2015 Agenda

Monday

August 10^th

6:00  – 8:00 pm

Registration and Cocktail Reception
17th Floor of the Trump Hotel & Tower  – Grand Salon

Tuesday

August 11^th

Registration and Continental Breakfast
16^th Floor of the Trump Hotel & Tower – Skyline Room Foyer

Welcome and Opening Remarks
Paul Sill – Principal and CEO, Forum Analytics

Executive Fireside Chat:  “Welcome to Moe’s!...and the New Focus Brands!”
Paul Damico – Executive Vice President and Group President, Restaurants at FOCUS Brands, Inc.
Moderated by Paul Sill – Principal and CEO, Forum Analytics

Changes are afoot at Focus Brands. This venerable conglomerate operates over 4,500 ice cream shoppes, bakeries, restaurants and cafes in the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and 63 foreign countries under the brand names Carvel®, Cinnabon®, Schlotzsky’s®, Moe’s Southwest Grill®, Auntie Anne’s® Pretzels and McAlister’s Deli®, and is the franchisor of Seattle’s Best Coffee® on certain military bases and in certain international markets. We’re proud to have Paul Damico, the Group President for the restaurant brands, which includes Moe’s, McAlister’s, and Schlotzsky’s, speaking with us about his vision and path to successful unit growth, the challenges of growing multiple brands, and how analytics are considered from his level of the organization to drive their strategic blueprint.

My SIMMS Online:  Stories from the Front Line
Rich Babson – Real Estate Research Manager, Academy Sports + Outdoors
Cheryl Monroe – Director of Distribution Development, Swarovski Corporation
Brooke Moyer – Director, Market Research, Sephora
Ed Prunier – Vice President Real Estate, Visionary Properties, Inc.
Cole Stengel – Senior Director of Finance & Treasury, Einstein Noah Restaurant Group
Moderated by Sarah Baumgartner – Chief Client Officer, Forum Analytics

In this moderated session, each of our seasoned client users will share stories of how they have integrated or utilized SIMMS Online in both their strategic planning and day-to-day site selection decision-making process. We’ll hear stories of how market optimization results have been used, revised, and re-processed to produce a final blueprint. We’ll discuss how existing assets are scored and considered against their peers and how ultimate committee packets are produced for senior leadership to get the final stamp of approval on a new property. Clients will share their unique internal processes and how they utilize the information from their SIMMS Online solutions to make big decisions.

Networking Luncheon
Lobby level of the Trump Hotel & Tower – Riverside Room

Secrets of Lifestyle Segmentation Modeling
Patricia Herrmann – Senior Director of Analytics, Forum Analytics
Taras Skavinskyy – Research Analyst, Forum Analytics

This session will explore the four geographic approaches to creating comprehensive, reliable, and relevant customer lifestyle psychographic profiles including: trade area extracts, MasterCard Feeder Zips, customer household enrichment with block group aggregations, and household level profiling with DataMentor’s enrichment at the household level.  Confused yet?  Don’t worry, we’ll explain everything.  We’ll also explore various ways this data can feed unit-level forecasting models for real estate but also why sometimes it just doesn’t work well in site forecasting models.

MasterCard Session:  Feeder Zips, Cross-Shop Analytics, and KPIs…What They All Mean to You
Lindsay St. Lawrence – Sales Engineer, MasterCard Advisors
Kenna Brannon  – Vice President of Technical Sales, Forum Analytics

This MasterCard session will explore the most commonly used MasterCard data products among SIMMS Online users: the almighty Feeder Zip, cross-shop analytics, and key performance indicators.  We’ll discuss how each of them can be used to enhance a SIMMS Online platform and we’ll provide real-world examples of successful integrations for each in a variety of industries.  We can also discuss with Lindsay the limitation around data at a block group level and if there are plans to make it available.

Coffee and Tea Service
16^th Floor of the Trump Hotel & Tower – Skyline Room Foyer

I Know What Perfume You’re Wearing, Before You Put it On…and Other Creepy Data Realities
Anders Ekman – President, DataMentors

Sad but true.  Most of our internet activity and digital behavior is captured, collated, and packaged all in the name of targeting us more effectively with relevant and timely advertisements.   However, creepiness aside there are practical and valuable applications of this “black box” behavioral data that can enhance real estate and marketing decisions through SIMMS Online.  This session will offer a primer on the types of data available for unit-level or customer-level enrichment from DataMentors and how such data can be used in various aspects of your business development and marketing strategies.  You won’t want to miss this session!  But if you do, we’ll know, because the internet will tell us.

Cocktail Reception
16^th Floor of the Trump Hotel & Tower – Grand Foyer

6:45 – 10:00 pm

A Plated Dinner
16^th Floor of the Trump Hotel & Tower – Grand Ballroom

Wednesday

August 12^th

8:00 – 9:00 am

Continental Breakfast
16^th Floor of the Trump Hotel & Tower – Skyline Room Foyer

Trade Areas: Assessing All the Options and Choosing the Right One for Your Business
Paul Sill – Principal and CEO, Forum Analytics

Set your faces to stun as we explore the granddaddy of all topics, the trade area.  The trade area sensei himself will aggressively opine on the topic and perhaps dispel certain myths and preconceptions about trade areas.  For all those who had to endure a sales call with Mr. Sill where he boasted “…I wrote my thesis on trade areas and can talk about them all day!…” you’ll finally get to hear the full story.  We’ll explore Forum’s new proprietary Rational Spacing Algorithm, geo-fencing data, GPS-sourced data, MasterCard, customer household, and many more methodologies and data sources.  Mercifully for everyone we will not have all day though, just 45 minutes.

Cannibalytics:  A Comprehensive Review of Forum’s Time-Series Methodology
Paige Stover – Senior Director of Analytics, Forum Analytics

Ms. Stover will lift the veil and discuss our amazing techniques for controlling and accounting for revenue changes over time.  She’ll explain how we account for seasonality, distance, and competitiveness in some instances to compute true lost revenue, and model the time-series change sequences to arrive at the most complete understanding of sales impact.  We’ll also discuss how this effort can then be calibrated within SIMMS Online to provide you the most accurate means of predicting future high-risk impact scenarios for your business and replace the traditional “At-Risk” analysis utilized in most solutions.

MasterCard Session:  UpFront Scores – Making Site Scorecards Obsolete?!
Lindsay St. Lawrence – Sales Engineer, MasterCard Advisors
Paige Stover – Senior Director of Analytics, Forum Analytics

MasterCard’s proprietary UpFront score provides a simple, effective way to classify your existing units based on the commercial activity and buying patterns that take place around your sites.  It’s like a FICO score for your real estate…so it’s been said.  We’ll discuss how this unique data metric is developed by MasterCard and illustrate how it can be utilized in SIMMS Online solutions to drive real estate decisions and possibly replace traditional site surveys as a better mathematical proxy for quantifying overall site quality.

Rebar on the River;  Mezzanine Level of the Trump Hotel & Tower

Oh Yes They Did!  How Domino’s Reinvented Their Real Estate Model
Steve Clough – Senior Director, Franchise Development, Domino’s
Brian Leipold – Manager, Market Analytics, Domino’s
Moderated by: Luke Douglas and Sarah Baumgartner, Forum Analytics

Few brands have undergone as massive an overhaul as Domino’s over the past three years.  Forum Analytics has been fortunate to have partnered with Domino’s over much of that time period to bear witness to, and assist in the development of, a reinvention of their real estate planning, modeling, reporting, and analytics platform and process.  We are certain you’ll enjoy hearing more about its origins and implementation from its key architects.

SIMMS Online Feature Showcase and Technology Innovations for 2016

• VEXRAY
• Multi-Site Mapper
• Trade Area Clipping
• Close/Relocation Modules
• Direct Mail Marketing Module
• New for 2016: Apple Watch App

Paul Sill – Principal and CEO, Forum Analytics
Luke Douglas – Principal and Chief Technology Officer, Forum Analytics

   3:00 - 4:00 pm

Beer and Wine Available
During this Session!

Client Jeopardy!  Clients Face a Series of SIMMS, Modeling, and Market Optimization Questions for Big Prizes
Rita Barr – Associate Director of Retail Real Estate Operations, Midwest, Verizon Wireless and 2-Time Defending Champion
Will Albaugh – Senior Finance Manager - Market Planning and Development, Select Comfort, Inc.
Kevin Gerads – Distribution Development Analyst, Swarovski Corporation

Hosted by Paul Sill  – Forum Analytics

A final test of their modeling and SIMMS acumen, these clients will face a gauntlet of rapid-fire questions in various categories. Who says learning about the best practice applications of SIMMS Online and general modeling can’t be fun?

4:00 – 4:15 pm

Closing Comments and Attendee Awards

Fabulous Conference Attendee Prizes Including:

• The first conference registration award
• Attendee who wore the most Forum swag at the event
• Attendees who generated the most SIMMS Reports in 2015 to date
• Client with the most VEXRAY submissions from both internal and external sources

4:15  –  5:30 pm

Conference Adjourns 
Cocktail Social at The Terrace -16^th Floor of the Trump Hotel & Tower

Mingle with peers, colleagues, and new best friends before heading off to the airport.

In the event of inclement weather the Cocktail Social will be held at Rebar on the River; Mezzanine Level of the Trump Hotel & Tower.