• How do you determine which services should remain in-house and which can be delivered by third-party partners?
• What are the best practices for onboarding, training, and managing service partners across multiple countries, languages, and regulatory environments?
• What incentives, programs, or royalties effectively motivate partners to sell, deliver, and grow service revenue?
• How do you provide access to AI tools, diagnostics, troubleshooting guides, and best practices without losing control or brand integrity?
• How can companies move from viewing partners as competitors to treating them as collaborators, suppliers, and growth enablers?
• What strategies ensure service standards are met when work is performed by partners? 

Room Leader – Rajat Kakar, CEO, QWE Solutions 

Table 1 Facilitator – Yohan Morel, Director, Services & Solutions (Aftermarket Sales), EMEA and Asia Pacific, MSA - The Safety Company

Table 2 Facilitator – Alexander Hemler, EMEA Service & Support Director, Canon

Table 3 Facilitator – Peter Haberleitner, Managing Director, Global Service Hubs,TEST-FUCHS 

As service organisations face growing pressure to improve uptime, responsiveness, and customer experience, closer alignment between service and supply chain has become essential. This discussion-based session examines how organisations can better connect field demand signals, service logistics, and inventory planning to improve material availability and operational resilience. Explore how service leaders can translate field realities into supply chain requirements, influence planning decisions earlier in the process, and create stronger collaboration across service, logistics, and product teams.

• How can field usage data and service demand signals be better integrated into supply chain planning processes?
• What strategies help service teams influence inventory, allocation, and forecasting decisions without direct ownership?
• How can organisations avoid service parts being deprioritised behind product and manufacturing requirements?
• Which KPIs create alignment between service performance, logistics efficiency, and customer outcomes?
• What operational models best support unpredictable service demand while controlling cost and obsolescence?

The future of service depends on turning fragmented data into a unified engine for decision-making, predictive insights, and measurable customer value. Service, IT and operations leaders will explore how data can become a true enabler of service growth rather than an inhibitor. The discussion will address challenging realities: cybersecurity concerns, disconnected customer systems, inconsistent processes, and unclear ROI. Leaders will share how they are simplifying data capture, standardising processes, earning customer trust, and turning raw data into actionable insights that power remote service, predictive maintenance, and new value-based offerings. Hear lessons learned to help you:

• Establish a trusted data foundation by standardising core service processes and master data so automation, analytics, and AI become achievable
• Navigate cybersecurity as a buying decision, balancing customer trust, regulatory requirements, and the growing demand for remote and digital service capabilities
• Integrate service data into customer ecosystems by making connectivity simple, secure, and complementary to existing customer platforms, not another silo to manage
• Turn connected asset data into service value by moving from basic monitoring and alerts to predictive insights that prevent failures and reduce service costs
• Clarify the ROI story for service data investments, linking improved data quality to measurable outcomes like reduced truck rolls, faster resolution, higher uptime, and new revenue opportunities 

Digital connectivity, remote diagnostics and AI have created new opportunities to predict and prevent equipment failures, but technology alone won't reduce downtime. The organisations making the greatest progress are those breaking down traditional silos between service and IT to build connected workflows, increase asset connectivity and turn real-time insights into proactive action. Drawing on a career that began as a field service engineer and now spans global digital technology and service R&D leadership, Shweta Ahire will share practical lessons on how Cytiva is bridging the service-IT divide to accelerate digital transformation, expand remote connectivity and create a more predictive approach to service. Learn from real use cases and outputs from AI Service Assistant, Cytiva's predictive engine — turning equipment data into early, OEM-validated risk detection and the right action. 

• Build stronger partnerships between service and IT to accelerate connected service initiatives and overcome common digital technology adoption barriers 
• Increase asset connectivity and leverage remote diagnostics to identify and resolve issues before they result in unplanned downtime 
• Create end-to-end digital workflows that fit into the customer's day-to-day experience 
• Shift from reactive firefighting to predictive service by connecting people, processes and technology around shared outcomes 
• Troubleshoot using AI Service Assistance 

Service organisations track dozens of metrics, yet frontline teams and service managers often struggle to know which ones truly matter. Financial KPIs dominate attention, while leading indicators that predict customer satisfaction, uptime, and loyalty are underused or misunderstood. Find out how to simplify service metrics into a clear, actionable framework. Balance financial outcomes with operational and experience-driven indicators, create role-based dashboards that guide daily decisions, and use transparency to strengthen customer trust. Make customer feedback more meaningful and connect internal service performance with the customer's end-to-end lifecycle view. Gain best practices to help you:

• Identify which service metrics truly drive financial performance, uptime, and customer retention
• Balance leading and lagging indicators to pair financial KPIs with operational and CX indicators that predict future outcomes
• Design a single, role-based dashboard that helps technicians and service managers know where to focus to give frontline teams clarity
• Implement strategies to increase survey participation and turn CX data into meaningful improvement
• Share KPIs across the service lifecycle to build trust and long-term customer loyalty 

As service becomes more digital, more data-driven, and more outcome-focused, the role of the technician is undergoing a profound shift. Today's technicians are expected to fix increasingly complex equipment, navigate digital tools, manage customer expectations, and surface insights that drive quality, sales, and sustainability, often with limited time, training, or support.

This closing panel brings together experienced field technicians to share what's top of mind right now: the realities of day-to-day work, the tools that help (and hinder), where upskilling is most urgently needed, and how they see the future of the role evolving. More importantly, the discussion is designed to give executive leaders a clear, unfiltered view from the front lines, highlighting where organisational decisions are creating friction, and where they can unlock performance, engagement, and trust. Hear illuminating perspectives to help you:

• Gain a clear view of the real obstacles technicians face daily, from tools and processes to administrative burdens, and how these impact productivity, customer satisfaction, and operational performance
• Learn which technical and soft skills are most critical for the evolving service role, helping you prioritise training, talent development, and workforce planning initiatives
• Discover which digital systems and tools truly enable technicians in the field, and which create friction, so you can make better decisions on technology investments and adoption strategies
• Understand how experienced technicians capture and share knowledge, understand risks from workforce turnover, and explore strategies to retain institutional expertise for long-term service excellence
• Explore the technician perspective on where the role is heading in the next 3–5 years, and identify actionable opportunities to make the role more impactful, attractive, and sustainable