This website is professionally crafted and maintained by Solcom limited, with my appreciation & thanks. Nonetheless, I am fully responsible for its content. - Richard Sykes, December 2007.

Dr Richard Sykes is an experienced businessman with a breadth of involvement & experience that spans the chemical industry, the IT industry and the world of arts. He has held senior executive roles in a major global multinational and non-executive chairmanships in a number of smaller ventures – and has lived and operated internationally.

Richard has a personal practice (‘Dr Richard Sykes’) as a board-level trusted advisor and strategic coach in information & communications technology (ICT) strategies & their implementation, sourcing & governance.

He specialises In the workings of the ICT Outsourcing (ICTO/ITO) and Business Process (BPO) sourcing, outsourcing and offshoring market places – and in particular the fast growing international trade in these technology rich & professionally rich business services. His strong interest is in the competitive & commercial impact of the commoditisation of many of these services, and business strategies required to create competitively defensible commerce in specialised services.

Richard works primarily in the vendor community, where he advises on practical approaches to the delivery of sustainable stakeholder returns in the very competitive services market place. He works in particular with clients who, active in the outsourcing & offshoring ‘space’, are making the challenging journey to becoming sustainably competitive suppliers of these services. His experience has allowed him to shape a structured methodology that brings focus to this difficult business transformation.

Richard is a recognised thought leader & communicator in his field. His new business book (jointly authored with Mark Kobayashi-Hillary) ‘Global Services: Moving to a Level Playing Field’ was published by the British Computer Society in April 2007. He is an active member of Intellect (the UK business association for the Hi-Tech sector: IT, Telecoms and Electronics – www.IntellectUK.org ) where he is Chairman of the Outsourcing & Offshore Group and an active member of two particular work streams: on Organisational Professionalism, and on Transformational Business. He also works to build relationships with NASSCOM, the Indian Intellect, in the field of the smaller hi-tech enterprise.

He is an associate of the Leading Edge Forum (the LEF provides its business clients access to a global network of innovative thought leaders who engage technology and business executives on the current and future role of information technology – lef.csc.com) and of Bloor Research www.bloor-research.com

Richard also acts as an experienced non-executive chairman & director of the boards of small & young ventures in both the IT industry and in the arts world. He chairs Solcom Ltd (whose business is innovative inter-disciplinary consultancy & project implementation in the process industries, working at the interface of science, engineering and IT – www.solcom.com) and has joined the advisory board of Quickstart Global Ltd (a young venture that is enabling medium-sized tech companies speedily establish and build their own captive operations in low cost economies such as India – http://www.quickstartglobal.com). He chairs the De La Warr Pavilion Charitable Trust (responsible for the Grade 1 listed modernist architectural icon and arts centre at Bexhill-on-Sea – www.DLWP.com) and is a trustee of HumanITy (‘working for e-inclusion’ www.humanity.org.uk).

Richard’s philosophy as a businessman working at the heart of the contemporary ICT industry was well expressed by the 20th C European artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: “Technical progress should never be the goal, only the means.”

News (and Notices!) updated and added: 5th December 2007

January & February 2008: In early January Richard will be joining a delegation of smaller UK hi-tech companies visiting India to test possible partnership opportunities with smaller Indian ventures – an exercise that Richard helped develop between Intellect and its Indian opposite number, NASSCOM [ www.intellectuk.org ; www.nasscom.com ] In February Richard plans to return to India to attend the NASSCOM 2008 Leadership Summit: in Mumbai and also to travel to the USA to attend the International Association of Outsourcing Professional’s 2008 summit in Orlando, Florida [www.outsourcingprofessional.org ].

6th December 2007: Richard was one of the chosen VIP Presenters at the BCS (British Computer Society) IT Industry Awards 2007 – presenting the IT Consultancy Organization of the Year award. [Richard has been an active member of Intellect’s work stream on Organizational Professionalism, an initiative developed in close partnership with current BCS initiatives on the modern chartered IT Professional - see www.bcs.org. The BCS and Intellect are working in alliance with the NCC and e-skills uk to bring a modern professionalism to the UK IT industry through the ProfIT intiative www.profitalliance.org.uk. Richard is one of the co-authors of Intellect’s Guidelines on Organizational Professionalism, which can be viewed here.

4th December 2007: Richard chaired a joint workshop of Intellect’s Outsourcing & Offshore and Legal Affairs Groups with the title ‘Moving our industry from adversarial bidding to outcome-based deal making & partnership/contracting.’ The workshop developed a game plan for an Intellect work stream to identify & capture best practice, and to develop a campaign to bring this important change agenda to the fore in the industry. [Intellect is the UK’s industry body for the Hi-Tech industries: see www.intellectuk.com ]

December 2007: The Leading Edge Forum LEF) published the latest issue of its Journal, on the topic of the Globalisation of IT. The full Journal can be viewed here. It includes an article by Richard, ‘Globalisation- Is that all there is to IT?’ developing some of Richard’s current thinking – the article can be viewed here.

17th-19th November 2007: Richard attended an International Trade Centre (ITC – a joint UNCTAD/WTO venture) conference “Bridges Across Borders” held in Accra, Ghana, where delegates from Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa explored the potential to develop an African presence in the global outsourcing & offshoring markets for IT and Financial Services. He had been invited to make a presentation on ‘Demand side requirements for outsourcing – a practical analysis’ that can be viewed here.

November 2007: The magazine Computing published its 2007 Outosuricng Yearbook.. Richard was one of 14 experts interviewed by Mark Kobayashi-Hillary for the review. The full Yearbook ‘Outsourcing 2007’ can be accessed here - the interview with Richard can be found on pages 28-31.

13th September 2007: Richard chaired a meeting of the Intellect’s Outsourcing & Offshore Group on the topic ‘Outcome-Based Contracting’. Intellect is the UK’s industry body for the Hi-Tech industries: see www.intellectuk.com

September 2007: Richard served on a judging panel for the National Outsourcing Association (NOA) on the 10th September – and as a member of silicon.com’s annual Agenda Setters exercise on the 12th September. Details of the NOA awards can be viewed here – and of the silicon.com Agenda Setters 2007 can be viewed here.

August 2007: The Leading Edge Forum published Richard’s report Accessing Best of Breed: Making Multisourcing Work based on the research that Richard and Lem Lasher (Chairman of the LEF) had conducted over the previous nine months: lef.csc.com. The Executive Summary can be viewed here.

3rd July 2007: Richard made a presentation at a joint session of Intellect's Outsourcing & Offshore and Shared Services Groups, focusing on the opportunity for commoditised on-line services as an alternative to shared services in the UK public sector. His presentation ‘Doug’s Cave, or the Opportunity for Commoditised Shared Services’ can be viewed here.

April 30th 2007: The formal launch Richard and Mark’s new book ‘Global Services: Moving to a Level Playing Field’ at the London School of Economics. View the launch flyer .The launch started with presentations and debate featuring the authors, Sir Howard Davies (Director of the LSE), Dr Fred Adam, University College Cork, AS Lakshmi, UK Country Head of Tata Consultancy Services, and Prof. Patrick Humphries of the LSE and was followed by a networking reception in the Senior Dining Room at the LSE. Reviews of the book can be viewed here.

February 2007: Richard spent most of February on the road. In India (1st-11th February) he visited QuickStart Global in Vadodara, Gujarat, attended and ran a half-day workshop at a client Executive Programme for the Sopra Group (Sopra Newell & Budge) near Udaipur and joined the NASSCOM Leadership Summit 2007 at Mumbai. [ www.quickstartglobal.com  - Richard is a non-exec adviser; www.sopragroup.com; NASSCOM is India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies – www.nasscom.org ] And in the USA (18th-24th February) he attended the annual Summit of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals at Lake Las Vegas [ www.outsourcingprofessional.org ] and worked with Leading Edge Forum colleagues in Boston on the way home.

26th January 2007: Richard shared & developed the findings from the research project Strategies for Best of Breed Sourcing at a Leading Edge Forum Workshop held at Intellect’s offices in London: http://lef.csc.com
 

Find out about Dr Richard Sykes and what he does

Three main reasons to contact Dr Richard Sykes

Contact details for Dr Richard Sykes

Short papers written by, and presentations given by Dr Richard Sykes

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