Stephen Ley's talk at 4me Connect '24 in Amsterdam addresses the persistent challenge in service management: the fragmentation of self-service portals across various departments like HR, security, and IT. Despite the vision of having a unified portal for all customer queries and incident reports, practical implementation often falls short.

Stephen discusses the development of AI capabilities within individual systems like ForMe and HR platforms, which still operate in silos. He proposes a solution using Microsoft Teams as the single channel for all user interactions, integrating with backend systems via an Automate platform. This approach simplifies the user experience by centralizing all queries and requests through one familiar interface, regardless of the underlying systems.