In this episode of Patch Me If You Can™, Arek Dreyer welcomes Emanuele Sparvoli, the Director of IT at Intercom. Emanuele’s background is rooted in transforming the way IT contributes to business value. At Intercom, he’s driven a cultural and technical shift to treat IT not simply as a support function, but as a strategic driver, focusing on designing systems that are secure, automated, intuitive, and built around the needs of users.
The conversation covers key challenges and solutions facing modern IT teams. Emanuele discusses the complexities of securing non-human service accounts—like bots and automated systems—and the shortcomings of industry-standard security approaches. He shares how Intercom addressed these pain points by developing internal tools and leaning heavily on automation to manage access more efficiently. This includes the adoption of platforms like Lumos and integrating with communications channels such as Slack, which enable faster, more secure, and less frustrating experiences for users requesting access or support.
Throughout the episode, there is a strong emphasis on evolving the IT mindset: Emanuele explains how automation and AI are freeing IT professionals to spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time improving systems and processes. By deploying enterprise search and conversational AI agents, his team boosts efficiency, reduces toil for both IT and business users, and helps the company scale securely. Emanuele closes with a call for industry-wide adoption of standards like SAML and SCIM, which he sees as essential for unlocking the next level of automation and seamless user experience across the business technology stack.