Registration & Coffee

Welcome Remarks by Conference Convenor:

Ecommerce in MENA the Untapped Potential

The MENA region is on track to be the next big growth market for e-commerce. The Gulf region especially is being touted as the market that’s set to grow exponentially within the next couple of years. According to PayFort, the Middle East e-commerce market would grow to US$69 billion by 2020, almost doubling in size in just a few years. According to Statista, overall growth across the Middle East and Africa would be at a CAGR of 11% between 2018-2022. However at the same time an oft-quoted Gartner study stated that, in 2016, only 15% business in the Middle East had any online commerce presence.

Customer Acquisition by Data Driven Marketing Strategies

Business leaders are pondering over questions like: Big data vs. small data: how do you filter through the data noise and identify what’s relevant? Quantifying the real value of social for their business. Trying to figure out how can the business build social KPIs into business’ objectives? and using analytics to accelerate customer understanding

Customer Acquisition Strategies: Ensuring the Value of the Customer Exceeds Cost of Customer Acquisition.

It is also an extremely common way that venture-funded businesses think alike about how to grow. They think they can burn through tons of capital acquiring users and figure out monetization later. But no matter how much volume you have, if you don’t make money on any of the transactions, you won’t make money at all. For a viable business, the value of the customer must exceed the cost of acquiring that customer. You don’t need to have this solved on day one of your business, but you need to have a plan as to how that’s going to happen.

Customer Acquisition Strategies: Build Engagement

Seventy-nine percent of customers want to see that a brand cares before making a purchase. Connect with your consumers by knowing your company values and sharing them frequently. Using social media is a great way to build engagement with potential customers. Follow your prospects on social, and share your customers’ content on your own pages. Share engaging content on holidays, promotional days, and throughout the week to stay at the forefront of prospects’ feeds and top of mind.

Networking & Refreshments

Customer Acquisition Strategies: Educate Your Customers

Let potential customers know why your product is the best choice. Most customers do their own research on a product online before making a purchase. Make their job easier by providing ample product information online— provide multiple images of different angles on your product detail pages, incorporate Q&A on your site to let customers answer each other’s questions, include a clear link to your return policy and a FAQ page, and consider implementing a chatbot on your site to answer customer questions. Another great way to provide social proof is to incorporate ratings and reviews on your site. 92% of customers read reviews when shopping online, and reviews can enhance SEO, improve conversions, and drive value to your bottom line.

Customer Acquisition Strategies: Converting Customers Through Content

Is content still king in 2020? Yes, content is alive and well, helping define your brand, build relevance and influence users towards conversion. Its important to learn how to leverage content to draw disparate audiences into the funnel, make them stickier and improve life-time value. Some of the biggest brands have done this to drive growth through content and native amplification, and you can apply these methods to your own brand.

Effective Strategies to Use Dropshipping as a Revenue Enhancer in MENA?

Many cost optimization efforts adopt a functional approach which focuses on individual cost centers and categories. This session will provide insights on the critical role of supply planning to harmonize individual functions into a cost-optimized network response that maximizes the value from assets and delivers efficient customer outcomes.

Networking & Lunch Break

Cloud & Datawarehousing: The Future of Data Infrastructure in the Internet Business

Many data warehouses deployed today were developed during the 1980s and were built for on-premises data centers typical of the time. With modern, cloud-built data warehouse technology now available, you can gather even more data from a multitude of data sources and instantly and elastically scale to support virtually unlimited users and workloads while ensuring the integrity and consistency of a single source of truth without a fight for computing resources.

How to Turn Employees into Social Media Rock Stars With an Employee Advocacy Program

Have you noticed your employees actively engaging with your corporate social channels? That’s a good indicator they’re thirsty for similar content they can share on their channels and become thought leaders in your space. Organisations worldwide are integrating social media advocacy programs into their overall integrated marketing and social media programs by incentivising program users to become active members

Effective Ways to Design Cross-Channel Experiences for Today’s Always Connected Consumer

The epicenter of a holistic customer experience strategy is the intelligent and insightful integration of a variety of customer-related data sources. Unified cross- channel customer experience strategy has the potential to inject efficiency and personalization to both commerce and customer-care initiatives. Operators today have no choice but to harness structured and unstructured data, convert that into actionable insight and use that insight strategically to serve their customers and ultimately convert them into brand advocates, resulting in an increased Net Promoter Score (NPS) .

Using AI to Analyze Unstructured Data and Predict Customer Behavior in Ecommerce

Utilization of unstructured data is crucial for every company that wants to improve its business processes and get the most out of its own experience. It will help to drastically improve customer experience and the overall interaction between the company and its clients. Therefore, it’s just the right time to apply machine learning tools to process and analyze all this data in the most accurate and you will get streamlined analysis for both structured and unstructured datasets.

The Convergence of UX and CX to Improve Digital Experience

Customers Experience (CX) and User Experience (UX) work towards the same business objectives, but operate in separate spaces. How can they work more synergistically to create more compelling and beautiful customer experiences? UX is a discipline of logic whilst CX is a discipline rooted in emotion and customer delight. By harnessing skills from UX designers into CX planning, they can apply the rules of simplicity and intuition to improve customer journeys. Similarly by harnessing the skills of the CX team within UX planning, user experience could build in more brand personality into information and action architecture.

Don’t Cross That Line! Navigating Personalization and Privacy When Creating Seamless Experiences

Increasingly, customers are using more than one device to interact with brands. Retailers who are tracking their customers across multiple devices are able to gain valuable data on who their most valuable customers are, how often those customers are interacting with their brand, and what those on-site experiences look like. Statistics show significant increases in product view rate, purchase rate and average order value leveraging personalisation strategies however its also important to strike a balance with the privacy element

Registration & Coffee

Welcome Remarks by Conference Convenor:

Developing Future Warehouses through Automation and Robotics to Ensure Operational Excellence in 2020

Digital Transformation is Key but Why Should you not Overlook the Importance of Physical Transformation

Although digital transformation has received the lion’s share of attention from analysts and technology companies alike, businesses must take care not to lose sight of physical transformation. The method of flowing truckloads of products from large distribution centers to stores has become outdated. Businesses must update their supply chain and distribution networks to compete in this new market, in which speed of delivery and inventory reduction are paramount.

Complex Multi-Channel Order Fulfilment from a Single DC

We see many distribution executives driving through retail store replenishment where inventory never leaves the enterprise. There's a lot of flexibility here in terms of shipping from a retail DC to stores in an effort to address new item introductions and replenishing commonly purchased items. These certainly help with flexibility, but always come with a set of challenges. These hurdles represent a very complex set of requirements to fulfil from a single distribution center.

Is Centralizing Customer Fulfillment the Right Design for Your Business?

Supply chain customer fulfilment organizations are undergoing significant transformation as a result of globalization and new digital capabilities. Recent research shows that 41% of players have a structure that is centralized across business divisions, but stand-alone by region. Learn the critical capabilities necessary to make centralization of customer fulfilment successful.

Networking & Refreshments

Cross Docking Strategies that Can Help Save Time Significantly

If you have fast-moving products coming through the door, you can save time with what’s known as cross-docking. Instead of putting these products back on the shelf only to have your employees retrieve them hours later, direct them to a temporary staging area for scanning and inventory purposes. This temporary staging area should be close to the loading dock. When the products are ready for the next leg of their trip, your employees can quickly retrieve them and get them out the door without having to look for them on the shelf.

Streaming Analytics for Real Time Warehouse Decision Making

With the increasing chatter about customer-centricity and personalization, stores are turning to Streaming Analytics — the use of real-time data to make and implement decisions. “Streaming Analytics is the ability to constantly calculate statistical analytics while moving within the stream of data. ”Retailers have used Streaming Analytics over the past few years and will continue to do so, given its impact on retailing.

Product Picking Optimization

To speed up the process of picking orders, avoid manually entering SKU’s, and instead, use a scanner or image capture on your smartphone or tablet in order to get the most up-to-date reading of your inventory. Beware that shrink wrapping, lamination, as well as certain color combinations can cause a barcode to not scan properly. Automated processes and set picking routes will allow you to optimize your warehouse management. Also consider changing the aisle width based on your forklift configuration.

Networking & Lunch Break

Overcoming the Challenges Associated with Segmented Supply Chain Processes & their Impact on Warehousing

If a business’s various supply chain processes don’t work together, it can’t ensure across-the-board customer satisfaction. Larger companies generally have many private warehouses and distribution centers, managed by different in-house and outsourced operators, that run on different systems. As a result, they employ different tactics to ensure their supply chain runs smoothly. The key to solving this supply chain segmentation is to consolidate these processes, rather than let them function in silos.

Get Near-Perfect Inventory Accuracy with Cycle Counting in a Cloud Warehouse Management System

Cycle counting is periodic counting of inventory within a warehouse to ensure that the physical inventory at the bin location matches the count reported in the warehouse management system. The theory behind cycle counting is that counting a smaller percentage of items on a more regular basis will lead to greater overall accuracy. These frequent inspections significantly reduce errors thereby maintaining incredibly high accuracy rates across the entire facility. The benefit is that organizations using this practice of inventory control can perform inspections at any time with little or no oversight.

Pick-to-Light Systems

Shoppers are increasingly drifting towards faster delivery. This is where pick-to-light comes in handy. A pick-to-light system, as its name implies, uses a lighting method to make inventory management easier. As operators pick items in a bin in your warehouse, they switch off a certain light that directs other store operators in the right direction. This helps operators find products in a warehouse or an inventory quickly and facilitates faster deliveries to customers.

Best Practice in Automating the Data Collection Process in a Warehouse

Running a warehouse these days is all about data. Digital technology can take the guesswork out of inventory and warehouse management with employees scanning products every step of the way. Your facility should collect as much data on your products as possible, including where they’re coming from, when they arrive, what condition they are in, where they’re going and when they’re set to leave.

How Can Lack of Inventory Visibility and Metrics Impact you DC Efficiency

In the world of omni-channel logistics, it’s crucial that businesses know the status of their inventory and whether it’s at a distribution center or retail location. The last thing a company wants is to promise next-day delivery to its customers and not be able to follow through. Inventory can be particularly challenging to keep track of during the holiday shopping season. To address this challenge, businesses must develop an efficient order fulfilment process through the use of a fine-tuned WMS.

Maximizing Man and Machine In The Modern Warehouse

The impact of digital transformation and connected commerce are resounding across industries. Forward-thinking companies around the world are challenging themselves to serve more customers, more quickly, more directly and more personally. In other words, omnichannel distribution projects aren’t just for retailers anymore, and warehouse technologies need to keep up. That’s why cutting-edge WMS now features an embedded Warehouse Execution System (WES) and powerful, new Order Streaming capabilities.