BCS awards The finalists of the Business Achievement
Awards
Continuing our series of articles detailing the finalists in the
BCS IT Professional Awards, this week we feature the shortlists for
the Business Achievement Award categories in financial and related
services (sponsored by Computacenter), the public sector (sponsored
by Canon UK) and the industrial and commercial sectors.
These categories reward the best project team or organisation for
excellence in IT management.
The finalists for financial and related services
are:
Bradford & Bingley, Class
Rationalisation
Royal Bank of Scotland, IT integration.
The finalists for the public sector are:
Virgin Trains, VMS2000 Electronic Seat
Reservation
Department of Trade & Industry, i-Biouk.
The finalists for the industrial and commercial sector
are:
Eclipse Internet, ADSL Self-Install
Marks & Spencer, Profit Protection.net
O2 (UK), retail integration programme.
"We were looking for IT projects managed with flair, which deliver
large, even transformational benefits," said Stuart Ward, chairman
of the panel of assessors.
The judges based their decisions on three main
criteria:
- Impact on the performance of the organisation
- Effectiveness of the relationships between all the main
parties
- Management of the development and operation of the
system.
Winners of all of the categories will be announced alongside the
individual and technology awards, which will be presented before an
audience of more than 700 IT professionals and VIP guests on
Wednesday 24 September at the Hilton Park Lane Hotel in
London.
For more information about the awards, contact Nisha Mukhey
020-7234 8711
nisha.mukhey@quest-media.com
www.bcs.org/awards/professional
What the judges said about the finalists for the
Business Achievement Award: financial and related
services
Bradford & Bingley - Class
Rationalisation
Bradford & Bingley is a retail financial services business
and also the country's largest mortgage broker.
Success in this market demands excellence in systems to support
existing products and services and to enable the rapid launch of
new ones.
As part of a major transformation programme using innovative
approaches to rapid application development, the Class
Rationalisation project enabled Bradford & Bingley to take a
major step forward in enhancing its systems capability.
Royal Bank of Scotland - IT integration
The coming together of large organisations always creates
opportunities and risks in rationalising IT systems.
When these systems are at the core of the business, as in the
case of the Royal Bank of Scotland's takeover of NatWest, the
challenge is all the more critical.
Despite many predictions to the contrary, the Royal Bank of
Scotland's IT integration project was achieved ahead of schedule
with minimal impact on customers and the ongoing business. The
overall benefits to the business have proved very considerable.
What the judges said about the finalists for the
Business Achievement Award: public sector
Department of Trade & Industry -
i-Biouk
Biotechnology is a boom area, but its governance and deployment
is spread widely across government and beyond. It carries with it
both political and public sensitivities and a raft of
regulations.
A cross-governmental project, i-Biouk has created a single point
of web access to a rich seam of relevant public and private sector
knowledge, providing a consistent view of government policy and
enhancing the critical mass of the UK biotechnology industry.
More than 200 organisations, along with six government
departments and five research councils, contributed to ensuring
that customer needs were met.
Virgin TrainsVMS2000 Electronic Seat Reservation Virgin Trains
operates two 15-year franchises (under public sector constraints
and rules) and is one of the largest UK train operators, carrying
31 million passengers annually.
The Electronic Seat Reservation project, supported by an
underlying infrastructure, enabled customers on new trains to see
their reservations displayed electronically at their seat.
What the judges said about the finalists for the Business
Achievement Award: industrial and commercial
Eclipse Internet - ADSL Self-Install
Eclipse Internet was established in 1995 as a local internet
service provider for the South West of England.
To grow and reach a wider market required new services and a
significant change to its business. The Asymmetric Digital
Subscriber Line Self-Install project developed a new product for
self-installation of broadband services, together with the internal
infrastructure for online ordering and support.
Being first to market with a customer-focused automated product
has enabled Eclipse to transform itself and become a well-respected
national market player.
Marks & Spencer - Profit
Protection.net
Theft in high street stores and on the internet are facts of
life for UK retailers, with estimates of average losses at up to 2%
of sales. As one of the UK's biggest retailers, Marks &
Spencer is not immune. Its Profit Protection.net project has
adopted a novel approach to this problem by enabling detection and
response to potentially fraudulent activity within a matter of
seconds.
The system demonstrated how a relatively small-scale project,
developed through a focused team, can deliver significant benefits
to a large organisation.
O2 (UK) - Retail integration programme
O2 (UK) is the UK arm of mmO2, a leading provider of mobile
communication services in Europe. In 2001 three separate retail
chains, all owned by O2 but with disparate IT systems, were brought
together into a single retail division.
The purpose of the project was to support and enhance the O2
brand by delivering common, integrated IT support through
infrastructure, applications and support teams and across the whole
retail division.
The project has delivered a quantum leap in the effectiveness of
the O2 stores, with minimum disruption to ongoing business during
its implementation.