Retail Week Buzz will explore the new approach retailers must take to succeed in today’s cross-channel world.
The customer should be at the heart of all decisions in retail. However, our relationship with the customer now crosses multiple channels and touchpoints.
In order to deliver an excellent customer experience, many departments within a retail business have to work in unison, which means breaking down traditional silos and adopting a new way of thinking and working.
Business structures that have underpinned retail for generations need to be unpicked and rebuilt if retail is to keep up with the demands of today’s cross-channel shopper.
Retail Week Buzz is a new two-day conference to bring together leaders in technology, digital, marketing and ecommerce that reflects the holistic approach retailers must take to customer relationships and technology.
The event will cover the issues and opportunities that your business faces, including:
New ideas, processes and thinking
Building a truly omnichannel business will require changes to how retailers think and operate. Retail Week Buzz brings together leaders from Holland & Barrett and thesnugg.com to discuss how you can build an agile business.
“Retail Week Buzz is a new two-day conference to bring together leaders in technology, digital, marketing and ecommerce that reflects the holistic approach retailers must take to customer relationships and technology”
Retail Week Buzz will also explore retail operating models and look at how to measure engagement and loyalty in a multichannel world, and debate whether current KPIs are fit-for-purpose.
New ideas and growth opportunities like personalisation will also be explored. Pioneers from House of Fraser, Disney and Pets Pyjamas will debate how we take advantage of personalisation technologies without being seen as creepy by our shoppers.
Disruptive technology
Technology is dramatically changing not just how we shop, but how we live. The likes of Uber and AirBnB are not just disrupting, they are redefining how modern consumers expect us all to operate.
Retail Week Buzz provides the platform to discover how the disruptors think and see if you can inject some of their magic into your business.
Hear from takeaway titan Deliveroo, beauty box innovator Birchbox and online shopping site Enclothed – which recently emerged from the Dragons Den lair with £70k investment.
And discover how new technology could transform your business at Showcase, a place to meet innovative start-ups to exchange ideas and meet new contacts.
“To truly succeed at cross-channel retail, transformation is needed at the back-end”
IT transformation
Creating a seamless customer experience is easier said than done. Most retailers are hamstrung by many disparate, legacy technology systems. To truly succeed at cross-channel retail, transformation is needed at the back-end.
The chief technology officers of Home Retail Group and N Brown, both of which have undergone massive change to meet the demands of the modern consumer, reveal how they delivered success.
Collaborative working
Collaboration is more important than ever in retail. Technology and ecommerce need to be fully aligned with other functions, data needs to be shared and processes streamlined. Retail Week Buzz shares examples of how retail leaders from M&S and House of Fraser have reorganised and restructured their business.
Unmissable speakers
Retail Week Buzz brings together speakers from across all parts of the industry to give you a 360 degree view on how best to serve your customer. They include:
1. Patrick Bousquet-Chavanne, executive director, customer, marketing & M&S.com, Marks & Spencer
Patrick Bousquet-Chavanne is the man responsible for making sure M&S – one of the nation’s favourite retailers – truly connect with its customers. As well as holding overall responsibility for the customer, Bousquet-Chavanne is also in charge of M&S’ marketing – creating the new generation of M&S’ ’food porn advertising’ – and M&S.com.
He will discuss how to blend the offline and online consumer experience at Retail Week Buzz, and will give a fresh perspective on loyalty, informed by his experience launching M&S’ Sparks loyalty scheme last year.
“Deliveroo… is currently on an unstoppable growth drive and is expected to hit £130m this year, up more than 1000% on year on year”
2. Jack Smith, group digital director, New Look
No-one knows technology better than Jack Smith. At New Look, Smith is in charge of giving its tech-savvy millennial shoppers a cutting edge digital experience across all channels.
Before joining New Look in 2014, Smith was head of the retail technology practice at Deloitte, where he worked with many of Europe’s biggest multichannel retailers on complex transformation programmes.
This means Smith is well-versed with not just spotting the tech, but making sure it gets implemented. Smith will discuss how digital can get a legitimate voice in the boardroom, and how tech can be leveraged as a business asset rather than an overhead.
3. Simon Calver, chairman and ex-chief executive at Lovefilm
Simon Calver is a familiar face to retail as former chief executive of Mothercare, but it was at the online DVD firm Lovefilm that he made his name. Calver led Lovefilm from 2006 until online behemoth Amazon snapped it up in 2011.
Computer science graduate Calver clearly knows how to spot a digital trend, and now chairs online business cards firm moo.com and recipe box business Gousto.
The online pioneer will chair a discussion with the leading lights in technology and ecommerce to discuss where we are going and how we get there.
4. George Pallis, director of marketing, Deliveroo
Deliveroo is transforming takeaway. Anyone who has found themselves stuck in the office frantically working towards a deadline will be grateful for their posh restaurant-standard deliveries.
The firm is currently on an unstoppable growth drive and is expected to hit £130m this year, up more than 1000% year on year.
Deliveroo’s director of marketing George Pallis will discuss the power of location-based marketing – an avenue many retailers are going down – and will explore how to engage audiences in both the real and digital worlds.
5. Julian Burnett, chief information officer, House of Fraser
House of Fraser has positioned itself as a digital pioneer. Market-leading multichannel initiatives such as click-and-collect only stores and same day delivery have driven stellar growth with online sales surging 26.8% in its last financial year.
To support House of Fraser’s new channel-agnostic business, much transformation has been needed behind the scenes. The retailer has married digital processes to physical assets and reorganised its business around the customer.
Julian Burnett, who left John Lewis to join House of Fraser last year, will discuss the transformation, and what steps it is taking next in anticipation of the next phase of growth.
Retail Week Buzz: InterContinental O2, London. September 14-15, 2016
Visit Buzz.retail-week.com or call 0203 033 4247 now to book your place today.
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