Alex McLachlan Senior Consultant
User experience of agile project: I have never known a project to develop at such a rate."
- Job Title
- Senior Consultant
- Bio
I work mainly on Agile Change Strategy projects for our Not-for-Profit and commercial clients including Agile CIO roles, strategic IT reviews and IT system procurement support. I specialise in IT architecture, website strategy, CRM, website CMS and web services.
I regularly contribute to the Agile Business Change blog with an emphasis on these topics.
Before to joining IndigoBlue, I worked as a project manager, consultant and design authority for Logica across a number of market sectors including pharmaceuticals, government and defence.
After leaving Logica, I worked for security X-ray company CXR/Rapiscan as a programme manager reporting at board level and systems engineering manager on the company's revolutionary £50m new X-ray product development programme.
- Short bio
I help organisations improve their IT to better support their business strategies and provide value. My main interests include CRM, CMS, web, integration, business strategy and making pizzas!
- LinkedIn profile
- http://uk.linkedin.com/in/alexjlmclachlan
- Twitter account
- https://twitter.com/alex_mcla
- Google+ profile
- https://plus.google.com/117328305806141033287
My Most Recent Posts
Who do you want your customers to become?
02 OCT 2012 | Posted in business value, IT, membership organisation, online communities, social media | Author Alex McLachlanProducts and services have the potential to transform customers, to change their behaviour. Henry Ford changed his customers into drivers, IKEA has changed their customers into assemblers of furniture and Ryan Air has created passengers willing to take their own sandwiches.
These are some of the examples from a recent Harvard Business Review webinar How IT Creates Customer Value featuring Michael Schrage.
CiviCRM - a real contender
20 SEP 2012 | Posted in charity, CRM, membership organisation, membership system, NFP | Author Alex McLachlanYesterday I went along to CiviCon to see what the current state of play is with CiviCRM and was very impressed.
I've been tracking CiviCRM for a couple of years and wanted to assess CiviCRM against the criteria I use for assessing the readiness of open source software.
Savings IT can make for NFPs
19 SEP 2012 | Posted in charity, CMS, CRM, IT strategy, membership organisation, membership system, NFP, self service, strategic IT review | Author Alex McLachlanWhere are the savings that IT can make for non-for-profit organisations?
This question has been prompted firstly by the recent Government Charity Report and secondly by a meeting we had recently with a consultant on behalf of a cross-sector organisation promoting the UK's digitally capability (which quotes NCVO identifying ICT as the biggest skill-gap in the charity sector).
Windows Server 2012, Virtualisation and the Cloud
06 SEP 2012 | Posted in IT, Microsoft, strategic IT | Author Alex McLachlanWindows Server 2012 has now been released after extensive beta testing. It's the biggest update/re-write of Windows Server in ten years, with many new features and also many improvements. The biggest areas of impact are likely to be on virtualisation, support for the Cloud and an improved approach to administration.
Government Charity Report - an IT Perspective
30 AUG 2012 | Posted in charity, Government, IT, membership organisation, NFP | Author Alex McLachlanYesterday's Government report "Making it easier to set up and run a charity …" makes a number of interesting points and recommendations, including easing VAT rules and reducing red tape (i.e. reducing the number of CRB checks needed). Included in the report are a couple of significant IT issues faced by charities - access to IT expertise and sharing resources.
BBC Olympics coverage, social media and mobile apps
22 AUG 2012 | Posted in business intelligence, business strategy, mobile, social media | Author Alex McLachlanThe technological legacy of the Olympics games looks like it will be social media and mobile internet access, particularly for mobile video. Following on from my post a couple of weeks back about the semantic technology behind the BBC Olympics, this post looks at the key tech trends to have come out of the Olympics.
John Wright Shortlisted for Best Agile Coach
15 AUG 2012 | Posted in agile awards, mentoring | Author Alex McLachlanCongratulations to John Wright who has been shortlisted for the Best Agile Coach or Mentor award at the Agile Awards 2012.
BBC Olympics website using Semantic Technology
02 AUG 2012 | Posted in internet, semantic web, web 3.0 | Author Alex McLachlanThe BBC Olympics website is based on semantic web / web 3.0 technology as is increasing proportion of the overall BBC website.
This gives the BBC considerable advantages in their editorial and publishing processes
MY RECENT BLOG POSTS
Products and services have the potential to transform customers, to change their behaviour. Henry Ford changed his customers into drivers, IKEA has changed their customers into assemblers of furniture and Ryan Air has created passengers willing to take their own sandwiches.
These are some of the examples from a recent Harvard Business Review webinar How IT Creates Customer Value featuring Michael Schrage.
MY RECENT ARTICLES
Today's highly competitive and rapidly changing markets that see the rise and fall of the likes of Nokia and MySpace places business imperatives on companies. In particular, companies need to be innovative, introducing new products, updating others to react to changes in the market (or predicting or even creating these market changes).
Much has been written on innovation, from the incremental improvements of Toyota and others through the use of Lean methods, to the disruptive innovation exemplified by Steve Jobs and Apple. What is often neglected, however, is that to deliver innovation, it is essential to have an underlying capability of business agility.
MY LATEST BOOK REVIEWS
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