As an extreme adventurer, Jim McNeill is not afraid of going beyond. Some would say he thrives on it.

Throughout his career, Mr. McNeill has selected, trained and led teams in all sorts of circumstances, from business-critical situations, where the reputation and share value of corporations is won and lost on strategic and tactical media relations, to critical life-saving operations, where effective leadership and hands-on teamwork are key to preserving peoples' lives.

In 2001, Mr. McNeill combined his professional rescue expertise with his 17 years of polar expeditioning to create the Ice Warrior Project, which helps ordinary people achieve extraordinary feats.

Last year he was ITV News' own "Ice Warrior," reporting directly from some 200 miles into the Arctic Ocean on the actual effects of global warming on the Arctic ice cap. Next year he will continue the story on ITN as he attempts to be the first person to reach the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility, at the very centre of the Arctic Ocean. He is going alone and without re-supply on a treacherous 75-day journey covering 735 miles. Along the way, he will gather crucial climate data, reporting on his expedition in a weekly diary for BBC Online and a British national newspaper.

Mr. McNeill has written for numerous publications and scientific journals and is currently writing his first book. When he’s not away on an adventure, he enjoys being at home in Royal Berkshire, England, with his wife Lori and their son Mac.

Nikola Cvijanovic has served as vice president of IT management, customer care, for T-Mobile Germany since 2005. Previously, he held various IT and business positions within T-Mobile Germany. In his current position, he manages all information technology activities pertaining to customer service, in cooperation with T-Mobile’s IT development and IT service management.

Before joining T-Mobile in 1998, Mr. Cvijanovic worked as a senior consultant specialising in workflow and call-center software at Document Access GmbH. His experience includes working as a freelance IT consultant and a career officer in Germany’s armed forces.

Mr. Cvijanovic studied computer science at the University of the Armed Forces, Munich, and earned an MBA at the University of Bradford (UK).

Prior to joining Genesys as vice president of product management in 2004, Brian Galvin was the founder and principal of a small consultancy focusing on call center optimization. His customers included many of the world's largest companies, especially in the financial services and telecommunications markets. He has served as a vice president (enterprise architecture) for SAIC, a large systems integrator, and was one of Genesys' earliest employees, serving as director of operations from 1995 to 1999.

Before originally joining Genesys in 1995, Mr. Galvin was a nuclear engineer in the U.S. Navy for 13 years. Mr. Galvin has published numerous articles in both scientific and business publications, and is the author of two patents and three pending patents relating to Genesys technologies.

Mr. Galvin is a graduate of Harvard University (biochemistry) and earned a master's in physics from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

As president and chief executive officer for Genesys, Wes Hayden is responsible for setting the company direction and managing overall operations. Previously, Mr. Hayden served as senior vice president for the Americas.

Prior to joining Genesys in 1999, Mr. Hayden was vice president of the central U.S. region for Informix Software, a provider of database management systems. He has also held sales and sales management positions with Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment Corporation and Applied Data Research.

Mr. Hayden holds a bachelor of science degree from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and a master of business administration degree from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. He currently serves on the board of trustees for the Glenkirk Foundation in Northbrook, Illinois and on the board of directors of the International Women's Democracy Center (IWDC) in Washington, D.C.

As senior vice president, EMEA Field Operations, Mr. Kaploun is responsible for sales and management within the multi-cultural EMEA region.

Mr. Kaploun joined Genesys in 1997 as the head of Genesys' French operations, which he developed into a rapidly growing organization. Two years later, he became vice president, Southern Europe Sales, where he hired, developed and managed strong Italian and Spanish sales teams. Mr. Kaploun brings more than ten years of sales experience to Genesys, gaining previous software industry experience while employed at Sybase and Business Objects.

Mr. Kaploun received his MBA from ESLSCA in 1986.

As head of retail programmes at eircom, Barry O’Toole is responsible for delivering key business projects for the eircom retail organisation. These projects range from management of software development projects to the development of business continuity plans.

Prior to his current position, Mr. O’Toole was responsible for designing a change programme at eircom to improve efficiencies across the contact centres. Through this programme, he directed the implementation of eircom’s “1901 electronic Voice Recognition” (eVR) automated voice response system, which was the first system of its kind in Ireland. Following the success of the project, Barry led the development of an eVR-managed service by launching three commercial off-the-shelf automated speech solutions, which are still available today.

Mr. O’Toole has also held a number of call centre manager positions across eircom, including inbound customer service and outbound telesales.

Chris Pike currently serves as head of the BT CRM Practice and drives forward BT's agenda for CRM—to deliver large-scale global growth for BT and excellent thought leadership for the industry and BT's customers.

Mr. Pike has enjoyed many key positions in his career with BT, including a number over the last sixteen years in the field of CRM. He was instrumental in designing the first call centre to serve BT's own customers for sales, service and billing enquiries.

Mr. Pike has worked with many of BT’s top customers (such as Lloyds TSB, Barclays, Halifax, Ministry of Defence, NHS, Police Forces, ATOC, O2, Vodafone, Microsoft and HP). His many experiences have given him an excellent understanding of the IT outsourcing market, from simple technology outsourcing to developing joint ventures based on risk and reward. Mr. Pike's efforts have helped position BT as a major contributor in the field of CRM.

Mr. Pike began his career with an education in telecommunications and computer science. He has also held positions working on private and public telephone switching systems, video broadcasting, data transmission systems, VHF radio systems and corporate network design.

As vice president of product and solutions marketing, Steve Rutledge is responsible for setting strategic direction and guiding investments within Genesys for solutions that deliver the best business value for customers in the areas of contact centers and customer service.

During his ten years’ tenure at Genesys, Mr. Rutledge has also served as vice president of strategic sales operations, responsible for identifying key customer needs and managing sales force initiatives; and in senior product management and product marketing roles, spending considerable time planning products and working with companies to improve their customer service and call center operations.

Prior to Genesys, Mr. Rutledge held marketing and sales positions at Intel Corporation and AT&T. In the 1980s, he helped some of AT&T’s largest customers implement (early) CTI solutions.

Mr. Rutledge has an M.B.A. from the Sloan School of Management at MIT and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Erik van Iersel began working with contact centres in 1996, when he supervised the centralising of IBM EMEA’s help desks in The Netherlands. He was subsequently responsible for the operation of the IBM UK help desk following its transfer. In 1999, Mr. van Iersel oversaw the integration of Genesys and VantiveCRM (later bought by PeopleSoft) at the contact centre.

Currently, he works as at ABN AMRO Bank, where he handles speech projects, speaker verification (biometrics) and the implementation of VoIP, Genesys Outbound, Virtual Hold and InfoMart. He thrives on finding solutions to “impossible” challenges.

Mr. van Iersel also owns Decart–Netherlands, a small company that outsources software development to Bulgaria for Dutch customers. He takes every opportunity to travel and enjoys exploring other cultures.

With a B.A. in computer science and a background in software development, Mr. van Iersel has also studied management science, as well several languages, including English, German, Spanish, French and some Bulgarian and Chinese.

Bruce Withers is vice president and operations manager of Wells Fargo’s retail
mobile banking channel. He is responsible for customer care strategy, project management and vendor management.

Prior to joining the mobile banking team, he was responsible for CTI, MIS and
reporting, PBX/IVR fi xed assets and telecom expenses for Customer Service, Sales and Operations. With 10 years’ experience split between technology and business practices at Wells Fargo, he specialises in the strategic use of information technology to solve business problems and to gain a competitive advantage.

Wells Fargo has more than 10,000 agents spanning 42 call centres linked by Genesys CTI. The bank answers in excess of 25 million phone calls per month from its more than 23 million banking, insurance, investments, mortgage and consumer finance customers. Wells Fargo is ranked #1 in cross-sell among retail banks (5.3 products per customer).

Service Providers Summit
Aimed at both fixed-line and mobile operators, this new track will focus on three areas: 1) how telecommunications companies can sell more via Enhanced Services; 2) how Managed Services can open new markets to telecommunications companies; and 3) how the underlying Genesys technology can further facilitate platform consolidation and superior customer service. This track will have a strong live-customer-testimonial component from telecommunication companies such as Telecom NZ, T-Com and Alcatel.

Session Descriptions

What's New from Genesys

Business
Improve your operations with Genesys business solutions. You will hear updates from the Genesys experts on our suite of applications, and how they can be applied to improve your business. These sessions focus on the solutions, help you understand which Genesys products are necessary to support the solutions and show you how to use the products to maximize business value.

Technical
These sessions highlight Genesys product and solution direction presented by Genesys product managers. The primary focus of these sessions is to provide insight into what's new, what's coming and what's visionary with Genesys products. Sessions are designed for IT professionals, technical users, architects and integrators responsible for evaluating, deploying or managing contact centre applications.

Session Descriptions

Driving Business Results from the Contact Centre—Optimizing Revenue, Quality and Efficiency Goals
Come hear from companies that have achieved world-class success in optimizing contact centre performance and striking the balance between cost, revenue and customer satisfaction. See how your peers have orchestrated efficiency and effectiveness to achieve desired outcomes and business value.

Session Descriptions

Customer Showcase: Success Stories with Genesys
This track features Genesys customers and showcases their innovative architectures and applications for managing interactions in today's contact centre and enterprise environments. Come join us for a series of compelling discussions and explore how our customers have harnessed the power of Genesys technologies to evolve their businesses to meet the demands of the 21st century. Sessions are designed for technical strategists and managers who are chartered with the direction for their technology purchases and implementation.

Session Descriptions