Speakers

Mike Atkin highly respected, industry recognised expert with fifteen plus years experience within the Loyalty/CRM Solutions Market, with specialist knowledge in all aspects of Loyalty Programmes, including strategy and operations. This includes all facets of Customer Management including basic customer acquisition schemes, Affinity Cards, single-brand programmes, co-branding, continuity campaigns and coalition/multi-partner programmes. Read more

Many of the 30+ customer loyalty platforms examined in a new study are failing to provide the functionality required to meet the demands of running an effective loyalty programme in today's marketplace, according to UK loyalty consultancy MJA Associates.

Mike Atkin of MJA Associates recently carried out a detailed investigation into the capabilities of over 30 loyalty programme platforms being used to operate programmes around the world, and came up with these surprising results.

Software solutions from New Zealand, USA, UK, Poland, Germany, India, France and many other countries were reviewed as part of the Benchmarking Study and Gap Analysis process that MJA Associates offers its clients. Read more

Chris Jacobs has been personally involved in the design and implementation of over 50 loyalty programmes in the UK and Europe, and has an in depth, practical understanding of the different issues involved in building customer relationships in a wide range of industries. Since graduating in Computational & Statistical Science in 1971, Chris has held many main Board positions in technology and marketing related companies. He has also successfully started and grown two companies offering customer specialist loyalty services and is now operating as an independent loyalty consultant. His main focus is in providing strategic loyalty/CRM advice to organizations considering launching a new programme, or reviewing an existing scheme. Chris is Fellow of The Institute of Direct Marketing.

A Loyalty Mechanic, combined with a data driven marketing campaign programme, is the driving tool in changing customer behaviour, which generates quantifiable benefits that justify the cost of the programme. The CRM purists argue for the inclusion of every possible element of data relating to the customer to be made available in a single (gigantic) data warehouse before even considering the Loyalty Mechanic. In many cases, this is resulting in solutions and projects that cannot be implemented in a timescale, or a cost, acceptable to the marketers. Predictably, this is serving to continue the rift between the IT and marketing departments, and creating the need for more pragmatic solutions.

Prior to co-founding Airline Information Roger was a consummate innovator during his dynamic airline career.

Formerly chairman for the 120-airline member ISMC organization and system manager for loyalty and alliances at Air Jamaica, Roger established solid senior airline management experience before the age of thirty. Over a period of ten years he fulfilled roles in operations, customer service, sales, network planning, and marketing.

Roger speaks at key industry events and is a leading expert on the development of future models for frequent flyer reward liabilities. He commands a uniquely powerful consulting portfolio for Airline Information covering projects ranging from co-branding airlines with music talent from the world's 2nd largest record label, to shedding airline FFP mileage liabilities and creating ancillary revenue for zero startup costs.

Originally from Kingston, Jamaica, Roger currently resides in the United States. He holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in International Relations and Intelligence from Florida International University and the University of Salford in the United Kingdom.

Ravindra Bhagwanani is the founder and managing director of Global Flight. After his youth in Switzerland and his education at the Berlin University of Technology as well as the Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile (ENAC), he quickly managed to become established as one of the most respected experts in the travel loyalty industry. He also is featured regularly in international media and speaks at conferences around the world. Ravindra is fluent in several major languages.

Global Flight is a specialised and independent management company offering a range of management-related services to loyalty program operators in the travel sector. Also a unique service offered to frequent flyers is helping them maximise the personal benefits they get out of the programs. Based in Toulouse, France, with a second office in the UK, the company’s roots reach back to 1996. It has stayed loyal to its pure focus on the loyalty topic ever since, giving it unmatched experience in this complex niche market, paired with a sound understanding from both the operators’ and customers’ side.

Harry Govind joined TCS in July 2005 as Director Business Development with a focus to provide airlines, airports and associated industries end to end quality solutions on time with speed cost effectively. Over the past 25 years, in addition to building on his skills and reputation, Harry has led several transformations himself and has built a team of Business and IT executives that enable dramatic results in companies. At SAA he was responsible for the implemetation of the Voyager FFP againt extreme tight deadlines and also responsible for the transformation of the same within within a year with positive resullts from a business bottomline and customer satisfaction perspective. He is now focusing on Airline Solutions and developing Management Dashboards (MD) for organizations helping CEOs and his management team to run a profitable and successful business. The Management Dashboard (MD) is a new generation knowledge management and business intelligence diagnostic tool which acts as an early warning system for companies to be versatile to make the correct customer and business decisions to succeed.

In his most recent operating role, Harry served as Director IM at IATA. In this capacity he was responsible for collaborative efforts related to information technology in the aviation industry. Harry was instrumental in working with the IATA IMC, whose membership was made up of airline CIOs, to lead change in the industry. He also created a airline business and technology Centre of Excellence (CoE) which was made up of former retired airlines subject matter experts who assist on various projects. Some of the initiatives he managed included the CEO Cockpit project and the annual Information Management conference which became a premier event in the industry.

Harry has extensive business and information management experience in the computer services, banking and airline industries. He has also lectured and carried out consultancy work at several large companies in South Africa and has working experience at Computer Sciences, Paytech, IBM, Amdahl, Allied Bank, South African Airways and IATA.

Walter Lukner has been working in the international petrol industry for 20 years. His main expertise lies in the area of Marketing and IT. Also noteworthy is his experience and expertise in bringing together brands and systems after corporate mergers (BP-Mobil and BP-Aral).As a Marketing Manager, he has coordinated the strategies and overseen projects in various countries for several companies in the industry. So he has developed and managed the co-operation between PAYBACK and ARAL as he has helped to develop a pan European Loyalty IT platform for the BP/ARAL service station network. Now he is managing the Loyalty and CRM strategy including B2C Cards offers in all 12 European countries on around 9000 service stations.

In his presentation he is going to give an update about the latest developments in the area of Loyalty and CRM from a retail service station perspective.

Dale draws on more than 20 years of experience in electronic payments and financial services. With Capra, Dale leverages his background in card acceptance and consumer point-of-sale environments to bring a merchant perspective to the firm's efforts. Dale helps retail organizations to plan and execute complex payment initiatives. He has managed and participated in a variety of projects to develop aligned payments strategies, improve the cost effectiveness and delivery capabilities of payment activities, define strategies centered on payment technology capabilities, and assess and turn around complex payment projects.

Before joining W. Capra, Dale worked for BP, managing 3rd party bankcard programs for over 13,000 BP branded merchant locations in the US. He served as a Vice President and Controller at PayPoint Electronic Payment Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of ARCO engaged in the delivery of payment processing services to a variety of retail verticals including petroleum, QSR and grocery. In particular he managed PayPoint’s key business relationships with all major debit and credit card payment providers to help deliver the optimal payment solutions to their clients. Earlier at ARCO, Dale managed a treasury cash management organization responsible for daily cash position activities, money transfer, bank administration/compensation and letters of credit. He also advised various business units on their cash and banking services needs and solutions.

A graduate of the Poznań University of Economics as well as of post-graduate studies at the Poznań University of Physical Education where he earned the title, Sports Manager.

For six years now, he has been associated with Lech Poznań where he is responsible for marketing issues such as sponsorship acquisition, delivery of sponsorship agreeements, development of new projects, construction of loyalty programs, organization of games, tournaments, building and maintaining the club's image as well as cooperation with municipal and media entities.

While at the same time, as the Managing Director, he created and developed the Lech Business Club Association. Currently, he is working for KKS Lech Poznań SA as the Deputy Marketing Director.

He is co-founder and President of the Management Board of the Sport & Business Foundation, operating in the area of Polish sports marketing and originator and host of Sports Marketing Days (since 2002) - the most significant conference on sports marketing - as well as the originator of the Sports and Business Gala that awards the DEMES Sports Business Awards.

Core Competences:

• Project management, especially IT with emphasis in project planning and -realisation
• Conception, setup and operation of dialogue marketing/ CRM platforms in the B2B sector
• Conception, design and integration of web-based applications
• Branch know how in supplier services, finance (banking/insurance), retail, hotels and tourism

DEVK - Project leading for the conception, technical realisation and operations of the individual it solution for central and decentralised direct marketing campaigns on the basis of the Client Vela product "DialogWorld".

Valamar Hotels & Resorts - Project leader for setup and utilization of a decentralised marketing services platform for hotels, apartments and camping sites of the Valamar hotel group.

Bruderhilfe PAX Familienfürsorge - Project leader for the conception, technical realisation and operations of the it solution for central and decentralised direct marketing campaigns (including customer retention measures) based on Client Velas system solution "DialogWorld".

Deutsche Messe AG - Project leader for the creation of a system specification to realise a platform for the visitor-CRM; development of a communication guideline which is aligned with the customer life cycle.

METRO Cash & Carry - Project leader for the creation of a comprehensive and international programme guideline ("CRM Toolbox") for the European customer card programme.

ArabellaSheraton Hotelmanagement GmbH / Starwood Hotels & Resorts / Schörghuber Unternehmensgruppe - Head of eBusiness / CRM for the ArabellaSheraton hotel group and Starwood Hotels & Resorts; eBusiness / CRM consulting for Schörghuber Unternehmensgruppe.

Micros-Fidelio GmbH - Trainer, Installer and support for more than 8.700 Micros POS-system customers (references amongst others: Deutsche Bahn / Mitropa, Airport München).

Since 2007 Karina has been working as the Marketing and Advertising Director in the X5 Retail Group (the company which manages the Perekriostok and Pyaterochka retail food networks). Beginning in 2005 Karina worked in the same position for Perekriostok.

Karina began her career in retail in 2002 as the Advertising Director in the Technosila retail network. Previous to that she worked in the Philips company for more than 6 years.

Karina was born in 1975 and has 3 degrees in higher education: Hanzehogeschool Groningen Diploma: International Marketing and Management and 2 diplomas with honors from the Russian Academy named after Plekhanov: Marketing as well as Credit and Finance.

Ivan has graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute (Technical University) with honors. He has been involved in the development of Ion Propulsion Systems for Russian and International Global Satellite Systems. He has attended post-graduate studies and defended a dissertation for a Ph.D. degree. The work was in essence about numerical modeling of processes in Ion Engines for Space Satellites. Special software has been developed for this purpose.

Afterwards, Ivan continued his work in the Department of Information Technology in Vimpelcom. The trade mark of the company is Beeline. It is the leading telecommunications operator in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). During his career at Vimpelcom he eventually became Head of the Application Operation department responsible for 30+ Information Systems including part of the Billing System and IT Applications for the Customer Service Center. He was the owner of the Incident Management process regarding IT in Vimpelcom.

Just after Vimpelcom he began working at Loyalty Partners Vostok (LPV) as the Chief Information Officer from October, 2006. LPV is the company that owns and operates the MALINA program on behalf of its partners. Ivan and his team are responsible for a number of key projects that closely connect IT and Marketing activities. He manages the implementation of Data Warehouse and projects for significant improvements of interaction between partners and MALINA members having the plastic Program card.

Ivan has more than fifteen years of comprehensive experience in the business oriented IT arena. He has skills in software and database development; support and maintenance of large corporate Information Systems including line and project management. He is confident that Information Technology can and should be operated as complete business department. IT should primarily propose a solution in most cases including the primary technical framework while implementing a suitable ready to use tool for marketing departments.