Professor Roger James has had an extremely successful career managing full services and £m budgets for global Pharmaceutical companies and both private and public sector organisations. Most recently the Director of Information Systems at the University of Westminster, he has just successfully completed a major transformation and restructuring programme involving extensive business process reengineering across the University.
Working at Glaxo as the Head of Advanced Technology, Roger introduced process modelling techniques for systems integration and the improvement of research productivity. Novel techniques such as simulation (for clinical trails optimisation) and Role Activity Diagramming (for process efficiency studies) were employed for the transformation of R&D. In particular Roger’s work led a ‘root and branches’ use of process modelling which was widely adopted by the teams of scientists delivering R&D and which led to significant process improvement.
At Napp Pharmaceuticals Roger launched a multi-country Process Modelling team which used the SAP tools ARIS to study process efficiency: applied to the pharmaceutical production process this addressed a $1m supply chain problem and delivered substantial simplification and efficiency improvement for key processes. He later led work on the ‘Company Charter’ system to integrate company objectives, departmental goals and team activities. Based on the Japanese technique of Hoshin Planning, this ensured alignment and agreement of all company activities in support of the new research targets, production targets and product launches.
In addition to a full-time role as a Senior Director, Roger has over 10 years experience as an independent consultant for the Higher Education sector specialising in innovation, business process reengineering, IT design & audit and collaboration. He also works as an advisor to big and small Pharma, service companies such as CROs and the healthcare providers such as the NHS.
Roger is a Fellow of the Operation Research Society and is a published author on techniques for Process Improvement, Six Sigma & Lean and IT Effectiveness Strategy. He teaches for the Open University on Systems Thinking and leads the MBA in Strategic Life Sciences.