6^th BREAKTHROUGH

Marketing Conference

Your productivity

services future!

Wed 20 Apr'11 at Kempton Park, Sunbury on Thames, UK

 

15 Apr'11

What a terrific line up we’ve assembled for the 6^th Annual BREAKTHROUGH Conference. Only 19 days to go to the top marketing event of the year. Check out the full agenda and speaker line up with mini-profiles here...
Book your place now...click here

 

The one-day conference is split into 2 session themes. The morning session focuses on the productivity services future with the new growth champions in this space sharing their visions and successful case studies.

 

In the afternoon session, we focus on the growth champions in direct marketing particularly in CRM, emarketing, social media, online webstores and mobile commerce, featuring the top 2 online resellers in the world Amazon and Staples.

Speaker mini-profiles (in agenda order)

Michael Brown, CEO - HiTouch Business Services Group (New Jersey)

US #1 independent and service provider pioneer

Michael serves as CEO of the $200m, New Jersey based HiTouch Group and its operating companies: MyOfficeProducts acquired in Nov’10; Rentacrate and ShredX. Prior to HiTouch, Michael spent 8 years with Allied Office Products, where he was president of his legendary father Howard’s company, involved in integrating and building a state-of-the-art infrastructure to support its rapid growth.

 

Allied was sold to Office Depot in May 2006. Before joining Allied, he served at Buhrmann Tetterode, where he held multiple senior level executive positions. Michael earned his bachelor’s degree in Information Studies from Syracuse University.

 

The HiTouch management team have been responsible for pioneering FM services, coffee services, ad specialties, shredding, responsible recycling of packaging, cartridges and hardware and managed print services

 

Alan Ball, MD, Spicers UK (Sawston)

Europe’s #1 OP wholesaler

Alan joined Spicers in November 2009 at a time of huge change in its leadership. He has set about transforming the wholesalers support services to help re-energise the independent dealer community

Alan has held senior management positions in FKI, GE and Wolseley. Before joining Spicers he was the Managing Director and Plc Executive Director for PTS, part of the BSS Group, a FTSE 250 business. In that time grew sales from £300m to around £700m and Alan oversaw the opening of 120 new locations, 2 acquisitions and several new ventures – including renewable energy where the business went from zero sales to over £20m in two years.

Dennis Kramer, business director, Europe, Print Fleet

PrintFleet, World leader of brand-independent Managed Print Infrastructure Technology and Solutions

Dennis has more than 25 years of experience in the office imaging industry. He has held senior European sales and marketing positions with Adobe and Electronics for Imaging, before taking responsibility as Business Director for PrintFleet in Europe.

Dennis’ focus is to work with office products dealers to bring their Managed Print Services (MPS) programs to market effectively and successfully. He has spoken at multiple MPS conferences and most recently shared his expertise at the 2010 Asia Pacific MPS Conference in Singapore and the Photizo European MPS Conference in Barcelona.

PrintFleet’s family of print management software solutions range from simple rapid assessment to advanced, independently hosted print management, offering unparalleled agnostic data collection, data integrity and back end support.  Over 4,000 office product dealerships in the USA, Europe and Asia Pacific have deployed PrintFleet technology to provide total print management solutions for their clients.

 

Adam Noble, CEO, Irongate Group (Derby),

One of the UK’s leading business services provider

Adam has served 22 years with Irongate, in recent years driving the group to record rates of sales growth with his innovative business services model

 

Working at Irongate Group since 1989 his previous positions were Sales Executive , Sales Manager , Group Sales Director  and CEO.

 

Irongate has grown strongly this year with its expanding business services model. It has expanded from office supplies, furniture and print services into print management, personalised marketing print, FM services and embraced the latest technology to reach £16m in sales in 2010.

 

 

 

Alex Tatham, sales and marketing chief, Westcoast (Reading), UK's leading technology wholesaler

 

Alex has spent 17 years in the IT distribution channel. He joined Westcoast as sales and marketing director in January 2009 after  ashort period as MD with Simms International (2007-8) and 13 years with leading global  IT distributor Bell Micro (now Avnet/ ATS) latterly as commercial director.

Westcoast is one of the UK's largest IT wholesalers supplying retail, VARs, e-tail, OP dealers with HP, Apple, Samsung, Toshiba and Microsoft as strategic vendors. It is also the largest UK distributor of IT Supplies and spare parts.

 

Alex is a rare mix of qualified chartered accountant and high profile marketer. Sales for Kellido, Westcoast’s parent company are expected to be £950m in 2010 inc. Westcoast £810m and XMA £140m, both substantially up on 2009.

 

Rachel Trueblood, VP Branding and Advertising , Staples, Inc.

The World's #1 OP reseller

Rachel Trueblood has been on a 13-year adventure of marketing, advertising and branding at Staples.  From targeted marketing, loyalty programs and credit card marketing to social media, mass media and sports marketing.  From marketing strategy, value propositions and brand promises to strategic platforms, personas and visual identity.  Rachel is currently spearheading the global rebranding efforts at Staples.

Rachel has her MBA from Babson College and prior to Staples she worked with AT&T while at Digitas.

 

Chris Poad – director of merchant services , Amazon.com,

The world's #1 online reseller

Chris was appointed director of software and video games of online retail giant Amazon.co.uk in January 2009. He recently was appointed VP of the burgeoning merchant services division

 

Chris was previously employed as head of e-commerce at the UK subsidiary of German company OTTO, where he was responsible for the online retail strategy for home shopping businesses such as Grattan and Freemans. Poad also has experience of internet search functions, having spent three years at Ask Jeeves.

 

Chris is passionate about the video games industry, and cites space-based BBC Micro title Elite as one of his favourite games. He also feels “there has been no greater technical or creative achievement than Grand Theft Auto IV.”

 

Ron Books CEO - ECi Solutions (Fort Worth, USA)

OP industries #1 software solutions company.

Ron has served 10 years with ECi Solutions, taking over as CEO in 2008. A hands on CEO Ron spends most of his time engaged with its 3000 OP resellers in US, UK and Europe.

 

ECI’s focus is not only to provide software solutions for dealers back office operations but to equip resellers with the latest emarketing tools to maximise CRM, personalised email campaigns driving users to well designed open webstores to maximise sales and profitability. His greatest challenge is to help resellers understand the tremendous functionality available within the systems available.

 

ECi started in the US by acquiring the #1 back office systems provider DDMS; it later added Britannia and recently Acsellerate the CRM tool service provider. It now has over 2000 OP dealers using its software. Recently it developed EC Interactive as its latest generation total software including ecommerce.

 

In Europe ECi acquired Interactive Solutions the Progress software developer, Integrity and eBuzz and services up to a 1000 OP dealers mainly in the UK.

 

Damian Hanson, CEO, One-iota,

A UK leader in social and mobile commerce services

Damian has over 10 years’ experience at management and board level delivering award winning business solutions and engaging marketing campaigns within the technology sector.

 

With an infectious drive for innovation, Damian has a proven track record in delivering unprecedented company growth and high impact results for both clients and partners.

 

After successful roles with GE Capital ITS and National Computing Centre, Damian decided to join early stage mobile marketing and technology venture 2ergo in 2002, quickly becoming a leading figure in the emerging mobile marketing sector.  As group sales director, Damian helped propel 2ergo into a global operation with over 150 employees and a client list that featured O2, Fox News, Transport for London, Ladbrokes, Yahoo! and Rightmove.

 

With a desire to become a leader in social and mobile commerce technology enablement for both brands and retailers alike, Damian set up One-iota alongside David Hague in 2010.

 

Peter Frost, CEO, Proficiency Group

Peter will open the conference with the annual Proficiency Index review of the Office Productivity marketplace for 2010 and the 7 megatrends that will drive growth through to 2020. He will close the conference with the BREAKTHROUGH Marketing Awards for:

• Dealer marketer of the year (Mark Heath, CEO Bluefish receiving award from Laura Gale, VP Marketing, United Stationers in 2010)
• Etailer marketer of the year
• Dealer marketing manager of the year
• Manufacturer marketer of the year

Finally, Peter will summarise a recommended course of action based on the presentation themes in order for service providers to succeed in the Office Productivity Services market run up to 2020.