11:30AM – 12:30PM | REGISTRATION & BRUNCH

12:30 – 12:35PM | WELCOME FROM RETAIL GAZETTE
Delivered by Gemma Goldfingle, editor, Retail Gazette

12:35 – 1:05PM | SCENE-SETTING INDUSTRY DEBATE
Defining efficiency: cost-cutting, culture or change?

In an economic climate where maintaining margins is an increasing challenge, two industry leaders outline their view of what efficiency means to retail businesses.

Viewpoint 1: Helen Dickinson, CEO, British Retail Consortium
Efficiency = a culture shift.

Driving efficiency is about creating agile and responsive organisations with empowered and diverse teams. It means responding to the pressures on business and the labour market by helping people navigate greater automation, more tech, more AI: a step change and culture shift in how roles are evolving within the industry. Better jobs. Better contribution. More social value. Shaping agile businesses with cross-functional teams.

Viewpoint 2
Efficiency = growing profit.

Driving efficiency is about laying the ground for long-term profitable growth. It’s about eliminating excess cost, transforming business processes to find performance improvements, eliminating silos, streamlining systems and processes, responding to consumers and shaping a business for the future.

1:05PM | Q&A + AUDIENCE VOTE
Quickfire Q&A to round up the debate, plus a vote to take the pulse of the room: where do your priorities around efficiencies lie?

1:10 -1:40PM | IN CONVERSATION
Top-down efficiencies: short-term costs, long-term goals
With the retail industry hinting at increasing board-level support for longer-term, efficiency-led technology, supply chain and ESG transformation, how can your business shape a smarter view around the partnerships and relationships that will enable this? Uncover the challenges and opportunities of looking through the lenses of growth, innovation and efficiency, and the tough decision-making inherent in driving change. Gain an insight into the process of shaping a slicker, more streamlined, cost-efficient retail business for the long-term.

Featured speaker:

Simon Geale, executive vice president, procurement, Proxima – part of Bain & Company

1:40 – 2:20PM | PANEL DISCUSSION
COLLABORATIVE, CROSS-FUNCTIONAL & CULTURE-LED RETAIL EFFICIENCY

• Exploring what a successful approach to retail efficiency and business transformation entails: removing silos; pulling together across different functions; understanding what’s working, what’s not, and the team ingredients needed to deliver transformation
• Looking at culture and workforce opportunities from a different perspective: how to be clear about your proposition and strategies, and how to shape and empower your teams to make that work
• Embedding clear cross-functional metrics: transforming the way you think about metrics, organisational design, and KPIs, to understand what will help you save costs, streamline and drive growth at every step of the journey
• Supporting a test and learn business mindset: seek out areas of demand and resilience, learn from failures quickly, and avoid wasting time on solutions that don’t work

Panellists include:

Alfie Meekings, director of transformation and change, Selfridges

2:20 – 2:50PM | NETWORKING & REFRESHMENTS

2:50 – 3:40PM | IDEAS PODIUM
Hard-hitting snapshot sessions: gain curated insights into the innovative tech and partnership opportunities that can boost efficiency.