Day 1
Host Overview
The Data Avalanche and its Impact on Companies

Utilizing Artifical Intelligence to Personalize Social Media Interaction
As price matching and commodity like pricing have become the norm in retail, the zero moment of truth is typically too late to be targeting consumers. The proliferation of social media and consumer willingness to express need before they search represents a big opportunity for retailers to reach people, not personas, which leads to better and more consistent conversion into customers.

Using Data and AI to drive Digital Transformation in Retail
Discover how Microsoft enables retailers to deliver personal, seamless, and differentiated customer experiences by empowering people, enabling digital transformation with AI, and capturing data-based insights to drive growth.

Journey of Social Media Analytics
Charlotte will discuss how social media analytics have come a long way in the past few years and show how HSBC are shaping social future with new technology

Networking Coffee Break
From Merchandising to Clienteling to Augmented Reality – Driving Analytics to Point of Impact
The retail environment has never been more competitive. Online and mobile shopping channels, with their lower overhead operations, exert constant pressure on retailers to deliver low prices while remaining profitable. These channels also give consumers the ability to instantly satisfy their shopping desires, eroding the allure of the in-store experience. At the same time, shoppers are better informed on prices, products and promotions that ever before, heightening their expectations for customer service. See how retailers are leveraging big data and embedding the insight where it can make the most impact.

Deploying Data Science: A Blueprint for Success
Deploying data science projects is difficult for any organization. For retailers looking to compete with the disruptive forces of Amazon, Jet and other data science-first retailers, the successful deployment of data science projects is imperative to their long-term success. In this talk we will discuss people and process strategies to quickly prototype and deploy data science at scale. We will discuss several strategies of data science team building and several alternative methods of deployment. The talk will close with a detailed description how a current customer builds and deploys product recommendations as a REST API.

DIY-BI (Self-Service Analytics): Analytics Coe, Data Exploration, and Live Stories of Visual Analytics In Action
Co-Presenter: Abdul Haque
-- We are in a new world of BI delivery. With so many mergers, acquisitions, and changing business needs, the role of traditional reporting has transformed. Business leaders have taken charge of analytics and have dedicated teams or build teams ‘On demand’ to support their rapidly changing needs. With a gamut of new Self-Service tools in the market, it helps the BI & Analytics teams to efficiently guide/support the business and stay relevant by helping business users generate powerful insights, and good decision making. In this session I will be sharing the journey of how we engaged and empowered our users to develop Self-Service Analytics for quick ROI, creating a Win-Win for the BI Analytics Team and Business. We will also see live examples of how the different business teams have used these DIY tools to generate powerful insights via simple interactive stories and visualizations.

The Shifting Retail Industry – Data Analytics Can Chart the Right Course
The retail industry is fast moving and complicated to navigate. Data analytics is the ideal way to help navigate stormy seas. This session will provide a front row seat to the shifts in the retail industry attached to the latest industry trends, a live demonstration of retail industry solutions to common business challenges, and examples from around the globe of retailers taking advantage of the shifts in the marketplace driving business value and hard dollar ROI. From start to finish, a comprehensive analytics showcase for any retailer or direct to consumer business that is looking to chart the right course with data analytics.

Lunch
Workshop: Winning Decisions! 4 Key Steps to Positioning Your Analytics Project for Success
In the fast paced, competitive and constantly changing world of retail, time is not always on your side when it comes to decision making. Using data science and advanced analytics to elevate your reporting, places richer insights in the palm of your hand in less time. But how do you get started? Join Capax Global’s Director of Data Science for a fireside chat, and learn how to evaluate your analytics maturity level and use this insight to align your teams and prepare your next big data and analytics project for success.

Big Data Visualization & Analytics (A Walmart Approach)
Visualization and analytics on big data platform is a challenge we all want to solve with various tools and solutions available in the market. The challenge is to build a governed platform or solution that is sustainable, scalable, cost efficient, and fast – yet maintaining higher levels of data quality with detailed metadata to enable self-service, self-discovery, and self-exploration.Global Data and Analytics Platform, an organization within Walmart Labs, is working on an overarching approach that defines, designs, and governs various building blocks within the data lake and visualization product – including data loading, data quality, data governance, metadata management, visualization portal, portal features and functions, enabling tools, and self-service functions. This presentation will share few key aspects of this journey, wins and challenges so far, couple of use cases, and the next steps.

Networking Coffee Break
Fireside Chat: A New Way to do Retail
Interviewed by: Ariel Goldfarb, Lecturer at Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern.
ShopRunner connects top retailers and brands to the best online shoppers. ShopRunner's exclusive member benefits and highly targeted, data-driven marketing help retail partners acquire high value customers while increasing existing customers' purchase frequency and spend. Led by CEO Sam Yagan, ShopRunner's team of e-commerce experts are backed by Kynetic, Alibaba Group and American Express. ShopRunner has offices in San Mateo and Philadelphia.

Your Data is Useless - Applying Context and Experience to Analytics
Your organization is big. At any given time you have thousands of data points pointing to a myriad of conclusions waiting to be made, the cumulative results of which are not seen for months or even years. Join me for an analysis of how we can apply the right framework to analyze information on a daily basis in order to learn quickly, and adjust and ultimately, win.

Networking Cocktail Reception
Day 2
Registration & Breakfast
Host Overview
Fireside Chat: McData
Interviewed by: Peg Murphy, Associate Chair, at Columbia College Chicago

Fireside Chat: Defining the Future of Food
Interviewed by: Shlomo Argamon, Ph.D., Professor of Computer Science, Program Director, Master of Data Science at Illinois Institute of Technology

Networking Coffee Break
Workshop: Data-Driven Growth Strategies
Discover new opportunities for increasing sales, marketing ROI and profitability by enhancing existing analytic processes with external economic and consumer behavior leading indicators. With a holistic view of future demand by category and region - 12 to 24 months into the future – CPG and Retail leaders can make bold decisions today with these data-driven insights. In this interactive workshop, the evolution of business intelligence will be explored and case studies examined. The aim is to show what is possible when global data meets cognitive computing that can mimic the mind of an economist with the processing power of millions of CPUs. The workshop will also provide a glimpse of the future of several major categories, showing the true drivers of demand.

Lunch
Providing Context with Data and Analytics to Drive Business Decisions

Granular Insight and Performance through Personalized Video
Nicole Kocherov is Vice President of Analytics at Eyeview, the leader in outcome-based video marketing. As head of Analytics it is Nicole’s mission to ensure Eyeview campaigns are driving maximum results and return on ad spend. Since joining Eyeview over 4 years ago, Nicole has led Eyeview’s analytics modeling, business development and analytic tools development. Nicole is at the forefront of Eyeview’s focus in driving video outcomes by providing granular insight on which elements of video creative drive consumer action. At Eyeview, we’re all about the outcome.
