Creating an accurate representation of Future Retail to meet consumer demands in a technology led world. Take a look at the planned congress programme.

19 September

08:15 Registration and refreshments

08:50 Chair’s opening remarks

09:00 Analysing the changing landscape of UK retail to assess future revenue opportunities

• Understanding how retailers can harness future technology to attract today’s customer
• Assessing the relationship between brick and mortar stores alongside their online offerings to create a seamless shopping experience
• How the concept of brick and mortar stores is evolving as customers seek shopping experiences and moments
• Learning from the past - discussing the various retail challenges which led to high profile retail closures and what the key takeaways are
• Debating the implications of uncertainty with Brexit and how this is affecting both retail and consumer confidence when making purchasing decisions

Speaker: Andreas Olah, Lead Analyst, Retail Technology, GlobalData

09:30 Understanding how retailers are starting to understand the power of Artificial Intelligence to drive faster business decisions

• Debating whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) enhances customer experience for your shopper
• Using AI as a marketing tool to attract millennials
• Engaging with AI programs to provide your business with access to new insights through the use of cognitive interfaces
• Enabling cognitive features in order to improve customer journeys through purchasing recommendations whilst also improving profits by creating upselling opportunities
• Improving customer care by reading correspondence to better understand tone of voice to help evaluate sentiment

Speaker: Ben Chamberlain, Lead Data Scientist, Asos.com

10:20 Integrating evolving mobile technologies into your core business to capture your customer at the point of interaction

• Implementing a mobile first strategy on your platform that embraces adaptable and responsive designs resulting in an efficient way to serve customers on your website
• Creating an easy platform when customers are browsing your products on their mobile/tablet to capture point of sale immediately
• Developing your offerings through slick mobile optimisation in various Omni-channels in line with consumer browsing behaviours
• Understanding millennial’s desire for mobile to create a seamless platform to meet these needs
• Ensuring ease of ordering to increase footfall in store whilst minimalising purchasing waiting times

Session reserved for Facebook

10:50 Morning refreshments and networking

11:20 Can use of data analytics across on and offline platforms help capture customers at the point of interaction and drive loyalty?

• One customer; multiple platforms: using cross device tracking on your customers from online browsing to in store purchasing to create a single unique customer identity
• Marrying online and offline data to understand when and where the customer journey begins and ends
• Understanding millennial’s desire for mobile to create a seamless platform to meet these needs
• Creating a value exchange in order to increase footfall into store and drive loyalty
• Interpreting your data through segmentation to better understand spending patterns and habits
• Incorporating AI and Machine Learning to drive more accurate data insights

Speaker: Karen Harris, Managing Director, Intu Digital

11:50 Session reserved for T Systems

12:20 Creating on scale growth for your brand internationally whilst discussing the challenges and opportunities this generates

• Incorporating Omni-channel marketing techniques based on your business needs and performance KPIs
• Ensuring you are constantly creating brand awareness as a counteract to being an ecommerce platform
• Organising your supply chain alongside your products for sustainable growth
• Managing cross functional teams whilst scaling your operations and systems
• Developing your brick and mortar store as a showroom to entice customers whilst also testing new products and innovations
• Capitalising on the theatre experience in-store by ensuring your décor and ambiance matches your brand’s persona

Speaker: Julien Callede, Co Founder, Made.com

12:50 Session reserved for Ecrebo

13:05 Lunch and networking

14:05 Creating a slick ecommerce platform that can capture new growth whilst ensuring customers can make purchases 24/7

• The importance of increasing your online product range to offer diverse choice and prevent customers from going to your competition
• Generating quality content and linking it to your product and website to drive purchasing
• Using google ad words, taxonomy and Search Engine Optimisation to raise your online profile
• Creating product tags online to evaluate cross-selling opportunities between commonly bought items
• Integrating your ecommerce platform with in-store capabilities to capture shopper insights

Speaker: Penny MacKintosh, Head of Category and Shopper Marketing, Graze

14:35 Session reserved for Fujitsu

15:05 Identifying the challenges and opportunities of pure play online retailers to understand the shifting dynamics of retail

• Recognising how your customers want to interact with you online and creating a platform that meets these needs
• Pursuing millennial shoppers through targeted social media campaigns on Instagram and Facebook
• Creating a fast, easy transaction from customers engaging with your brand on social media to point of sale to optimise purchase frequency
• Constantly creating a buzz around your products and offerings to engage customers
• Evaluating the challenge of creating customer loyalty in pure play online retail when having faceless staff

Speaker: Rob Feldmann, Chief Executive Officer, BrandAlley

15:35 Session reserved for ACI Worldwide

16:05 Afternoon refreshments and networking

16:35 Know your Shoppers and Know Them Well!

• The challenge of translating shopper insight into strong and successful activations
• Exploring strategies for evaluating shopper insight to deliver ROI
• Understanding the importance of cross channel and global consistencies
• Unveiling the value of knowing your shopper (and where they shop)

Session reserved for Kostas Perifanos, Head of Machine Learning, Argos

17:05 Leveraging sustainable packaging solutions to create a strong brand ethos that instills buying confidence

• Diversifying your packaging options to increase your product portfolio
• Working alongside your policy team to understand packaging trends to ensure they adhere with upcoming regulations
• Initiating deposit schemes to incentivise customers to be packaging savvy when using plastic
• Embracing consumer sentiment in regards to packaging to start discussions with suppliers to create a more sustainable supply chain
• Creating projects to tackle waste and overuse of packaging whilst ensuring your marketing team uses this to portray your brand in a positive light

17:35 Chair’s summary and close of conference

20 September

08:15 Registration and refreshments

08:50 Chair’s opening remarks

09.00 Speaker Hosted Roundtables

Interactive roundtable sessions offer a unique opportunity to come together with your peers to share best practice and develop solutions to critical challenges facing the industry as a whole. Hosted by industry experts and each focused on a single issue, roundtables are an exciting, interactive way to build your personal network and learn from the experience and expertise of others. Each roundtable session lasts for 45 minutes, and delegates may attend up to 2 roundtables

Roundtable 1 Is there a disparity between what we mean by customer experience, and what customers mean by it?
Speaker: Mark Stephens, Head of Content Marketing, Time Inc

Roundtable 2 Roundtable reserved for Cardlytics

Roundtable 3 How is technology going to change customer experience in the future?
Speaker: Guy Smith, Group Design Director, Arcadia Group

Roundtable 4 Incorporating Artificial Intelligence/Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality before our competition does
Speaker: Darren Smith, AVP, Store Experience, TJX Europe

Roundtable 5 How retail can overcome Brexit challenges
Speaker: Andreas Olah, Lead Analyst, Digital Retail, GlobalData

10.30 Morning refreshments and networking

11:00 GDPR: Discussing the challenges that came with being GDPR compliant and how they were overcome

• Debating what the biggest pain points were in GDPR compliance and how they were resolved
• Initial challenges and teething problems before the deadline
• Aligning all your departments to ensure all-round compliance so that nothing slips through the cracks
• Evaluating any positives to come out of GDPR and how companies can utilise this in the future

Speaker: Edwina Surtees, Head of Business Operations, Trouva

11:30 Session reserved for Webloyalty

12:00 Increasing brand loyalty by creating a positive customer experience for your shopper

• Measuring customer satisfaction through NPS to understand what you are doing well and where there is room for improvement
• Creating brand trust amongst your shoppers by providing clear channels of communication
• Positioning your brand ethics so consumers can make informed purchasing decisions
• Choosing the influencers you work with so that they align to your brand and product to increase reach amongst hyper targeted audiences
• Using social media listening tools to analyse real time feedback and customer attitudes whilst addressing potential negative publicity

Speaker: Kate Maher, Senior Director, Retail Concept Creation, Adidas

12:30 Lunch and networking

13:30 Putting your customers at the forefront of store operations through the use of data to create a hassle-free experience

• Creating a platform to book quickly and easily to increase footfall growth
• Minimising your restaurant bookings from 13-15 clicks to less than 10 to create efficiency for customers when booking a table
• Incorporating voice recognition software such as Alexa to improve ease of ordering
• Working alongside your EPOS provider to ensure the data captured is used to segment your customers to accurate personality profiles
• Integrating various data sets into one to extract the raw data necessary to accurately segment your customers

Speaker: Mark Jeffries, Business Transformation Lead, TGI Friday’s

14:00 Compiling your USPs into a loyalty membership to increase interaction and rewards whilst making your customers feel appreciated

• Analysing whether a loyalty card or app is the best approach for your business and weighing the benefits of both for a holistic understanding
• The power of personalisation – tailoring specific offers based on customer preferences to increase retention
• Tracking customer experience ROI through loyalty programmes to create personalised perks
• Offering a tier based loyalty programme to drive renewal spending amongst your biggest clients
• Providing consumers with a unified experience across multiple platforms to reduce fragmentation of data

Session reserved for Liam Price, Ecommerce Director, L.K. Bennett

14:30 Assessing the various procedures that contribute to a sound pricing strategy in order to yield higher margins for low cost products whilst maintaining profits on more expensive purchases

• Beyond discounting – creating a unique brand in order to be price assure
• Developing discounting strategies that are still able to drive profits
• Utilising your marketing tools to differentiate yourself from the competition to be bold with your pricing strategy
• Establishing whether some retail behaviours are disincentivising loyalty through major discounting
• Using data to implement sound discounting policies and seeing where people are happier to buy at full price

Speaker: Gemma Jennings, Senior Manager, Strategy, John Lewis

15:00 Afternoon refreshments and networking

15:30 Case Study: Empowering store staff with technology to deliver smooth customer service

• Investing in technology for your customer facing staff to limit the number of transactions between customers identifying a product and purchasing it
• Creating convenient payment options that alleviate extra touchpoints
• Equipping staff with in-depth product knowledge to ensure customer’s view you as experts to instill buying confidence
• Working closely with your c-suite to implement technology that prioritises customer retention over ROI to ensure long term success
• Effectively using stock control technology to determine your most popular products to guarantee resupplying is quick and efficient

Session reserved for Roy Westwood, Strategic, Creative & Innovations Director, Levy's Restaurants

16:00 Understanding the difficulties in getting your design to market in untapped areas to offer consumers more choice

• Using platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to generate website views whilst also improving brand awareness for your product by getting it in front of early adopters
• Balancing lower conversion rates from solely selling on your website with higher margins on items sold
• Positioning yourself as a thought leader through value-added content to raise awareness and capture market share as your business grows alongside your category
• Creating inventory and emphasise on pre orders to increase cash flow for your business
• Exploiting the lack of competition to capture customers who do not currently have brand loyalty

Eliott Wertheimer, Founder & CEO, FuroSystems

16:30 Utilising neuroscience techniques in retail to get inside the mind of your customer to understand how they shop

• Incorporating eye tracking software into your store to analyse what instinctively draws the attention of your customer
• Optimising how your products are segmented on the shelf to drive revenue based on customer spending habits
• Tailoring your store layout in a way that encourages footfall and increased customer purchasing
• Less is more – selected over spacing in order to give visibility to NPD or high value items
• Embracing the concept of theatre in your store to create a lasting memory for your customer to increase retention

17:00 Chair’s summary and close of conference