With over 15 Years of experience in IT and Business, Rob has a varied background of knowledge to help with your next business venture, project or just to take your strategy to the next level.

Strategic Consulting

The ability to harness technology to create and sustain a competitive advantage for a business is an ongoing discipline. Many organisations are yet to entirely exploit the potential that technology provides to them. Alternatively, the organisations that do, find that not only are they market leaders, but market innovators and drivers. Every business (large or small) SHOULD have an IT strategy, and it needs to deliver aligment to the entire business strategy. Developing this type of strategy is  very difficult to do when business internals are clouding the bigger picture, it is often advantagous to bring in external experts that are able to view the business internally and externally, and provide a 360 view of the IT strategy.

Enterprise Architecture & Vision

Similarly to the IT Strategy of an organisation, many businesses (particularly larger and more complex ones) require to have a Vision around the Enterprise Architecture. Enterprise Architecture is sometimes mistaken as an IT role, but this is too narrow minded. Emerging from IT frameworks, Enterprise Architecture is the “framework that describes the structure of the business.” Or, as taken from the MIT Center for Information Systems Research; “Enterprise Architecture is the organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of the firm’s operating model.”

The more complex the organisation, and the more complex the systems, this becomes crucial! Ensuring that  investment is targeted towards a unified strategy. Making sure that systems are fully utilised, or at least assessed for any new initiatives, before making new investments.

Innovation

Where would the world be without Innovation? Innovation is what defines many of the organisations and even the individuals within them. But in business, innovation is more than just the idea of “doing something different”. With innovation, comes the ability to execute on that innovation. Is it something that will maximise profits, create new revenue streams, is it for internal benefit, or is it a new product or service? How do you get your innovation from a mear idea in your head to fully fledged initiative, with its own strategy, vision and direction? And beyond that, how do you deliver it in the trenches, making sure processes and procedures and all change management impacts are addresses to minimise any chance of failure. These are all challenges that are attainable.

Web 2.0 & Enterprise 2.0

The demise of the dotcom era saw the dawn of the 2.0 era. A new time of the web where social web, user generated content and rich user interfaces became the new face of the web. This has been exciting for the use (or arguably, re-use) of web technologies to reinvent the reasons users would use the internet. Sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr were at the forefront of this movemt, but today, there are hundreds of sites launched every day trying to deliver on the ongoing promise of Web 2.0. Enterprise 2.0 introduced the concepts from Web 2.0 into the business world. How can businesses benefit from tools like Twitter and Google Apps? And how can businesses have their own 2.0 strategy. Welcome to the 2.0 world, and there is still more to do – what about 3.0?

Trading and Financial Services

Trading and Financials are some of the most important systems on the planet. But often lacking is the alignment between financial professionals or traders to the technology. Financial systems require great IT systems to exploit the opportunities that are available in Banking, Insurance and Trading arenas. Whether it is Risk Management, Accounting Standards, Institutional Banking Strategies, Implementation of Regulatory or Statutory Requirements or Business re-engineering of systems, Rob James has dealt with many of these issues and will be able to assist with your needs.