Keynote Speaker
KEN CLARKE
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Conservative Politician, Father of the House of Commons
Ken Clarke is one of the longest serving MPs in the country, he has served in every Conservative Government from Heath to Cameron, including laying foundations for growth as Chancellor under John Major. He argues that the big global problems are deficit and debt, which have to be addressed. An outspoken Europhile he also considers the prospects for Brexit negotiations and the UK’s new role in world.Throughout his time in politics, Ken has maintained liberal and pro-European views often at odds with many in his party. His comments on industry and the economy have always commanded headlines, sometimes because of his close direct links to business. Ken has served as Deputy Chairman and a director of British American Tobacco, as Chairman of Unichem and Deputy Chair of Alliance Unichem, and as a non-exec director of Independent News and Media.
External Speakers
SARAH ASHDOWN
Head of Proposition & Market Development
News UK
Sarah is the Head of Proposition and Market Development for The Times and The Sunday Times. She has created a global pricing strategy, and defined a 3 year product and technology road-map to focus the business on subscription growth, which includes leading on large platform negotiations such as Google, Apple and Facebook. Her focus is now on defining a new paywall strategy and moving towards a more customer-centric approach to pricing
LIAM GRANT
Chief Commercial Officer
JLA
Liam Grant is currently the Chief Commercial Officer at JLA, a subscription based critical asset service business. He has held various commercial roles at JLA focusing on driving the growth of the business through eight years of private equity ownership. Prior to JLA Liam held various commercial leadership roles in different industries across Automotive, FMCG and Video on Demand, both B2C and B2B.
BENJAMIN GROL
Chief Digital Officer
Advent International
Benjamin Grol is a Digital Growth expert who has worked on several billion-user products, like Gmail, Google Maps, Facebook and Facebook Messenger in product, growth and engineering roles. More recently Ben has turned to start-ups, as a partner at Atomico, a fellow at Zinc, and a speaker/coach for start-ups across Europe.
RICHARD HARRIS
Head of Ticketing
Rugby Football Union
Richard Harris has 17 years of experience in delivering commercial ticketing revenue at world-class sporting events and venues. He currently works at Twickenham Stadium for England Rugby as the Head of Ticketing, Membership, and New Events delivering c.20 rugby and music stadium events per year, selling and servicing multiple tiers of membership, and retailing 1.1 million tickets per year generating c. £50 million in revenue
STEVE HAWORTH
CEO
Evo Group
Steve began his career at I.S.A International PLC in 1991 selling typewriter ribbons & telex rolls and has a unique insight and experience of this market having been either an employee of, supplier to or customer of one of the EVO Group companies ever since then. His role was gradually widened to include responsibility for all of EVO’s Trading channels. Steve was appointed to the position of Group CEO in April 2016.
DOUGLAS IBRAHIM
Head of Strategy
Civica
Douglas Ibrahim is Head of Strategy at Civica, a global leader in enterprise software for public services. Douglas works with Civica’s Executive Management Team on developing and implementing key strategic initiatives to drive value creation. Prior to working at Civica, Douglas spent 8 years as a strategy consultant at Credo, working on growth strategy, operational improvement and commercial due diligence across a range of sectors.
DAVID KIRBY
Investment Director
Livingbridge
David Kirby works in the growth acceleration team at Livingbridge, partnering with both management and investor teams to support strategic decision making around customer acquisition and retention. Whether identifying attractive customer segments, refining a proposition or thinking through operational complexity, David’s role is to help structure thinking and draw on expertise from the Livingbridge network.
KEVIN NOLAN
Net Revenue Manager
Bayer
Kevin Nolan is the NRM Lead of UK & Ire at Bayer plc whilst also supporting NRM capability development across the Europe North region. With a background in finance, sales and now twelve years in Pricing and Revenue Management across a range of consumer goods categories, his expertise lies in designing sustainable, profitable and executable revenue growth strategies.
JOHN PHILILIPS
General Manager EMEA
Zuora
John Phillips is the GM for EMEA at Zuora, a post he has held for five years. John has spent over 25 years in the enterprise technology industry at major software vendors. Since joining Zuora, John has lead the growth of the European business as companies from a variety of industries, from Media to Manufacturing, Technology to Telecommunications, make their transition to subscription models. Zuora is proud to work with innovative brands such as the Finance Times, Philips, Sage, DAZN, Which?, Guardian and many more.
ALEXIS PRENN
Chairman, Co-Founder
Receipt Bank
Alexis is now Chairman of Receipt Bank, a business he co-founded with Michael Wood in September 2010. Receipt Bank is the leading provider of pre-accounting technology solutions to the accounting industry globally and is used by over 250,000 small businesses. For bookkeepers and accountants worldwide seeking to improve their productivity, profitability and client experience Receipt Bank has become an essential partner.
IAN REA
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Head of Product & Cross Sell
Segment
Ian joined Big Bus in 2016 as global product manager. His initial focus was to gain valuable customer insights to provide the nucleus in the transformation of Big Bus’s global product & pricing architecture, which was successfully implemented in 2017.
With multiple initiatives activated, in 2018 Ian was promoted to his new role which further expands his remit to overseeing the global attraction partner relationships within the world famous cities Big Bus operates.
IAN REA
Head of Product & Cross Sell
Big Bus Tours
FIONA SPOONER
Global Marketing Director
Financial Times
Fiona Spooner is Global Marketing Director, B2C at the Financial Times. In her time at the FT, she has played a lead role in implementing the FT's pioneering paywall and growing consumer subscription revenues both in print & digital. She has led cross-functional teams to build customer acquisition, engagement, retention & marketing operations whilst supporting the continuous evolution and optimisation of the paywall strategy.
JAMES WOOD
Head of Pricing
Segment
James Wood is Head of Pricing and Packaging at Segment in San Fran, leading the company's pricing, packaging and value communication. Before joining Segment, he worked on over 30 packaging and pricing projects for Simon-Kucher, including working closely with many of the leading U.S. SaaS vendors. Originally hailing from the U.K., James holds a B.S. in Management from Manchester University.
Simon-Kucher Speakers
XI BING ANG
Director
Simon-Kucher & Partners
Xi Bing is a Director based in the London office of Simon-Kucher serving clients within the UK, having previously also worked in the New York office covering North American clients. He specialises in strategy and pricing projects in industrial sub-sectors and B2B data services, with experience in growth strategy formulation, pricing audits and solution development, price model and structure design, as well as organisation design.
CHRISTIAN ATHERTON
Director
Simon-Kucher & Partners
Christian has over ten years of consulting experience. Much of this has been in strategy development, sales operations improvement, pricing and interim management roles. He has a BSc (hons) in International Business from Warwick Business School. He has extensive experience in the industrial and construction related sectors having have led projects covering a range of business issues including: sales strategy, price optimization, operating model review and analysis of business growth options
MAX BIESENBACH
Partner
Simon-Kucher & Partners
Max is a Partner in Simon-Kucher's Global Banking practice in Cologne. He advises leading private banks, asset managers, and B2B infrastructure providers on product offering, pricing, and sales excellence topics and has extensive project experience in the fields of strategic positioning, pricing, and profitability management with a large number financial service providers across all major financial hubs.
MARK BILLIGE
Managing Partner, Board Member
Simon-Kucher & Partners
Mark Billige is a Board Member and Managing Partner of the London office. Mark's areas of specialisation are in the development of pricing and monetisation strategies with a particular focus on revenue model (re)design, portfolio and packaging optimisation, customer segmentation, loyalty management and promotional effectiveness. He also has deep experience of working with Private Equity firms and their portfolio companies both pre and post-deal.
EDDIE HARTMAN
Partner
Simon-Kucher & Partners
Eddie Hartman is a Partner at Simon Kucher’s San Francisco office. He specialises in developing high-growth revenue strategies, conducting effective go-to-market planning, and achieving recurring revenue excellence. Eddie works with small “hypergrowth” companies and “unicorns,” as well as larger B2B corporations in the SaaS/n-sided market space and helps them optimise their pricing.
JAMES BROWN
Partner
Simon-Kucher & Partners
James Brown is a Partner with Simon-Kucher in London. He specialises in commercial strategy, with a particular focus on pricing – both in the Consumer Goods & Retail sector and B2B services environment. James is a regular media commentator and conference speaker on pricing topics, having been called on extensively in the last 2-3 years to cover retail price wars, deflation and the spiraling of promotions in the UK market.
DR. PETER COLMAN
Partner
Simon-Kucher & Partners
Dr. Peter Colman is a Partner and shareholder at Simon-Kucher. He leads the consultancy’s Technology & Industrials practice for the UK and Ireland. Peter has generated strong profit enhancement results throughout his 20 years in consulting and industry. He specialises in Commercial Excellence programmes to address strategy, sales & marketing, pricing and product management topics.
GREG HARWOOD
Director
Simon-Kucher & Partners
Greg Harwood is a Director with Simon-Kucher in London. As a senior member of the Global Software, Internet and Media Practice, Greg’s consulting activities primarily focus on pricing and sales optimisation, customer segmentation, promotional effectiveness, revenue model re-design, portfolio optimisation and the development of actionable and implementable strategic solutions for market leading organisations.
DIMITRIS HIOTIS
Global Head of LTT, Partner
Simon-Kucher & Partners
Dimitris is a Partner and Global Head of Leisure, Travel, Transportation at Simon-Kucher. He has 10 years experience in pricing & yield management. Dimitris has worked for clients from a number of industries covering tourism & hospitality, retail, B2B services & cloud computing. His areas of expertise include market sizing and channel strategy, yield management and dynamic pricing, price-sensitive demand forecasting and value-based discounting.
MARC HUIJBREGTS
Global Head of Digital Strategy
Simon-Kucher & Partners
Marc is passionate about business transformation in the digital age, the impact of digital in large organisations and the disruption across industries. He has been a trusted adviser for a large number of C-suite executives in co-creating the digital strategy and navigating the organisation in a changing business environment. Marc has a focus on topline growth, marketing – and sales transformation is key for organizations to stay or become leaders in their industry.
ROSALIND HUNTER
Senior Director
Simon-Kucher & Partners
Rosalind Hunter is a Senior Director at Simon-Kucher. She specialises in pricing strategy, both reviewing existing approaches and developing new structures, including modelling the impact of new pricing strategies and assessing the risks associated with these changes. She has also developed a number of forecasting models and customer segmentations, working from initial strategy through to implementation.
MADHAVAN RAMANUJAM
Partner, Board Member
Simon-Kucher & Partners
Madhavan Ramanujam is a Board Member and Partner at Simon-Kucher. Advising companies of all sizes from Fortune 500s to startups, He has led more than 125 monetisation projects for Internet, Software and Technology clients, helping bring numerous new products to market. Madhavan is also co-author of the book “Monetizing Innovation”, that has been featured in leading publications including Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur and Inc.
DAVID SMITH
Partner
Simon-Kucher & Partners
David Smith is a Partner at Simon-Kucher in London. David has worked for both the London and San Francisco offices and has conducted projects across the UK, Europe and the USA. David is a published author, regular conference speaker and commentator on pricing and commercial strategy topics. His core focus areas are Software and B2B Data Services. He also leads the Education practice in the UK.
RORY SWEENEY
Director
Simon-Kucher & Partners
Rory’s principle areas of expertise are in strategy formulation, and the development and implementation of pricing strategies for both new and existing services / products.
Rory has a wide range of experience including: customer segmentation, product development, new product pricing, pricing optimisation, subscription renewal pricing, print-to-digital business model transformation, discounting strategies and sales optimisation. Rory holds a BSc (Hons) in Business Administration from the University of Bath.
DR. GEORG TACKE
CEO
Simon-Kucher & Partners
Dr. Georg Tacke is the CEO of Simon-Kucher. He has been leading the company since May 2009. Georg has more than 25 years of consulting experience in the service sector (telecommunications, transportation and logistics, travel and hospitality, B2B services, etc.) and the automotive industry. His key specialty is pricing transformation. He has conducted many global pricing transformation programs for large multinational companies.