Programme

Morning Programme

08:30 Registration and Coffee
09:00 Opening Remarks from Chair

Ian French, Managing Director, Siceo

09:15 KEYNOTE

Creating Value & Maximising Profit: Controlling Margins and Promoting Growth in Leaner and Meaner Times

Mike Norris, CEO, Computacenter

10:00 The Key to Engaging New Customers…and Keeping Them!

VARs are now recognising the need to move away from relationship selling and move into more sophisticated avenues to engage and retain customers. This session, bringing together leading figures in the channel, will reveal the strategies used to grow their business and how they keep adding value, growth and profitability. VARs must become more sophisticated and develop a combined integrated multi channel approach to engage new customers and this panel will show them how.

Andrew Brimson, Director, Khipu Networks
Mark Price, Financial Director, BT Convergent Solutions
Sukh Rayat, Vice President of Avnet Technology Solutions EMEA
James Felix, Business Development Director, ACS Syan Ltd

10:45 Morning Coffee

11:15 INTERACTIVE FOCUS GROUPS - delegates are invited to choose one of the following.

A/ Unlocking Capital and Credit: Finding Flexible and Innovative Finance Solutions to Engender Customer Loyalty

Product and service development is critical if VARs want to stay ahead of their competitors, but creativity in financing is a frequently overlooked yet equally essential component of both winning and retaining business. This session will examine emerging strategies for addressing the question of customer affordability. How can you unlock credit from your own suppliers and pass the benefit onto the customer? Innovative financing is key to opening up new products to new and existing markets facilitating investment in best fit solutions for your customers.

Jan Schuil, European Business Development Manager, De Lage Landen

B/ Evaluating and Mitigating Risk: Conducting a Business Health Check

As the credit crunch rolls on and margins start to be squeezed it is imperative that businesses know their strengths and weaknesses. Our expert focus group leaders will show delegates how to conduct a business check up: where are the risks in your businesses and what can be done to plan for, mitigate and eliminate them?

Ian French, Managing Director, Siceo

C/ Consolidate or Die? Planning for M&A and Managing Expansion

New mergers and acquisitions seem to be announced on an almost daily basis. This session will review what consolidation means for the channel, in addition to focusing on what it means for the businesses. Are you readying yourself for sale or deciding on your next acquisition? These experts will equip delegates with strategies for coping with mergers and acquisitions and how to react and respond to corporate and cultural change during business expansion.

Richard Btesh, Director, Chess

D/ Reaching and Retaining Your SME Customers
How can I reach and engage the SMEs? Notoriously difficult to reach this is the most popular market segment with 60% of resellers selling to them and so this is one of the most pressing questions for the channel and this panel has been designed to try and answer it. Bringing together resellers successfully working with SMEs our focus group leader will scrutinise their potential for growth, the threats they face and the opportunities to be exploited.

Nicholas King, CEO, Apex Computers
Steven Rees-Pullman, vice president channels, Torex

12:30 Lunch

Afternoon Programme

14:00 KEYNOTE

Sukh Rayat, Vice President, Avnet Technology Solutions EMEA

Untapping the Distribution Value

Today's VARs are faced with many challenges in the quest to service their customers across a wider range of IT requirements whilst enabling improved efficiencies and reduced cost. A lack of technology skills, developing the right sales skills, managing and building relationships with vendors and positioning solutions to customers are some of the biggest challenges facing the channel today. This session will examine the challenges in more detail and demonstrate how VARs should be tapping into the skills, resources and services held within some distribution organisations.

14:30 INTERACTIVE FOCUS GROUPS - delegates are invited to choose one of the following.

A/ Talent Management Solutions in a Downturn: Attracting and Retaining Key Staff

The talent battle is on. Retaining good employees in tough times is an essential component of business success. This focus group will provide delegates with best practice solutions for implementing winning strategies in the talent war. Delegates will be offered insightful guidance into talent management trends including how to gain competitive advantage through strategic human capital management, align talent management strategy with the overall business plan and measure the ROI of talent management and get the most from leadership development.

Christopher Gabriel, Marketing and Solutions Director, Logicalis
Sean Mills, Senior Client Director, Centre for High Performance Development

B/ Relationship Management: Building Effective and Winning Collaborations to Capture Market Share

The channel is very much a relationship business and resellers partnering with other resellers is a key growth area as a means of adding value, differentiation and maintaining competitive advantage. Resellers are looking for new ways in which to win business in areas that our outside their core set of skills. This group led by experts in the field will equip delegates with tools to build lasting and winning collaborations across the channel.

Scott Yates, managing director, Comms-care
Martin Woolley, business unit director, Integralis

C/ Adopting the Green Agenda: Energy Efficiency and Climate Change – Impact, Implications and Solutions for the Channel

Over the last 18 months, the IT world has gone green. This focus group will examine strategies being used by businesses to play the green card to their a dvantage. Without a doubt companies need to react to climate change and implement plans to mitigate the risk to their business, but at the same time businesses need to ensure that these plans drive revenues and save costs.

David Hardcastle, Technical Director, Redstone Converged Solutions
Ian Osborne, Project Director, Intellect
Anja Ffrench, PC Donations and Marketing Manager, Computer Aid International
Tracey Rawling Church, Marketing Director, Kyocera Mita

D/ Making the Most of Virtualisation
Virtualisation is one of the hottest topics in the IT industry today. Converting a business to a virtual world can be confusing and risky if not completed properly. What virtualisation is and how it will evolve, how customers are using it today and will deploy it in the future, and what channel players can do to position themselves to drive revenue and profits from it will drive the discussion in the session.

Bryn Morgan, Commercial Director, Virtual IT

15:45 PANEL SESSION
Shift, Adapt, Survive: The Changing Dynamics of the Channel, Services & Profitability

As consolidation throughout the channel continues apace and the margins between channel members become increasingly blurred, resellers must ask themselves whether their business models are sustainable and profitable. The channel is changing with new competitors emerging all the time. For companies to survive they must make sure they are maximising the value of their business model and staying abreast of trends and technologies in the market. With some resellers striving to find niches away from the highly commoditised and competitive mainstream, and others focusing on services and consultancy to boost margins our panel of thought leaders will debate the profitability and growth potential of different business models. Is your business model the right one to take you where you want to go and what should do today to be ready for tomorrow?

Tim Black, Intel SMB Director, Intel UK&I
Martin Prescott, Managing Director, RedPC
Julian Fielden, Managing Director, OCF
Des Lekerman, Joint Managing Director, Eurodata Systems
Judy Groves, Group Marketing Director, SCH Plc

16:30 Closing comments from the chair

Ian French, Managing Director, Siceo

Drinks and canapés reception