Business Change Specialist Group Inaugurated
17 September 2009
On 16th September, the newest BCS Specialist Group, Business Change, officially came into being. The inaugural meeting heard three speakers dealing with the topic of innovative business change.
Professor Joe Peppard, Chair in Information Systems at Cranfield, gave a presentation on "Innovation through Information Technology". He described his on-going research into the synergies between IT innovation and business opportunities. In one case study, he showed how one large retail company used a visually-rich diagram showing a pipeline of innovative methods being considered, including the categorisation of business benefits, namely: reduced cost, increased margin and mandatory compliance. What particularly interested me was the fourth category – that of "agility"; giving strong evidence that agile approaches are gaining traction at senior executive level.
Lauren Sager Weinstein, head of Oyster at TfL, gave a presentation on the inception, development and future of the Oyster card. Having reached a point where of four-fifths of all journeys on TfL are now made using Oyster cards, Lauren showed how TfL was using the technology in partnerships to diversify into contactless payments products such as Visa payWave.
Paul Excell, BT's Chief Customer Information Officer, gave a presentation on how the company approached the delivery of innovative new products, from inception to mainstream customer service.
It was a highly enjoyable evening and the new Chair of the group, Kevin Johns, stressed that the group was committed to providing similar such top-quality speakers in future meetings, split between academic and practitioner focus. The next meeting will be held on 17th November. Keep an eye on the webpage for further details soon.