Membership

AGENDA

Navigating Uncertainty: Driving business value now whilst innovating for future growth
18 May 2023︱The May Fair Hotel, Stratton Street, London W1J 8LT, UK 

09:35-11:05
Headline Session

Over the last 3 years, lasting economic, geopolitical, environmental and technological disruptions have redefined the business environment. In order to navigate this uncertain and competitive environment, organisations need to deliver digital transformation that unlocks efficiencies, productivity gains and growth whilst also building innovation and experimentation capabilities. At the same time, building cyber resilience, achieving sustainability goals and replacing legacy systems remain crucial initiatives. 
 
So how do business and technology leaders navigate and control this increasingly foggy and chaotic picture? This keynote panel session will explore: 
  • Evaluating the uncertainties, challenges and threats facing organisations and business and technology leaders in 2023
  • Identifying and prioritising your technology objectives to enable your organisation to combat external market challenges
  • Achieving and managing secure, fast and cost-effective digital transformation that delivers business value
  • The role of technologies, in particular big data and cloud computing, in allowing organisations to effectively pivot and adapt to external market challenges
  • Enabling and accelerating business and digital innovation through building a culture of experimentation, skilled workforce and technology capabilities
  • Embedding environmental sustainability within digital transformation initiatives

Speakers:

Matt George, Director and SME - Digital Transformation, Equinix

Neil Turner, Chief Technology Officer, GoCardless

Tara Waters, Chief Digital Officer, Ashurst LLP

Kabir Patel, Global Head of Finance IT and Transformation, AstraZeneca

In partnership with
Equinix

This session will explore: 

  • The separation and creation of Haleon from GSK
  • The facts, figures, business drivers and reasons for separation
  • Who are Haleon and how were we created
  • The challenges of being a new FSTE 20 company
  • Lessons Learnt: what we would have done differently?

Speakers:

David Venter, Managing Director, D&I Associates and formerVP Separation, GlaxoSmithKline

Jon Jacobs, CTO Delivery & Portfolio Lead, Haleon

This session will explore: 

  • The role of the business and technology leader in delivering both growth and purpose
  • Defining, identifying and maintaining purpose across growing business functions and geographies
  • Communicating purpose to customers to build loyal, trusting and connected customer relationships
  • Building a culture and workforce that supports and develops an organisation's purpose and vision
  • Leveraging disruptive technologies to scale and deliver purpose-led business
  • Case-study examples from cross-sector thought leaders within disruptive organisations such as Too Good To Go, Co-Op and Zopa.

Speakers: 

Jamie Crummie, Co-Founder and Director, Too Good To Go

Patricia Haynes, VP Technology Operations and Delivery, Zopa

Caoilionn Hurley, Managing Director, Co-Op Legal Services

11:10-11:45 Networking and One-to-One Meetings

11:50-12:50
Unlocking the Hidden Value
of Technology

This session will explore: 

  • Accelerating the understanding, implementation and optimisation of AI and ML projects
  • The skills, training and people required to successfully leverage opportunities presented by AI such as ChatGPT
  • Key principles when exploring use cases and building business cases for AI projects
  • Navigating ethical and sustainability considerations of AI and ML

Speaker:

Harsha Tharkabhushanam, Head of Data Science and AI, BP

This session will explore: 

  • The barriers and challenges organisations face to achieve operational efficiency and productivity 
  • The role of disruptive technologies, such as Automation, Big Data, APIs, AI and Cloud, in driving productivity in 2023
  • The challenges facing organisations when implementing and embracing digital tools.
  • The statement ‘to achieve and optimise productivity and performance right now, all organisations should be a technology organisation’?

Speakers: 

Leon Gauhman, Founder and Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Elsewhen

James Tomkins, Chief Architect, Met Office

Hanna Mayhew, Head of Product Management, Shell

In partnership with
Equinix

11:50-12:50
Innovation and Experimentation
in 2023

This session will explore:

  • How do we get the best out of our people? What does a disruptive and innovative workforce look like in 2023?
  • The relationship between people and technology; does technology complement or replace humans?
  • How can organisations best communicate the value of disruptive technology to people across the business? 
  • What sort of behavioural changes do organisations need to prepare for the uptake of disruptive technologies such as Automation or AI?

Speaker: 

Brandie Deignan, CEO, Pier Health Group

This session will explore:

  • Defining innovation and experimentation in 2023 and the role they play in delivering business value
  • Strategies to build a culture of experimentation across an entire workforce
  • Scaling and overcoming challenges to innovation initiatives
  • Measuring the business value of innovation and experimentation initiatives
  • Balancing the need to take risks in pursuit of new business opportunities with the need to manage and mitigate risk.

Speaker: 

Rikesh Shah, former Head of Open Innovation, Transport for London (TfL)

This session will explore:

  • What barriers do organisations currently face when it comes to promoting innovation? 
  • How organisations can drive innovation in this cost-saving environment? What are the key guiding principles and methods to follow to achieve this?
  • Do people have a bigger role to play when innovating in 2023 e.g. upskilling, culture, innovation techniques, operating models etc?
  • Given the external environment, is there still a role for high-risk innovations?

Speakers:

Vimal Parekh, Head of Digital Innovation, Oxford University Press

Alex Cottrell, Principal Innovation Lead, Zurich

Dr Maurizio Pilu, Managing Director, Safetytech Accelerator

Lydia Hawthorn, Delivery Director, Cprime

 

14:00-15:15 Masterclass Session
Delivering Competitive Advantage Through Data-Driven Insights

Our 2023 Disruptive Trends Report found that driving operational efficiencies and new product development will be crucial in navigating uncertainty in 2023. The same report found that data analytics will be a fundamental component of the technology and information leaders' toolkit in this ongoing battle.

It is clear, during uncertainty, data is no longer ‘collected for the sake of it’. Having the right data at the right time has become a competitive advantage capable of driving productivity and innovation across an organisation. Ultimately, data-driven insights and decision-making propel organisations towards growth and delivering results now.

Join our masterclass for an interactive session exploring current approaches to data, common challenges and barriers facing organisations and the steps necessary to become a leading data-driven organisation. We will kick off with a fire-side chat with our masterclass partner Domo and a customer case study from Aston Martin Lagonda. We will then explore the topic further with a panel discussion featuring other speakers from Royal London. The session will explore:

  • Current approaches to leveraging data to drive competitive advantage

  • Updating strategies and initiatives to develop, implement and embed data-driven insights into business decision-making

  • Balancing the use of data to drive business process efficiencies with the need to innovate and explore new business models and opportunities

  • Approaches to addressing data maturity, literacy and buy-in from employees across the organisation

  • Building a culture of data experimentation and addressing challenges of scaling data analytics across your business

Following our scene-setter, we’ll be facilitating a breakout roundtable task to explore the challenges, solutions and opportunities organisations face when it comes to integrating, interpreting and using data to drive informed decision-making across your business.

Speakers:

David Johnson, Director of Strategic Architecture EMEA, Domo

Matthew Randall, Head of Software Development and Integration, Aston Martin Lagonda

Lee Wilson, Head of Data Strategy, Royal London

In partnership with
Domo

14:00-15:15 Masterclass Session
Masterclass: How to Delight and Retain your Customers

Any organisation wanting to succeed in 2023 will know that enabling exceptional customer experience across the entire customer journey is the holy grail. Certainly, according to the Chief Disruptor 2023 Disruptive Trends Report, improving customer experience is the 3rd highest business priority for investing in technologies in 2023. But actually delivering an exceptional customer experience is becoming increasingly challenging and complex. 

This is partly because of the confusing array of new disruptive tools that organisations could deploy to enable competitive advantages, such as AI chatbots, automation, the metaverse and predictive analytics. At the same time, consumer trends and expectations are also evolving rapidly with customers demanding more bespoke, authentic and less transactional experiences with brands. More than ever, building loyalty and trust is key to competitive advantage and organisations need to consider how they can use technology to drive engagement at every stage of the journey.

Join our masterclass, where we'll be kicking off with a panel, "Leveraging Customer Insight to Deliver More Personalised Customer Journeys", with Peter Dignan, Head of Engineering and Customer Engagement at PistonHeads. We will explore:

  • The current challenges and trends when it comes to delivering customer experience across different industries
  • The role of customer insights in delivering personalised, frictionless and complex digital customer experiences
  • Leveraging disruptive technologies to drive customer insight initiatives including the use of conversational AI
  • Best practices to embed customer insights within business decision-making and drive value across the business
  • Balancing the need to humanise digital experience and digitise human experiences

Following our scene-setter, we’ll be facilitating breakout round table discussions to delve into: 

  • What are the different ways to build trust and engagement in your brand and how can different technologies enable this to happen?
  • How can technologies help organisations measure customer experience across each stage of the customer journey? 
  • How do you ensure that digital customer experiences remain human?