I’m thrilled to announce that in less than six weeks’ time Forrester Research will hold its first-ever Summit for Marketing & Strategy Professionals in Sydney, Australia.

The entire Australia team is incredibly excited about this landmark event for Forrester. Here’s why:

The theme for this year’s event is “Winning In The Age Of The Customer.” What does this really mean? It’s simple, really. Empowered by digital platforms, your customers are free — free to act on their own needs and priorities, free to pick their own moments of engagement, free to design their own experiences — and free to ignore your own best efforts to shape and control all three. Forrester calls this new reality “the age of the customer.”

We’ll be releasing some brand-new research at the event that sheds light on the current state of customer experience management practices in Australia. While I don’t want to give away the ending, suffice it to say that Australian firms of all sizes are making customer experience a strategic priority. Firms across Australia increasingly have C-level executives driving their focus on CX, and they expect to get significant value from their efforts.

But not all firms are at the same level of maturity — or even awareness. While some are finding ways to pull ahead of competitors through CX differentiation, others have not even gotten started yet. That’s why we’ve tailored this event to show attendees the one sure path to CX maturity and provide detailed guidance on how to advance along that path.

Throughout the day-long event, we’ll have executive speakers who are leading their companies along the path to CX maturity. The confirmed speakers represent companies at many different levels of customer experience maturity:

  • Angelo Demasi, Head of Strategy and Planning AFS Digital, Westpac Group
  • Gregan McMahon, Senior Executive Digital Business, Marketing and Ecommerce, Optus
  • Jodie Sangster, CEO, ADMA
  • Louise Long, Head of Customer Experience Design, National Australia Bank
  • Carl Mogridge, Head of Digital Australia & New Zealand, Avon

What’s more, I’ll be joined by two of our global thought leaders serving marketing and strategy professionals, Julie Ask and Fatemeh Khatibloo. Together we’ll be delivering keynotes and interacting with attendees throughout the day. Plus you’ll also have the opportunity to interact with key local and global Forrester analysts from outside the M&S team, including Dane Anderson, John Brand, and Tim Sheedy.

Spaces are filling fast so if you haven’t done so already, register now. I look forward to seeing you in Sydney!