Dr Richard Sykes is a 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.
Today Richard has a personal practice ('Dr Richard Sykes') as a
board-level trusted advisor, strategic coach & facilitator. He works
with senior management in the practical shaping of effective business
information & communications technology (ICT) strategies & their
implementation, sourcing & governance. He has a particular expertise in
the workings of the ICT Services and Business Process, sourcing &
outsourcing market place - including through the agency of 'the Cloud'.
His focus here is in coaching the development and practical
implementation of business strategies that will deliver quality,
sustainable stakeholder returns in these very competitive markets.
In delivering his role as a strategic advisor, Richard particularly
collaborates with Gavin Bowden-Hall, the Director and Managing
Consultant of Strategic Sourcing
and Procurement Services Ltd,
and with Sue Tompkins and
Jessica Long, joint Directors of
EQ Partnering.
He also acts as an experienced non-executive chairman of the boards of
small young ventures in both the IT industries and in the arts world.
Richard's background in the Business World
Richard has recently completed a three year term as
an elected member of the main board of Intellect, the UK trade
association for the IT, Telecoms and Electronic industries. He chaired
their Outsourcing & Offshore Group 2005-2009, and their initiative in
Outcome Based Agreements 2008-2009.
www.intellectuk.org.
Richard is Chairman of the TMMi Foundation,
dedicated to improving test processes and practice. It is a non-profit
making organization and the focus of the Foundation's activities is the
development of a common, robust model of test process assessment and
improvement in IT organisations.
www.TMMiFoundation.org
He is non-executive Chairman of Solcom ltd, the
software engineering, consultancy and project implementation business
specialised in control systems & the Oil, Gas, Pharmaceutical and
Nuclear sectors since 1998.
www.solcom.com.
Richard is a member of the Advisory Board of
Quickstart Global: whose In-House Anywhere™ offering allows companies to
rapidly & economically establish captive operations around the world.
www.quickstartglobal.com.
Richard is an Associate of the Leading Edge Forum, a
research-based CIO membership forum.
www.csc.com/aboutus/lef/index.shtml
Richard is Director, Services at Bloor Research, a
grouping of expert industry technical analysts:
www.bloorresearch.com.
Between 1999 and 2004 Richard was chairman of Morgan
Chambers plc, Europe's leading independent strategic consultancy in ICT
service and business process (BPO) sourcing & outsourcing, since
acquired by Equaterra.
www.morganchambers.com.
Between 2000 and 2004 he was also non-executive
chairman of SiteConfidence Ltd, the UK's leading web-site performance
monitoring company, since acquired by the NCC Group.
www.siteconfidence.com.
During the 1990's Richard was Group Vice President
IT at the UK international chemical major, ICI plc, where he lead a
major restructuring of ICI's corporate ICT based on an extensive
programme of outsourcing and delegation back into the businesses of ICI.
In earlier years he held senior commercial and business leadership roles
in ICI's chemicals & plastics businesses, including in Asia, where he
lived and worked in Japan as Regional General Manager of ICI's
speciality plastic film business 'Melinex' and a board director of ICI
Japan, implementing a £55m investment in ICI's first 100% owned
manufacturing facility in Japan.
Richard plays a wider role in the ICT industry as observer and critical commentator
He is a regular public speaker at ICT industry
events. He takes a critical, informed and sceptical approach to the
apparent bounty that the industry professes to offer. His particular
emphasis is on the need for the industry to mature from an overly
technology-focused youngster into a maturer, high reliability supplier
of services that tightly align to end user needs: and on the
non-technical roots of business value-add and competitive 'edge'.
He is co-author, with Mark Kobayashi-Hilary, of the
business book
'Global Services – Moving to a Level Playing Field' (BCS
2007) - and writes a widely read monthly column for the UK Edition of
CIO Magazine:
Richard is a Trustee of the charity HumanITy, which
supports work devoted to tackling the issues of the digital divide and
social exclusion.
www.humanity.org.uk He is a member of the Editorial Board at
the ICT industry news service silicon.com.
www.silicon.com
Richard's involvement in the Arts World
Richard and his wife Penny Mason are significant
collectors of contemporary art and are active in the arts world through
membership of groups such as the
Contemporary Arts
Society and ArtAngel
.They are also architectural enthusiasts and are working with architect
Niall McLaughlin on
a major refurbishment of their home, a Georgian Terrace house dating
from 1793 in the Angel, Islington area of London.
Between 2002 and 2008, Richard was Chairman of the
De La Warr Pavilion Charitable Trust at the UK south coast resort of
Bexhill on Sea. Here he led the development of the premier centre for
the visual & performing arts on the UK south east coast, with a £9.0m
refurbishment program.
www.dlwp.com. Today Richard is Chairman of the Trustees of
Cubitt, an artist lead cooperative:
www.CubittArtists.org