Chairman/Speakers

Chairman

Martin Newman, CEO, Practicology

Currently CEO of his consultancy business Practicology, Martin is one of the most experienced international e-commerce practitioners. He’s been involved in multi-channel retailing for 25 years, owning direct mail, e-commerce and call centre channels for Ted Baker, Harrods, Pentland (Speedo, Kickers), Burberry and Intersport.

A global player of repute delivering best practice e-commerce presentations and masterclasses in Holland, Spain, the US, Bulgaria and most recently at Online Retailer in Australia. He was also the International judge for the inaugural online retail awards for Australia. Martin's clients include: Ben Sherman, Thomas Pink, T-Mobile, arco, Edinburgh Woollen Mill, Peak Performance, The Science Museum, Mars Drinks, CPP.

Further info at: www.practicology.com

Speakers

Huw Thomas, Managing Director, Paul Mason Consulting

Huw has worked in the services sector with a focus on retail IT for over 25 years. He has extensive, senior experience in operations, service management, salesand general management. He worked for IBM, Phoenix and NCR before joining PMC in 2004. He joined the company specifically to enhance its proposition portfolio to include complementary retail-specific services and provide market-leading products to support PMC’s continued growth. Targeted where the company’s pedigree can add value to retailers, these unique services ensure that PMC provides ‘something different’ - rather than being a ‘me-too’ service provider. Huw continues to improve its suite of retail systems-focused services to meet the real demands of retailers’ changing requirements.

Steve Haworth, Chief Executive Officer, TeleWare

Steve assumed CEO responsibilities for the Teleware Group of Companies in 2008 and has been instrumental in focussing the company and laying out a clear strategy for the future. A key player in the company’s successful expansion into the hosted service market, he is one of the original drivers of the Private Mobile Networks line of business providing fixed mobile convergence and rapid deployment solutions and utilising the company’s guard band spectrum licence, purchased in 2006. More recently Steve has been actively involved in the development of the Vemotion interactive product range.

He joined TeleWare in 2002, initially as TeleWare’s Business Development Director and, more recently, as Group Strategy Director. He has worked closely with research and development teams as well as channel partners to kick start profitable new business areas for TeleWare. Steve’s high level of business acumen combined with both data communications and telephony technology awareness means that he is in a unique position to identify technology opportunities and bring them into business solutions in a way that is highly focused and brings new opportunities to TeleWare and to his customers and partners.

Nick Rennardson, Head of IT, Republic

Nick is a commercially driven and results focussed IT executive with considerable experience of managing significant change programmes within fast moving retail environments. A strategic thinker and clear communicator, he has successfully delivered successful projects across store and PoS, supply chain and e-commerce solutions within both SME and blue chip organisations.

He joined Republic in 2006 from Sainsbury’s to lead the IT function, managing the systems, infrastructure and service desk units. He soon embarked on developing the IT roadmap which would create the foundation for growth and provide the ability to realise future trading opportunities. Most recently the team has delivered a replacement PoS solution to help facilitate a seamless multi-channel experience.

Jo Molineux, Head of Multi-Channel, Republic

An e-commerce specialist with seven years experience, Jo began her career at Asda.com where she was responsible for defining the optimal customer journey for online grocery shopping and also launched the first five non-food categories online before joining Otto UK. There she had responsibility for the operational management of five multi-category online brands which represented 40 per cent of the business.

Guy Stephens, Senior Consultant, Foviance and Founder of Where Social Media Meets Customer Service (LinkedIn group)

Guy is a Senior Consultant at Foviance, where he heads up the company's 'social business' change practice from a customer service perspective. Prior to this, he was the Customer Knowledge Manager at The Carphone Warehouse where he set up the use of social media within customer service.

Guy has worked in the digital space for over 12 years building up expertise in customer experience, strategy, marketing, eCRM, SEO and project management. He is generally recognised as a thought leader for the work he has done within the social media customer service space. He is a founder of the LinkedIn Group – Where social media meets customer service, is a regular contributor to various online and offline publications, conference speaker, and founding member of BestServiceOne.com, the customer service specific portal for CustomerThink. He is an avid Tweeter (@guy1067) and blogger on various sites.

Steve Bolton, Managing Partner, Retail Pragmatist

Steve Bolton is Managing Partner of Retail Pragmatist, helping retailers, logistics and service suppliers to move up the multi-channel retail value chain. Steve’s experience includes 10 years at GUS Home Shopping where he was Director for Merchandise Planning and Solutions Director for the Reality Group. He is an expert in emerging delivery point options, the so-called final mile. He has undertaken both multi-channel strategy and operational performance improvement work, and is currently working with a major High Street retailer on its new distribution network implementation and a European click & collect service provider.

Tony Bryant – K3 Business Development Manager for Multi Channel

Tony Bryant heads up the Multi Channel Solutions group within K3 Retail Business Solutions. Tony has had many years experience (he says too many to be published!) working in a retail environment, the majority of which was spent at Marks and Spencer. He covered roles from Store/Area Manager, Divisional Operations Manager, and Retail Project Manager to Food Senior Programme Manager managing a large end to end supply chain transformation.
Tony has a passion for the fast moving industry and has detailed knowledge of the key functions - Plan, Buy, Make, Move and Sell and understands the interdependencies of information, products and services. Since joining K3 he has taken a pro-active role in helping the company deliver its multi-channel vision to the retail sector. His deep understanding of the commercial issues facing retailers and developing IT solutions and business processes to improve product availability, drive profitable sales and reduce costs has been invaluable in establishing K3 as a leading provider of multi-channel solutions.

Russell Dorset, Sales & Marketing Director, Maginus

Russell Dorset is Director of Sales and Marketing at multi-channel retail specialists Maginus. He has over 20 years’ experience in the software industry in a range of senior sales, marketing and operational management roles.  Russell joined Maginus from K3 Business Technology Group plc where he was Chief Operating Officer. Prior to this, Russell was a Divisional Director at Misys plc.

Phil Randles, Managing Director, Catalogue Development Centre Marketing

Phil has been a board director of several media companies and major advertising agencies but more specifically he has been an independent multi-channel marketing consultant for the last 15 years. In that time, he has advised dozens of businesses at all stages of development from multi-million pound businesses to fledgling start-ups, from UK niche companies to US launches, in both consumer and business to business fields.

Phil is also co-founder of the industry publication - Catalogue|e-business, owns a successful niche mail order business - Calendars Direct and has conducted a series of training workshops around the country for 15 years called Profitable Multi-Channel Marketing.

Mike Welch, Managing Director, Blackcircles.com

Mike Welch launched Blackcircles.com in 2001 with just half a month’s wages to call on after leaving his job as e-commerce director at Kwik-Fit. Since then, he has grown the business to a turnover of £15 million, more than 300,000 customers and national affiliations with major motoring brands such as the RAC and Unipart. A true entrepreneur, Mike left school aged 16 to work for a local tyre fitting company and soon after launched his first business with just a £500 grant from The Prince’s Trust, a room in his parent’s house and a mobile phone.

Kees de Vos - Director of Business Consulting, hybris

Kees joined hybris in 2010 to further re-enforce its focus on the business importance of multi-channel retail. In his role as Director of Business Consulting, he is responsible for driving multi-channel success for hybris clients and helping to communicate its vision to the wider market. Kees came to hybris with a background spanning 10 years of implementing and advising on multi-channel retail systems worldwide. During this period, he worked for clients such as Argos, Tesco, Boots, Woolworths Australia and WalMart. Before joining hybris, Kees was a director at Javelin Group and led the e-commerce team at Salmon.

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