My skills as a Business Consultant

A quick bulleted list to give readers an idea of what I have to offer:

Consultancy skills

• Business Change: deep understanding of how to combine people, process, and technology to achieve business outcomes—with the emphasis on people
• Business consultancy: Strategic and technical IT consultancy from a programme viewpoint; business / process analysis and design; report writing and presentation delivery
• Benefits management: Experience of Fujitsu’s Benefits Realisation methodology, which focuses on business outcomes, and creates network of activities to assure delivery of business benefits
• Business networking: active business school Alumnus and business networker (online and face-to-face).
• Project delivery: architecture and design; technology selection; team-worker and leader
• Project management: project planning and basic financials; awareness of PRINCE 2 methodology

Business Understanding

• IT Strategy and Governance; Peer collaboration, Financial Services regulation; Corporate Performance Management.; Virtualisation; Enterprise Application Integration & Web Services, Business Process Management, Virtual Worlds; IT Architecture; J2EE and Application Servers

Technical

• Internet protocols and infrastructure; Collaboration platforms and online communities; Windows Operating Systems (MCSE 1999); Database Systems; Gadgets of all kinds

Grasp of Business and Technology Marketspace

• Through reading The Economist; McKinsey Quarterly, Harvard Business Review; subscription to various Industry Sector and Technology newsletters and blogs

Props to Hugh Macleod

Technorati Tags: business,technology,consulting,skills,benefits,return on investment

Business Consultant for hire

I leave Fujitsu today, i.e. at the end of September. I am striking out on my own, and plan to do contracting work in the North East of England. Hopefully this will be a springboard to more varied projects – reflecting my interests in cutting-edge collaborative tools and virtual worlds etc.

In putting together my leaving note to Fujitsu colleagues (and the associated mailing list), I was able to reflect on all the fantastic people I have worked with, in nearly 10 years with Fujitsu. Also, that I genuinely believe Fujitsu has been an excellent employer and good place to work.

Those ten years have given me a great foundation to help Customers maximise their return on their Technology investments. In practical terms, this means helping them:

• Exploit existing collaboration tools and infrastructure
• Understand impact of consumerization and Web 2.0 on Customers and other stakeholders
• Create a successful blend of infrastructure, using established collaboration / information management tools and leading edge ones
• Understand technology’s impact on People, and create programme of change to manage this impact and maximise Return on Investment
• Make informed decisions about which tools / trends match needs of organisation - don't just go with the flow

I’ve worked for Fujitsu with a number of large Government Departments, and a mixture of Private and Public Sector bodies.

More details at http://www.linkedin.com/in/justinguysouter.


Props to Laughing Squid / Scott Beale, Ariel Waldman and, of course, to Hugh Macleod

Technorati Tags: work,business,success,technology,consultancy,advice,web 2.0,NE England

Microsoft vs. Yahoo! My tuppence

A quick contribution to the debate.

I grew up on, and with, Microsoft. I have only come to Open Source through Firefox, and lately, Ubuntu.

I use tools from Google; from Microsoft; from Yahoo!; and others. I don't use a Mac, nor an iPhone: I'm still on XP (although I started on a Sinclair ZX81).

I understand the anti-trust issues that Microsoft has been faced with over the years, and have a reasonably good grasp of both sides.

I admire Google, and am happy to use their fantastic search and free tools.

I used to admire Yahoo! Their taxonomy was always useful, although I've come to rely on search.

z

My take is that Yahoo! is going down the plughole, and Jerry Yang's tenure as CEO has been a disaster.

Although I respect where Tim O'Reilly is coming from, I'm with Michael Arrington on this one.

Although I suspect that the time has passed for the Microsoft deal, I hope Carl Icahn is successful with his boardroom coup at the AGM in early August.

z

I believe in competition, level playing fields, regulation. I'm often wrong, but I believe Google needs strong competition to keep it on its toes.

I'm hoping there's enough of Yahoo! for Microsoft to salvage and create the competition we all need - it's better than regulation...

Thanks to the Guardian team for their coverage on this.

Technorati Tags: adverts,business,search,google,innovation,microsoft,yahoo!

Windows Live tools - so far, so good

A quick post about some Microsoft tools that seem to be genuinely useful. :-)

Tip of the hat to Roo Reynolds for pointing me in the direction these Windows Live tools (via Twitter post):

• Live Writer
• I'm using Writer to compose this post
• A neat tool, much more functionality than the Blogger interface
• You can compose off-line and upload later
• Appears to match Blogger features - e.g. newly arrived scheduled post
• fyi there seem to be a whole load of add-ins
  
• Live Mail
• I can see my two Hotmail accounts, along with my gmail one in one place, and not have to muck around--again--through a browser interface
• Live Photo Gallery
• A way to keep track of your digital photos
• This looks quite promising
• A competitor to Picasa

Maybe because I've grown up with & on Microsoft, I seem to be comfortable with these tools.

They appear to have good / the right amount of functionality for what I'm looking for - once I'd installed and played with them a bit, they seemed to have tools that I'd only subconsciously considered.

Not sure about impact on system performance, but some things that've made my life easier.

There seems to be a gap in the market for these sorts of things - I think MS has piled in probably because competition is doing this (e.g. Google's Picasa).

Interesting that Live Photo Gallery allows you to upload to Flickr, given bid for Yahoo! by Microsoft...!

Flickr vs. Picassa (cont'd)

Ok, reporting back about what I've found so far. Please see my earlier post if necessary.

Thanks to Dave Briggs and Puller for their comments. I went with Dave - "Flickr every time."

• Flickr
• I've upgraded to a Pro Account, and have started uploading various photos
• Picasa
  • I figured that Picasa and the online service weren't as good as Flickr, in terms of look & feel
  • I didn't really check out the functionality - it was more a gut feel thing
  • I plan to keep using Picasa on a limited basis for publishing photos to this blog
• Windows Live Photo Gallery
  • Sister of Windows Live Writer (being used now for this blog post)
  • See also Live Mail, can read my Gmail account as well as my Hotmail accounts
  • Integrates with Flickr - useful, as this is my chosen destination for photos!
  • fyi earlier post on these
• Memory card reader
  • I'm buying a memory card reader for both Memory Stick and my old Smart Media card, so I can more easily upload photos to Flickr
• Joomeo
  • This is what Puller recommended - I'm afraid I didn't take it terribly seriously...

Technorati Tags: technology,photography,picasa,flickr,windows live writer,windows live photo gallery