Outline of Workshops

Patrick Poncelet
Senior Adviser European Banking Federation (EBF)

In the European Banking Federation, Patrick Poncelet is in charge of matters related to operational banking and more particularly payments and securities settlements issues.

He joined the EBF at the end of 2000. Before that Patrick Poncelet was Director, Business development with SWIFT where he spent 14 years in various management positions.

Born in Brussels, Patrick Poncelet graduated from the University of Brussels with a degree in economics and then went to the US to carry out post-graduate studies in sociology at Princeton University.

In 1972, he joined Générale de Banque, Belgium’s leading bank, as Attaché de Direction in the International Department and later moved to the division dealing with project financing. In 1976, he was seconded to the European Bank for Latin America, a Latin American-based consortium bank, as Assistant General Manager and held appointments as branch Manager in Argentina and Chile.

On his return to Générale de Banque in Belgium in 1983, Patrick Poncelet was appointed Manager for international products in the data processing department. In 1986, he moved to SWIFT.

Charles Inches
IT Director, Cornèr Banca, Lugano, Switzerland
Chair, SNIA Europe End-User Council

Mr. Inches has almost 30 years experience in the industry, with five years as a systems and storage manager. His areas of expertise are Mainframe systems programming and analysis, mainframe and distributed systems management, operational management and technical analysis.

His current responsibilities cover IT Service Delivery and Logistics, with the deployment of around 80 people.

Charles was awarded best speaker award at StorageTek FORUM1997 in San Francisco, was the Steering Committee Chairman for EuroStorage from 1999 to 2001 and is honorary member of the SNIA-Europe Governing Committee as Chair of the End User Council. In October 2002, Cornèr Bank was honoured with a “Best Practices in Storage” award at the Storage Networking World conference in Orlando, USA.

Charles Inches is also the Chairman of the End User Council of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Europe, the European affiliate of the SNIA. In this role, Charles is responsible with the governing board of directors for increasing awareness for storage networking solutions through the SNIA-E’s regional committees across the European end-user community. Also, Charles conveys user expectancies and requirements to the SNIA Europe board, ensuring these messages get delivered to and managed by the members of SNIA Europe.

Charles is a frequent and appreciated speaker at international storage focussed events, acts as Master of Cerimonies for SNW-Europe and writes regular columns for Europe’s leading storage magazine, SNS-Europe.

Steve Towers
Founder and CEO of the Business Process Management Group

Steve Towers is the founder and CEO of the Business Process Management Group (www.bpmg.org ) a global business club (formed 1992) exchanging ideas and best practice in Business Performance Management, Transformation and Process Improvement.

He leads from the front and works with many of the leading fortune 500 companies as a mentor, coach and sometimes consultant specializing in the implementation of performance improvement, process change and transformation. An inspirational speaker and author of several books including “A Senior Executives guide to BPR”, “In Search of BPM Excellence”, “Thrive! How to Succeed in the Age of the Customer” and recently “Customer Expectation Management – Success without Exception” he is noted for his direct and pragmatic approach. Steve previously worked for Citibank where he led restructuring and business process improvement projects both in the US and Europe.

Steve now advises many boards and sits on the steering panel of the influential California based BPM Forum, a group of distinguished CXO’s heading up Global 500 companies. Early in 2007 he was presented with the “Lifetime Achievement Award for contribution to Business” at Gartners Annual Summit in San Diego. You can read of Steve’s recent work at www.stevetowers.com www.stevetowers.com

The BPM Group is now represented by more than 24,000 corporations with offices in the US, Europe, Australia and South Africa.