REBUILDING RETAIL: DATA INITIATIVES TO CREATE COMMERCIAL UPLIFT
REBUILDING RETAIL: DATA INITIATIVES TO CREATE COMMERCIAL UPLIFT
Agenda Day 2
8:00 am - 8:30 am
EVENT REGISTRATION & COFFEE
8:30 am - 8:40 am
OPENING ADDRESS FROM THE CHAIR
Matt Large -
Data Leader,
UNiDAYS Ltd
8:40 am - 9:25 am
PANEL DISCUSSION: ENABLEMENT VS. EFFICIENCY: THE TWO‑SPEED STRATEGIC ROADMAP
Matt Large -
Data Leader,
UNiDAYS Ltd
Sam Middleton-Bray - Head of Data, The Cotswold Company
Sara Sheridan - VP Data & AI, Beauty Pie
Will Hofmann - Head of Analytics, Ocado Logistics
Miguel Macedo - Head of Data Governance, Farfetch
Retailers need efficiency gains immediately while simultaneously building AI fluency for the long term. Examine how and why other data leaders structure a two‑speed roadmap: fast‑moving automation data products for cost, and capability‑building enablement pathways for scale. Hear how value gates, councils, and disciplined backlogs prevent shiny‑object waste while improving margin impact.
• Understand and contrast different enablement and automation pathways for data teams.
• Discover how our panellists are identifying quick‑win POCs and readiness criteria.
• Explore build councils, demand‑shaping, and value‑gating mechanics.
• Expand into the murky territory of scaling pilots into enterprise capabilities that improve margin.
10:00 am - 10:30 am
ONE-TO-ONE BUSINESS MEETINGS & NETWORKING
10:35 am - 11:05 am
ONE-TO-ONE BUSINESS MEETINGS & NETWORKING
11:10 am - 11:40 am
ONE-TO-ONE BUSINESS MEETINGS & NETWORKING
10:00 am - 10:30 am
ONE-TO-ONE BUSINESS MEETINGS & NETWORKING
10:35 am - 11:05 am
THINK TANK: FROM PROTOTYPE TO PRODUCTION - INDUSTRIALISING AGENTIC AI IN RETAIL
Thomas Vigneron -
Director of Data,
Salomon
Agentic AI has moved rapidly from buzzword to board-level expectation, yet many retail organisations are still stuck in the prototype phase. In this closed-door Think Tank, senior data and digital leaders will benchmark where they truly are on their agentic AI journey and discuss what it takes to move beyond experiments. Discuss how the team is evolving from “data” to “data + AI”, including internal agentic tools for analysts. Then dive into practical questions: which use cases to prioritise, how to choose the right architecture, how to mitigate hallucinations, and what organisation, skills, and operating model are needed to maintain agents at scale. Expect an honest, practitioner-led discussion focused on what is working in the real world, and what isn’t.
11:10 am - 11:40 am
ONE-TO-ONE BUSINESS MEETINGS & NETWORKING
11:45 am - 12:15 pm
FIRESIDE CHAT: THE YEAR OF ONTOLOGY: AI CONTEXT MATURITY LADDER
Ryan Burke -
Global Data Science Lead,
Royal Canin
As retailers race to operationalise AI, the real differentiator is not more data, but better context. This session explores how ontology, semantic layers and knowledge graphs form an “AI context maturity ladder” – from fragmented data islands to connected, explainable insights. We’ll discuss what each maturity step looks like in practice, how federated and centralised models approach the journey differently, and where to start if you’re still in experimentation mode. Expect pragmatic guidance on resourcing, governance and stakeholder buy-in rather than just another framework.
12:30 pm - 1:00 pm
PRESENTATION: THE POWER OF TRUST + CONTEXT FOR AGENTIC ANALYTICS
Bhavik Patel -
Data Director,
Huel
Jane Smith - Field CDAO, ThoughtSpot
You've rolled out self-service analytics and empowered your culture—job done, right? Not quite. As organisations race to drive AI across the enterprise, the secret to successful agentic analytics lies in two foundational pillars: absolute trust and deep business context.
Join ThoughtSpot's Chief Data & AI Field Officer, Jane Smith, and Bhav Patel, Data Director at Huel, for a candid conversation on what comes next. Discover how Huel evolved beyond traditional dashboards into a new era of proactive, AI-driven decisions. Learn how establishing reliable data governance and rich business context ensures AI agents deliver accurate, high-impact results with rich context beyond data. Whether you have fully nailed self-service or are just beginning your AI roadmap, this session provides the blueprint for true automated empowerment.
The Next Frontier: Move from reactive, human-led self-service queries to proactive, AI-agentic insights and actions.
The Trust Equation: Understand the critical role of semantic layers and how that provides a trusted foundation to support your entire organisation.
Context is King: Learn how Huel embeds unique business context into data models, so AI tools understand the why behind the numbers.
The AI Roadmap: Gain practical steps to scale AI capabilities across your entire workforce safely and effectively.
12:35 pm - 1:05 pm
ONE-TO-ONE BUSINESS MEETINGS & NETWORKING
1:05 pm - 2:05 pm
NETWORKING LUNCH
2:05 pm - 2:35 pm
ONE-TO-ONE BUSINESS MEETINGS & NETWORKING
2:05 pm - 2:35 pm
THINK TANK: THE OTHER SIDE OF GEO: HOW PROMPT INJECTION AND POISONED CONTEXT CAN SKEW AI DECISIONS
Shay Weiss -
Head of Ireland Engineering, Product & DevOps | Director, Engineering & Product,
Walgreens Boots Alliance
This Think Tank explores the hidden risk side of GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and AI visibility. As organisations increasingly rely on LLMs, AI agents and AI-generated recommendations, the content these systems consume becomes a new enterprise risk surface. Through practical sandbox examples, the session will demonstrate how indirect prompt injection, poisoned context and misleading signals can influence AI answers, recommendations and downstream decisions, followed by a discussion on governance, ownership and mitigation strategies.
Shay Weiss
Head of Ireland Engineering, Product & DevOps | Director, Engineering & ProductWalgreens Boots Alliance
2:40 pm - 2:45 pm
LIVE POLLS
2:45 pm - 3:15 pm
CASE STUDY PRESENTATION: FROM LEGACY TO CLOUD: TRANSFORMING RETAIL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE FOR AGILITY AND SCALE
Hatem Hamza -
Head of Data,
Hublot
Discover the practical strategies, challenges, and results involved in migrating a legacy data warehouse to Google Cloud Platform within the retail sector. This session examines the complexities of transforming long-standing, on-premises infrastructure—addressing issues such as incomplete documentation, technical upskilling, and change management—while operating under tight timelines and budgets. Learn how establishing a robust cloud foundation unlocks greater efficiency, scalability, and new opportunities for data governance and AI-driven planning. Attendees will gain actionable insights to navigate their own modernization journeys from legacy systems to the cloud.
3:15 pm - 4:00 pm
PANEL DISCUSSION: WINNING THE BATTLE OF THE AGENTS: HOW RETAIL BRANDS CAN EARN THE FIRST RECOMMENDATION IN AGENT-TO-AGENT COMMERCE
Nicole Ferreira -
Global Senior Manager of Inbound Operations Analytics,
QVC
Matt Large - Data Leader, UNiDAYS Ltd
Yali Sassoon - Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Snowplow Analytics
As LLM agents increasingly mediate shopping decisions, “agent visibility” becomes a new competitive front. This session explores how CDOs build structured content, schemas, trust signals, and guardrails that make brands easier for machines to understand—and recommend first. Join the panellists in a heated debate and examine how agent-ready data products create commercial uplift in a margin-pressured landscape.
• Understand what agent-to-agent commerce could mean for retail discovery.
• Discover how peers plan to test and measure their brand’s LLM visibility.
• Explore how panellists recommend to structure content, attributes, and proofs for agent parsing.
• Hear how to build teams, KPIs, and processes for ongoing agent optimisation.
