Overview
Every business, across every sector, stands or falls on the ability of its senior executives to make the correct decisions at the right time. In today's changing economic landscape access to trusted information has never been more essential. Those business leaders who can turn raw data into intelligence, who understand that information and know exactly how to act on it, will be best placed to stay one step ahead of their competitors.
The FT's Executive Breakfast Forum, Unlocking the Business Value of Information, will bring together an exclusive group of C-suite executives to discuss the challenges businesses face in 2010 and beyond, and how an organisation's data can be turned into intelligence that makes it possible to foresee opportunities and threats and make faster and better strategic decisions.
The forum, which is being held at the FT's headquarters, will be chaired by Peter Whitehead, the FT's Digital Business Editor who will ensure debate at the highest level. A distinguished panel of guest speakers, including Simon Henry, CFO, Royal Dutch Shell, Sharon Flood, Finance Director, John Lewis Partnership, Stephen Prentice, VP and Fellow, Executive Leadership and Innovation Group, Gartner and Mark Salthouse, Business Analytics and Optimisation Leader, UK and Ireland, IBM Global Business Services will share best practice examples illustrating ways of managing intelligence to achieve the following key tasks:
- Make proactive, not reactive, decisions - The right information, at the right time, in the right format, will increase an organisation's ability to predict changing consumer demands for services and new products and enable the organisation to anticipate change and manage risk.
- Make fact-based decisions - Simple, fast, trusted, relevant and complete information enables C-level executives to better understand a business and align the right resources, metrics and initiatives with corporate goals.
- Provide a complete view of the business - In order to recognise future opportunities and shape future strategy, Chief Executives require real-time information from their management team. But how can correct information be obtained from a myriad of sources? How can useful information be extracted from huge volumes of organisation data?
- Collect and share information with internal and external stakeholders - Applying analytics across the entire value chain allows C-level executives to map trends, enable collaboration and leverage insights.
The informal nature of the forum offers participants the opportunity for frank and intimate discussion and to network with peers in a closed group. To encourage this, the breakfast forum will be held under the Chatham House rule.
