“Downtime isn’t just about the immediate loss of revenue. It’s also about the long-term damage to shareholder value, brand reputation, and customer trust. “
– Forbes, 2024
Business executives face a challenging paradox. On one hand is a desire to know the hidden costs and risks that lie buried within your business. And on the other hand is the time and resources needed to quantify them in the first place. However difficult to achieve, this is the gateway to understanding the true impact of these hidden issues, and the key to unlocking additional spend by your board.
The cost of downtime is a good example. The impact of downtime is typically measured at the point of occurrence yet these outages can have long-term ramifications on share price, reputation and lost productivity [Forbes, 2024]. These hidden costs are difficult to quantify and project. But they are real, and your board understand this.
At the next Change Makers lunch, we’re opening the book on the consequences of a major outage by interviewing someone involved in post-incident external communications and PR. It’s an interesting perspective that will help do the impossible, and cast a light on the hidden costs and risks within your business.
THOUGHT LEADERS
Nick Venables
Group Vice President UK&I at SPLUNK
With over 20 years of experience in the tech industry, Nick is a seasoned executive with a proven track record of building and running market-leading businesses. He is a strong advocate for delivering an exceptional experience to customers and partners, and for supporting diverse teams, inclusive cultures and equitable environments that encourage the best for everyone.
Prior to joining Splunk, Nick previously served as VMware’s Global VP of Sales for their Tanzu Intelligence Business, leading global teams for sales, presales and customer success. Throughout his career, Nick has also held senior executive positions at both Hitachi and HPE before joining Pivotal in 2018, an organisation that focused on helping companies accelerate the way they built software using modern tools and design practices, which was subsequently acquired by VMware in 2020.
Shaun Cooney
Field CTO, Principal Strategic Advisor & Director of Innovation, EMEA at SPLUNK
Shaun is a business technologist who’s spent much of his career in intelligence, defence & telecommunications where he has experience in Cyber Security, resilience, data and product development leadership roles. Until recently Shaun was the Head of Engineering for Cyber Security for the UK’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC).
Shaun is Splunk’s Field CTO and Strategy Advisor for EMEA. He spends most of his time helping organisations through their transformations and large change programmes, helping them to think more strategically or differently about their use of data and technology to validate and implement their business strategies. He is not a salesperson and has no interest in selling customers ‘more Splunk’. Instead, he’s able to think strategically and vendor agnostically to help customers achieve their business goals – leaving market research and product selection to others.
THE VENUE
Searcys at The Gherkin
The Gherkin, 30 St Mary Axe, London EC3A 8BF
Searcys Helix restaurant at The Gherkin is one of London’s most iconic landmark restaurants and offers sky-high contemporary dining on 38th floor with panoramic views across the city. The private dining room offers stunning views of the city with an entire glass wall from floor to ceiling.
A proud celebration of British produce in one of London’s finest landmarks, the menus put seasonal and local produce centre stage. As such, the menus are designed for you to enjoy in style, with dishes that are inspired by quintessential British cooking with fresh products from British farmers and local producers.
ATTENDEES
Senior decision makers and other top-executives with a focus on technology, finance and information security, working within some of the largest organisations in The UK. This discussion will be valuable to you if you’re looking to better understand how to uncover the hidden costs of downtime.
Attendance is capped to ensure every participant is able to contribute. The meeting is only open to invited participants or those who have been referred by a colleague or our partner, Splunk.
OUR CLUB PARTNER
A special thank you to Splunk for their continued support of the Change Makers Club. Splunk was founded in 2003 to solve problems in complex digital infrastructures. From the beginning, we’ve helped organisations explore the vast depths of their data like spelunkers in a cave (hence, “Splunk”). Splunk has evolved a lot in the last 20 years as digital has taken centre stage and the types and number of disruptions have simultaneously escalated. With over 1,100 patents and a culture of innovation, we’ve stayed one step ahead of our customers’ needs. Today, many of the world’s largest and most complex organisations, such as Tesco, Specsavers, Gatwick Airport, McLaren, Vodafone and Bank of England, rely on Splunk to keep their mission-critical systems secure and reliable.
THE EXPERIENCE
All of our roundtables are focused, collaborative and informative. Thanks to a chaired and moderated discussion you will: gain insights and ideas from thought leaders in different industries, benchmark your own plans within a collaborative and confidential environment and network with an exclusive group of senior executives in similar size organisations to you.
The Team
James Harris
Founder
William Russell
Club Director
Chloe Vais
Club Director
Elle Brasier
Head of Operations
OUR SUSTAINABILITY PLEDGE
We’re committed to supporting our society and environment. When you attend a Change Makers Club event, we pledge to neutralise your carbon footprint. To offset your travel or energy usage we will plant a tree via One Tree Planted. Once mature, the average tree has a net absorption of 30 kg of CO2 per year, which equates to 227 miles of travel by car or 96 hours of office usage. You can see our maths here.
Learn more here: https://onetreeplanted.org/
If you have a question about attendance, please contact me:
Chloe Vais
Club Director, Change Makers Club