Conference Tracks

BBC conference tracks are topical areas of professional interest to all attendees.

Rethinking Business Models

Nowadays the pressure is on for organizations to change the nature and face of entire lines of business, not just tinker with select parts of operating models. They must re-examine their value proposition, relationships with customers, partners and channel key resources, and cost and revenue streams. To attain a competitive advantage – and sometimes simply to survive – all these things are now on the table. The scope is vast. It implies significant organizational turmoil and massive cultural upheaval. Nonetheless, some organizations are accomplishing dramatic success in dropping old models and adopting new ones. This Track will feature those who have done so and what methods they employed.

Designing the Adaptable Business

Providing a point-in-time solution to a business problem often introduces rigidity and paints the organization into a corner later on. An adaptable business is designed knowing that change will come faster and faster even though you do not know yet what it will be. Change will impact all aspects of business capability – systems, processes, rules, competencies, jobs, and attitudes to name just a few. Learn how to equip your organization, make the right changes easier, and to deliver them faster.

Business Analytics

With the ever-expanding proliferation of data, a new opportunity-rich landscape has emerged. In order to stay competitive, organizations need to commit to better data-driven decision making. Today data is ubiquitous, complex, unstructured, and fast-moving. How can you harness it effectively? When executed well, business analytics can provide invaluable insights. In today’s digital economy, it is essential for organizations to understand how business analytics combined with good analysis can be leveraged for competitive advantage and to drive better business outcomes.

Product Management

The importance of product management is expanding due in part to new development methodologies, big data, advanced technology, and the way today’s consumers make purchases. A focus on a better customer experience and better product design is essential to gain and sustain competitive advantage. Today’s products are being built differently. The approach to documenting product requirements requires stronger collaboration, closer team work, and an iterative process built on constant feedback.

Analysis & Design

In an ever faster-changing business context, creative approaches to business analysis are more critical than ever. Design thinking, gamification, and product management techniques increasingly reflect a more customer-focused approach. Join this Track to learn about new techniques and how you can apply them to define innovative business capabilities.

High-Impact Techniques

A wide range of techniques are available to help professionals do their job. Knowing which techniques have proven best-in-class is imperative in order to lead the organization toward business excellence. Find out which techniques can help you get a step ahead. This Track engages attendees in critical assessment of available techniques, related practices, and their applied results.

Leadership Skills

What does it take to be a leader? Good leaders are visionary and can adapt easily. They constantly act as both learners and teachers. They possess a strong sense of ethics and work to build integrity in their organizations. They are needed at all levels of the organization. What you learn in this Track will help you become a strong, effective leader.

Getting Ahead

As new business models continue to evolve, so too are the functions and practices supporting today’s increasingly competitive business environment. What does your future hold? One thing for sure – you will be expected to adapt more and more rapidly. The new mantra is continuous upskilling! You will need to blend traditional or foundational skills with new emerging digital skills. Today’s practitioners are expected to be more nimble, to work within shorter and faster delivery cycles, and to possess higher cognitive capabilities and social intelligence – and all the while to stay abreast of technology changes.

Enterprise BA Capability

Organizations need to embed and harmonize effective business analysis practices and disciplines across the enterprise and establish business analysis as a core competency. That way they can optimize their ability to create better business solutions and deliver better value to their stakeholders, then leverage their superior business analysis capability as a key differentiator against the competition. Should your organization set up a BA Center of Excellence or offer Business Analysis as a Service? What’s the best way to integrate BA practices with other key business-support functions? This Track explores how to successfully establish a thriving business analysis community of practice (COP) with the appropriate structure and resources.

Organizational Agility

Change is the new normal. Its rate is exponential. Doing things as in the past has no chance of winning the day. Organizations are adjusting through new modes of work, ones that seek higher levels of collaboration, increased ability to absorb and disseminate ideas, empowerment, flattened hierarchies, and rapid iteration. They are nurturing a culture of transparency, continuous learning, and tolerance of failure, often involving servant leadership, middle managers as player-coaches, self-organizing and self-directed teams, and more. Success requires an altogether new mindset. Learn what works and what doesn’t in energizing your organization to face a world of perpetual change.

Agile & DevOps

New consumers’ behaviors and enabling technologies are accelerating demands on the business. Organizations must find new ways to deliver business capability faster to the marketplace. Many organizations have succeeded in implementing agile methodologies, which has proven an essential component of their digital transformation and business performance. Building on that success, DevOps has recently emerged as an important enterprise-wide, value-add approach to better connect ‘development’ with IT operations. When executed well, DevOps can amplify agility and responsiveness, and help achieve faster time to market.

Practitioners Toolbox

The industry equips professionals with powerful tools and applications to manage and assess data, develop new business models, conduct process and rule automation, and build new business capabilities. Such technologies support business operations, IT functions, and business analysis. Find out how such technologies have enabled other organizations to provide better services and value to their stakeholders through greater automation, integration, and innovation. Explore how you can leverage similar tools in your own organization. This Track features case studies co-presented by leading organizations and technology companies who have implemented solutions successfully. Learn what is possible with the technologies and how to gain an edge for your organization.

AI & Bots

A new era of computing dawned this decade, first with IBM Watson winning at Jeopardy and more recently with Google DeepMind winning at Go, the Chinese game of strategy. These breakthroughs have been enabled by the availability of massive volumes of data, new computing architectures, and new algorithms for human-like speech recognition, conversations, vision, and emotion detection. Along with robotic process automation (RPA), AI, and bots will transform industries and massively scale human expertise. Demystify the technology. Hear what world experts have to say about bringing these tools into your professional toolkit and building new business capability.

Digital Fluency

Demand is skyrocketing for organizations to provide digitalized services for their customers and to become a part of digital supply chains with multiple partners in a seamless stream of services. This is not a technology problem! Digital requires a different strategy, one focusing on end-to-end experience. How exactly are digital businesses different? Digitalized business capability needs to be tackled in the context of an omni-channel world that can involve human and robotic agents, machine learning, and business analytics across significantly broadened processes. High-quality, integrated data is a must. This Track provides state-of-the-art insights into digital thinking, strategy and practice, as well as case studies of the digitalization journeys of advanced organizations.

Event Trails

BBC 2018 features four concurrent event trails.  Trails single out industry areas where there are concentrations of focused business opportunity, extensive vendor tool-sets, and specialized skills and experience