Meriel Neighbour

Meriel Neighbour

Program Director IKEA
Currently Senior Programme Director consulting with Ikea on a Global Transformation. Meriel was previously Director of Technology Delivery and Transformation with iconic British retailer RiverIsland leading their Transformation across eCommerce, PIM, Search&Merch, Loyalty and onward to POS. Meriel has held similar positions leading major UK centric and Global Transformations for other iconic retailers both in eCommerce, POS or both concurrently as well as alongside other application platforms such as PIM,, CMS, DAM, PLM, Search & Merch, Tax, Payments, Loyalty etc: Boots UK, Clarks Shoes,TedBaker, Selfridges, The Post Office, Hobbs and Matches Fashion. With a passion for the customer, and a love of shopping herself, in store or online, Meriel focusses on a seamless connected customer experience, whilst ensuring the technology used to support such an operation is modern and fit for purpose.

Day 1 | 16th June

9:30 AM FUTURE COMMERCE PANEL: Building the Tech Stack of Tomorrow: How can you leverage AI and analytics to let customers ‘buy their way’ and improve conversion?

  • What technologies can help you connect and personalise the online and in-store experience to increase your share of wallet?
  • How can you map out tech touchpoints across the customer journey to uncover hidden inefficiencies?
  • What are the benefits of consolidating tech vendors to improve ROI vs working with specialist tools to align business functions?
  • How can you optimise vendor overlap to identify cost-saving consolidation opportunities?
  • How can you integrate social commerce, so it becomes an important player in improving checkout conversion, not just a marketing platform? 

2:50 PM Lessons Learned Interactive Roundtables

Join a group of 5 retailer peers to deep dive into a subject that is a top priority for you. As well as learning from the roundtable host, you can benchmark with your peers to find out how they are finding solutions to the challenges you face.

Roundtable 1: Levelling up with Technology: How can leaders upskill non-technical teams reduce friction and drive adoption of new technologies without overwhelming?

Paula Abasolo, Omnichannel Technical Delivery Lead, Mint Velvet

Roundtable 2: Moving from Clicks to Commerce: How can you turn organic search into sales improving SEO conversion rates not just visibility?

Helena Dingley, Senior Ecommerce Director, Ella & Jo

Roundtable 3: Tackling Cross Border Complexity: From GDPR and VAT, to Logistics and returns, how can you avoid common pitfalls when scaling into Europe, the US or beyond?

Aymer Wilson, Head of Digital Trading, Hobbycraft

Roundtable 4: Balancing Speed and Margin: How can you offer faster fulfilment to meet the demands of Gen Z customers without bleeding profit?

Meriel Neighbour, Director of Technology Delivery and Transformation, River Island

Roundtable 5: Measuring ROAS vs Profitability: How are leading retailers learning to differentiate between high ROAs and actual bottom-line contribution?

Stefania Del Zotto, Digital Director, Bradshaw Taylor

Check out the incredible speaker line-up to see who will be joining Meriel.

Download The Latest Agenda