Gartner Customer Strategies & Technologies Summit

Gene Alvarez leads Gartner's research on e-commerce, including topics such as vision, strategy, business models, e-commerce platforms, Cloud, SaaS, and open source e-commerce technologies, social commerce, mobile commerce and context-aware computing, product reviews, recommendations and CRM organizational vision and strategy. He is the chairperson for Gartner's premier Customer 360 Summit and has spoken at many international events. Mr. Alvarez has 29 years of business and IT experience in business impact assessment, vendor management, project management, software development and delivery of complex business applications. He was named in 2011 & 2010 "HITEC" Award - Top 100 most influential IT leaders from The Hispanic IT Executive Council and in 2011 "HE&IT TOP 200" Award - Hispanic Engineer & Information Technology Magazine Top 200 Influential Hispanics in Technology.

Arvindh Balakrishnan is the VP, CX Applications Group in Oracle. In this role, he guides and supports Oracle's CX Go to Market efforts across verticals globally. In previous roles in Oracle, he has managed Oracle's Life Sciences Industry Business Unit, Oracle's consulting sales in Life sciences, and delivery and sales of services to high tech and industrial manufacturing verticals. He joined Oracle in 1996 after completing three years in the PhD program at Texas A&M as Deans Fellow, Operations Research.

Attila Bayrak is the CRM Senior Vice President of AKBANK, leading three teams of CRM Analytics and Marketing Systems, CRM Applications, and CRM Strategy Development. He has an engineering background, with both MBA and MSc degrees, and a Phd in Banking and Finance. Mr. Bayrak started his Banking career in 2000, and worked in sales and marketing, credit cards, CRM applications and data mining departments until 2007. He has been with AKBANK since 2007, and has helped form the new CRM initiative and the CRM division within the first year of his joining the Bank. He has been a frequent speaker at several EFMA events.

Alexa Bona is a vice president and distinguished analyst in Gartner Research, where her research currently focuses on IT management. As part of the IT asset management research practice, Mrs. Bona is responsible for coverage of future trends in software licensing and pricing practices, as well as maintenance and support models for business applications. She is also a generalist for software asset management trends and issues. In addition to looking at how models will evolve, Mrs. Bona advises organizations on deal negotiation strategies to help them achieve best-in-class, sustainable and flexible deals with major business application software vendors and SaaS providers, such as Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, salesforce.com, Workday and SAP.

Kimberly Collins, Ph.D., is a Research Vice President in Gartner Research for the CRM team. Her research focuses on marketing strategies, processes and enabling technologies. Areas of primary focus include marketing resource management (MRM), integrated marketing management (IMM) and marketing performance management.

Mila D'Antonio is Editor-in-Chief for 1to1 Media where she leads the editorial direction and operations of the award-winning 1to1 Media.com, 1to1 Weekly Digest, Think Customers: the 1to1® Blog, and online videos and podcasts. Prior to joining 1to1 Media, she worked for a number of trade magazines and daily newspapers in Pennsylvania and Connecticut. Mila is passionate about the customer experience and looks forward to hearing readers' feedback about how 1to1 Media can continue to bring them value.

Jim Davies is a Research Director in Gartner Research and is part of the company's European CRM team. His research focuses on all aspects relating to the voice of the customer (VoC), including technologies such as surveying, speech analytics and social media monitoring. He also covers the contact center workforce optimization (WFO) marketplace, which integrates and optimizes call center agent functions spanning from recruitment, recording, evaluation and training to scheduling, reporting and all associated analytics. Both research areas feed into Gartner's overarching coverage of customer experience management.

Rolf Eichweber is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa and most recently spent eight years as a Director at Standard Bank, responsible for distribution, operations and customer strategy. His career spans retail banking, business process optimization, IT, private equity, commercial law and venture capital. In 2008, Rolf and his Standard Bank team won the Gartner CRM Excellence award at the Gartner CRM Summit in London.

Gareth Herschel is the Lead Analyst on the use of analysis to drive improved business performance in the area of customer relationships. Mr. Herschel covers a wide variety of different types of analysis, including predictive analysis, social analytics, and text and speech analytics, to identify the most appropriate technique for different business situations.

Partha Iyengar is VP and distinguished analyst in Gartner's "CIO Research - Service and Operational Technology Management" team. He is also the Country Manager - Research, India, with responsibility for managing the India research agenda. His research interests cover areas of strategic interest to CIOs and their direct reports, including service management and sourcing issues, and the newly emerging areas of IT-OT integration management. In addition he covers the areas of business and IT strategy, business value of IT, IT measurement (ITScore), CIO leadership issues and the changing role of the CIO in a globalized world. He also researches India and China issues in terms of the business, technology and innovation impact these countries have on the global marketplace, and also on how global enterprises can succeed with their IT and business initiatives in these markets. His recent reports have focused on "On Demand: From Capacity to Capability," "The Entrepreneurial CIO" and "Managing Strategic Partners." Mr. Iyengar is a frequent and sought-after speaker and presenter at numerous Gartner and external forums, as well as for various government organizations in India, China and other countries. He is extensively quoted in the local, national and international press; was interviewed on the U.S. CBS News show "60 Minutes"; was a panelist on a CNN International panel discussion on the future of IT; and also participated in the BBC panel discussion on IT in emerging markets. He is the co-author of a book published by Harvard Business School Press on India and China strategies, titled "IT and the East: How China and India Are Altering the Future of Technology and Innovation." Mr. Iyengar is a non-executive director on the board of directors of State Bank of India, India's largest bank and one of the world's largest financial institutions. He is also on the advisory board of Symbiosis Center for IT, a leading management school in India.

Johan Jacobs is an enterprise application analyst focusing on CRM and ERP and specializing in Web self-service channels, processes and technologies. Mr. Jacobs has held several key roles in IT and financial services companies and is well-known as an authority on CRM Web customer service and ERP competency centers, with a keen focus on all contact center multichannels. As the Gartner lead analyst for Web customer service, Mr. Jacobs focuses on Web chat, knowledge base for self-service, e-mail response management, virtual assistants, collaborative browsing and mobile communication for CRM service. Within ERP, Mr. Jacobs is passionate about competency centers and ERP-related support. He frequently speaks at local and international events and is often quoted in the press.

Nick Jones is a Vice President and Gartner Distinguished Analyst. Mr. Jones' research focuses primarily on mobile business, mobile technology, mobile applications and emerging technologies. His research coverage includes business-to-employee (B2E) and business-to-consumer (B2C) mobility; mobile commerce and payments; machine-to-machine (M2M) applications and technology; wireless technology; the impact of emerging technologies on mobility; and mobile application development. His research interests also include emerging trends/technologies, technology road mapping, and the social impact of technology.

Brendan Keogh-Smith is the CRM Project Manager for the International Tennis Federation. The ITF is the world governing body for Tennis and is celebrating its centenary this year. Our role is to foster the growth of tennis through out the world and oversee the rules of Tennis. We are utilising Dynamics CRM to help us offer a better experience for our Players, Officials and National Associations.

Michael Maoz is a Research Vice President and Distinguished Analyst in Gartner Research. His research focuses on customer strategies and technologies, with an emphasis on the CRM customer service disciplines, collaborative customer strategies, social media strategies, and cloud-based CRM applications and analytics. Mr. Maoz is the research leader for the customer service and support strategies area. He researches social software, software as a service (SaaS), CRM contracts and budget strategies, multichannel contact center applications, social CRM/communities, and field service management. He is also the lead analyst for the Oracle CRM product portfolio.

Scott Nelson is a Managing Vice President in Gartner Research. He is responsible for managing research in the area of customer-related research, including CRM and customer experience management. His particular research examines the effect on vision and strategy that results from focusing on the customer. His broader team looks at areas such as the role of social media in relating to customers, e-commerce, sales strategies, marketing strategies and customer service strategies.

Professor Obeng is a British educator who is recognized for his success as a motivational speaker, innovator and author. He created the concept and practice of 'New World Management,' which is often the topic of his speeches. In addition to founding Pentacle, the world’s first virtual business school, and establishing QUBE, the world’s best 3D learning environment, he is also a professor at the School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Henley Business School. Obeng is the author of nine books, all of which focus on business strategy, adapting for change, leadership, innovation and organization. Eddie Obeng offers insights into the most effective ways to adapt to address the rapidly-changing environments in business, society and culture today.

Bill O'Kane is a research director in the area of master data management (MDM) on the Information Management team within Gartner Research. He provides expertise and advice to Gartner's clients and staff in regard to MDM program management, MDM vendors and technologies, MDM implementation styles, and MDM's role within an overall enterprise information management (EIM) strategy, including data governance implementations.

Adam Sarner is a Vice President at Gartner, responsible for global coverage of CRM, with a focus on marketing strategy and technology. This includes multichannel campaign management, lead management, marketing analytics, segmentation, loyalty marketing, digital marketing, and social. In addition, Mr. Sarner works with marketers to help them assess and take advantage of innovative and emerging marketing technologies and put them to business use. Before covering marketing applications, Mr. Sarner covered the e-commerce market for Gartner.

Praveen Sengar is a Principal Research Analyst with Gartner's Business Applications team. He leads Gartner's research on all aspects of e-commerce and configure price and quote (CPQ) technology research. He covers all aspects of CPQ, including direct sales to partner and self-service sales channels. E-commerce coverage includes business models, cloud-based e-commerce technologies, e-commerce outsourcing, e-commerce globalization, e-commerce analytics, e-commerce implementation partners, and mobile and social commerce. He often provides strategic and tactical advice to heads of sales, heads of CRM, VPs of e-commerce, directors of e-commerce, channel-base sellers, and IT professionals responsible for customer-facing transactional websites and CPQ. Mr. Sengar also works with Gartner clients in Asia/Pacific on their CRM projects, helping them realize the full benefits of their initiatives.

Jesper Søgaard has a background as Master of Science in Economics and Business Administration. For the last 10 years he has worked with implementing IT in International Companies like Carlsberg and SAP AG, where he has been working primarily in the order-to-cash related processes both as a Solution Architect, Head Architect, Program Manager and Enterprise Architect. His primary focus has been on IT enablement of business processes, i.e. working in the space between IT and the business, where he has been implementing CRM and ERP, customer experience, customer service, marketing, mobility and related supporting processes like Finance and Procurement.

Patrick Stakenas' primary focus is on sales performance management (SPM), and mobile technology. Mr. Stakenas has extensive expertise in SPM, customer relationship management (CRM), SaaS and cloud computing models. He also covers multiple sales topics, sales process transformation and management along with cloud computing sales services and emerging mobile trends. With Gartner for 1 year, Mr. Stakenas has more than 25 years of experience in sales and sales management and over 15 years working with IT on CRM and related sales projects. He has application expertise in SPM, incentive compensation, sales force automation (SFA) and performance management analytic tools.

Jenny Sussin is a Principal Research Analyst in the ITL Enterprise Software group of Gartner Research, with her primary focus on social for CRM.

Edmund (Ed) Thompson is a VP and Distinguished Analyst in Gartner Research. His research focuses on CRM, and he is the research leader for the CRM Strategy and Implementation and Customer Experience Management topics. He researches CRM strategy, implementation, CRM service providers, customer experience and SAP CRM, and more generally covers CRM in Europe.

As President of both Engine and WCRS, Robin was part of the management team that led the management buyout from Havas in 2004. Robin began his career by setting up a student advertising agency while he was still an undergraduate at Cambridge. After working as a copywriter in a number of agencies, including Collett Dickinson Pearce and Partners, he co–founded Wight Collins Rutherford Scott with Peter Scott in 1979. Though Robin Wight has spent his whole career in advertising, he has always had a number of outside interests. From 1992 — 2002 he was Chairman of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, Charter for Business, which has since raised over £40 million. From 1997 — 2005 he was Chairman of Arts and Business which encourages British businesses to invest £140 million a year in support for the arts. In the 2000 Birthday Honours Robin Wight was awarded a CVO for his services to the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, Charter for Business. In 2003 he founded the Ideas Foundation, a charity which helps identify and nurture creatively gifted young people from ethnic minorities through the award of Creativity Scholarships. For the last three years he has been working on a study looking at the way the brain processes communications built on the latest learning from evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience. Linked to this, in 2007 he published “The Peacock’s Tail and the Reputation Reflex: The Neuroscience of Art Sponsorship”.

Anthone is the Director Worldwide, Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) for HP. In this role, Anthone leads the practices responsible for delivering cloud based Business Process built on Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce.com and Workday platforms to enterprise customers globally. Anthone leads HP’s Enterprise Cloud Solutions strategy for Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce.com and Workday business applications. He is also responsible for developing HP intellectual property for various industries such as Automotive, Financial Services, and Public Sector, as well as horizontal IP such as Social Engagement Management.