Arrival, Refreshments, and Networking

Welcome Address

Matthew Crabbe, CEO and Founder – QA Media

Machine Learning in Retail: The Key to Maximizing Potential

Speaker: Andy Korman, Head of Industry, US Retail, Google

Retailers must be prepared to respond to increased consumer expectations - with many expecting retailers to provide the most relevant experience possible as they shop and connect.  In tandem, privacy standards and regulations have raised the bar - causing legacy data personalization tactics to become less effective or obsolete.  These two opposing conditions pose a challenge to retailers as they balance customers’ frustrations with a lack of relevance, while also acknowledging a higher threshold of shoppers sharing personal information. So - what do you do? Andy will show us how the best practices that Retail has relied on for years are not the solutions that will help Retail achieve its goals moving forward. As we adapt to a privacy safe world with a more complex consumer, he will outline how the use of advancements in technology, particularly automated solutions, enable Retail to be present at the right time for shoppers to maximize potential growth.

Unleashing the potential of 5G: How a global telecoms player is automating end-to-end testing for a new era

Speaker: Srdjan Nalis, Senior Principal Consultant, BlazeMeter & Perforce

The evolution to 5G cellular networks is enabling download speeds of 10 gigabits per second. It is projected to add billions of dollars to E-commerce revenues with smoother experiences, lower latencies and ability to provide enhanced user experiences. In this presentation, Srdjan will describe how British Telecom is making the huge technology and cultural shift to 5G, transforming its networks and software platforms. It's a change which has provided BT a golden opportunity to accelerate automation for end-to-end testing, resulting in efficiencies and cost savings that will continue to increase over time. Srdjan will cover the process of transformation; which optimizations had the most impact; the new test tools BT and the lessons his team has learned. 

Coffee & networking break

AI-driven and data-driven testing; How leading retailers keep pace with changing consumer expectations

Speakers:

• Pratyush Nutalapati, Managing Director, Deloitte Digital

• Amy Hawman, Head of Marketing, Appvance.AI

Join us to hear how leading fashion and retailing companies are choosing to deploy AI in their app testing programmes, driving their automation efforts and enabling the optimization of their testing data to release new and upgraded web, native mobile, and hybrid apps that reflect lightning-fast changes in customer demand and buying patterns. AI and machine learning in the QA realm is not just about mining data, however: the true potential lies in its ability to optimize your test suite, support the automation and maintenance of key performance test cases, and identify efficiencies and risks in your DevOps program. Pratyush and Amy will be focusing their discussion on how AI-driven testing can support a better customer experience, supported by plenty of real-life examples.

Towards continuous delivery: How to maintain quality while moving faster

Speaker: Tanya Kravtsov, Head of Quality Assurance, Audible

As we move faster and faster with app delivery, how do we reduce technical debt and improve quality? These are the challenges Tanya and her team have been facing at Audible, and of course they are challenges common to all delegates at our E-commerce and Retailing Forum today. While each organization has their own distinctive toolsets, Tanya will share insights and experience in moving along and up the curve of CI/CD that will be universally relevant.

Lunch & networking break

Changing Payments Models for E-commerce: How Your APIs Can Adapt

Speaker: Zaki Bajwa, Global Head of Partner Solution Engineering, Stripe

New ways of doing business - the move to subscriptions models for everything for autos, for example - place new demands on businesses. Zaki will explain in this session how Stripe works with its partners to accelerate new business models and how you can integrate end-to-end payments flows into your architecture, with a special focus on API design and the integration of third party E-commerce platforms into your CI/CD lifecycle. He will also describe how businesses are working with Stripe to grow in the face of economic uncertainty and how Stripe is helping companies modernize their finance platform.

Performance testing at scale and maintaining data integrity: Solutions for two key challenges in accelerating app delivery

Speaker: Eric Elkins, Director of PreSales, Tricentis.

Now more than ever, as buying patterns change with increasing speed, E-commerce and retailing companies have to connect the challenges of performance testing and data integrity in order to accelerate app delivery and win new customers. Eric will explain performance testing can be scaled with automation and how you can enhance your data integrity to ensure consistent quality across the enterprise and move closer to true data-driven app production.

Coffee & networking break

Integrating UX and customer behavior into DevOps: A case study with Electric.ai

Speaker: Alex Martins, VP of Solutions Engineering, Relicx

The days of "let's automate everything" are behind us. It's not enough, even if you could really do it. Now it's about testing smarter, and in particular for E-commerce firms, it's about embedding customer experience and user behavior into DevOps; feeding user sessions directly into the software development lifecycle.

Alex will explain exactly how that can be done, using the example of Electric.ai, a company that automates IT management processes and is itself one of the fastest growing companies in the United States in part due to their hyper focus on UX. That automation enables Electric's customers - companies of all sizes - to spend less time on internal IT issues, and more time on their own growth targets.

Learn how Relicx, a new CX-driven DevOps SaaS provider, has helped Electric.ai automatically test and detect UX issues as part of their DevOps lifecycle so that future releases deliver a five-star CX.

Metadata for our food, Emulating Legacy Code...and Preparing for Black Friday

Speaker: Kenneth Seals-Nutt, Director of Software Engineering, Verb Energy

In addition to his role as head of software engineering at Verb Energy, which sells plant-based energy bars direct to consumers online, Kenneth has two other missions that he will be discussing this session. First, there's his project, working alongside the Department of Agriculture and John Hopkins University, to create a metadata repository for the food industry. Second, there's his project, in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, another government agency, to preserve apps written in legacy code such as COBOL and FORTRAN. The project is designed to provide "emulation-as-a-service" to ensure the future interoperability of those legacy apps. In his presentation, Kenneth will explain how his projects interconnect, and how Verb Energy is preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.

Cocktails and Networking