how to visualise, manage, and act on the insights that matter most to employee and customer experience.

Neil Keating has been pioneering the pathway for improved employee experience for many years. Neil has worked in IT Services both internally and externally all his career and, having worked on creating multiple outsourcing contracts, is an expert in designing and managing IT Services to meet organisations changing experience needs. For the last 8 years Neil has been speaking at events globally helping organisations move from SLAs to XLAs and has helped create accredited Experience courses covering both the Art and the Science of employee experience.

Stop monitoring infrastructure and start focusing on the customer. This session details a critical shift in service management, moving from system-centric monitoring to real-time customer experience insights. Discover “Business Process Mapping (BPM)” a powerful method for mapping customer interactions that has enabled our business to fully understand service operations. Attendees will walk away with a proven approach to enhance service visibility, leading to pro-active and rapid real-time issue detection, faster resolution, and improved situational leadership across their own ITSM teams.

Alexandra Smith began her career after completing a degree in International Business, driven to pursue a greater challenge at the intersection of business strategy and the fast-paced world of technology. She started in IT Consulting, managing complex service projects for a high-street retail giant, before moving into Financial Services at Capital One. Today, she leads the implementation of Service Level Objectives (SLOs), viewing them not simply as metrics but as a roadmap for continual service improvement and a key enabler in turning technology into a strategic advantage for customers.

Beyond her technical and strategic work, Alexandra is passionate about people and their development. She is actively involved in initiatives such as Early Talent committees and Women in Tech, where she supports and mentors others. Outside of work, she enjoys spending time on the sports field and exploring new corners of the world.

How do organisations move beyond good intentions to create lasting impact in experience management?

This presentation challenges the status quo and introduces the XLA Institute Maturity Model: a bold, practical framework for exposing where organiaations really stand—and what it truly takes to move forward. It cuts through the noise, revealing the gaps between ambition and reality, and provides a clear path to measurable, meaningful progress.

Whether you’re early in your journey or looking to advance, this session offers practical insight and a roadmap for turning vision into lasting value. The legacy you create before your next career move.

XLAs are widely discussed, but how do you design one that actually delivers value?

In this hands-on session, Computacenter – a thought leader in experience management and founding member of the XLA Institute – will guide you through building an XLA from the ground up.

Using a proven design method from the XLA Institute, you’ll be guided through the key steps required to create an XLA that connects experience ambitions to measurable outcomes.

Grounded in real-world practice, this session will help you understand what good looks like, how to avoid common pitfalls, and how to transform experience insights into meaningful action.