Halifax puts knowledge to good use

NEWS When it comes to knowledge, the Halifax bank has a success story to tell. With the help of Unipower systems, the firm has implemented a project management system to help senior managers throughout its information systems division to monitor the progress of all its business projects. The system enables them to tell which projects are on time and on budget. But when he set out on the project, George Scarlett, head of business development at the Halifax, wasn't thinking about knowledge management. He simply wanted to maximise efficiency. In a Silicon.com video interview, Scarlett argued that it was easy to sell the business benefits of the system to get full financial backing, and said it didn't take long before staff and managers were also convinced of the system's business benefits. He said: "Any project of that size that has to be implemented across a division of 1,500 people is a fair challenge, but once we had convinced the staff and managers that this was actually going to save them time, people took it on board.". Scarlett added that this is just the start of a major commitment to knowledge management, which will eventually see the technology rolled out across the enterprise. "The first step will be to make it available throughout the business in terms of making sure the companies we are working for have access to it and have the same sort of capabilities that we have. We also intend in the next few years or so to move it towards our intranet, so that it can be distributed across the enterprise if necessary," he said. The full interview with George Scarlett can be seen in Silicon.com's Knowledge Management Channel.