Computing Awards: Innovative project of the year shortlist

The Co-Op is shortlisted for an award

Computing Awards Innovative project of the year shortlist

Yorkshire Water Services
Yorkshire Water is saving £1m a year in power and chemical reductions, after implementing a system that has revolutionised its water resource allocation plan (Wrap). The Wrap cycle, which once took a week and could only work from week-old data, is now a daily, automatic, real-time process, with all data collected through telemetry. The system can also be used as a training tool, or to model potential scenarios.

Southern Water
Southern Water has improved productivity by 15 per cent compared with a year ago, thanks to its field data capture system (FDCS). By enabling 31,000 extra jobs to be completed by the existing workforce, the system is generating annual savings of £2.6m. FDCS provides real-time, accurate information, greater visibility of contractor efficiency and an electronic audit trail of performance. The system can be easily adapted by creating new scripts to match new requirements, and hundreds of new users can be added as necessary.

Sky
Sky worked with digital agency Sapient to launch an electronic programme guide, offering TV data in a form inspired by Google’s organisation of map data. Viewers can browse and search thousands of programmes on more than 600 channels up to a week in advance, viewing synopses, recommendations, links and related programmes. The guide, which can be accessed via a desktop PC or a handheld device, offers a choice of layouts, and can be personalised to speed up access to preferred data.

NHS Connecting for Health
The Mobile Clinical Assistant (MCA) platform is helping NHS staff spend more time on core activities, reducing unnecessary processes and speeding up result reporting and access to information. Functions include real-time data entry, accurate patient identification through RFID chips in wristbands, barcode technology, and the ability to input data at the bedside.

Lloyds TSB
Lloyds TSB’s Innovation Market is a company-wide scheme for staff to generate ideas and potentially enter an “IPO” stage where they can be bought and sold like shares on a stock exchange. “Stock prices” rise as ideas gain traction and stockholders can promote the best ideas by implementing a pilot or live product. All head office staff are given a balance of “journey pounds” to invest in the ideas, and can make a profit by cashing out after an idea is implemented.

The Co-operative Group
The Co-operative Group has introduced a customer feedback facility based on software installed on the retailer’s in-store tills, replacing expensive, time-consuming third-party surveys. The organisation can now survey 15 million customers a week at no additional cost and produce results for head office the next day – a recent survey received response rates of up to 44 per cent in some stores. The system has been rolled out to all 1,635 stores in the group, and more will follow after the completion of the group’s merger with United Co-operative, scheduled for October.

Nomura Securities
Financial services group Nomura Securities worked with Infosys to improve its analysts’ understanding of market risks. Grid technology was introduced to improve performance and scalability of applications, making running time about 180 times faster and boosting the number of products supported from 57 to 500. “We have enabled quicker decision making and improved our ability to introduce more products and understand interest rate risks within a short space of time,” said Junichi Shirasaka, executive director at Nomura Securities.

Loyalty Management Group
Loyalty Management Group (LMG), the company behind the Nectar card, worked with data analysis supplier Kognitio to implement Self Serve – a system that shows clients and their suppliers a full analysis of information collected at point of sale and extracted from the retailer’s data warehouse. LMG claims to be providing unrivalled insight into customer behaviour and the performance of retailers’ products and promotions.

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