CA

CA 

 

Innovation is driven in 3 ways at CA - visible innovation; customer outcomes; and employee engagement

Computer Associates is extremely proactive in Australia in the area of research and development, with 100 developers in Melbourne devoted to R&D. This unit's $25m investment into R&D is proportionally high for a company with a $200m turnover in Australia.

We also have 35 staff developing mainframe software for our global operations at our Frenchs Forest, Sydney, facility. This office supports our global operation. It was natural that we should have such a facility in Australia for a number of reasons:

• The high quality of output and potential staff from Australian universities like Monash and Swinburne
• Quality of output-quick delivery time-high efficiency output
• Staff collaborate better in Australia than elsewhere
• In Australia, IP protection is high.

Another of our activities to spur innovation is the Computer Associates initiative to sponsor PHD students

The second area for innovation, and one of our main areas of focus, is helping our customers to innovate. We specialise in enterprise IT management helping our customers to govern, manage and secure IT systems.

Our aim is to help free up time on IT management which companies can then devote to innovate and manage the business better and improve customer service.

One of our big success stories is Qantas.com, where we manage the online customer experience.

Thirdly, I believe that if your employees are engaged, your customers will be happy. We proactively support our staff in a number of ways to drive this engagement.

In our new facility in North Ryde we will be expanding our Montessori school. Supporting a diverse spectrum of employees helps foster creativity and innovation. We have also designed the building to encourage interaction and collaboration with open stairwells and workspaces and numerous breakout spaces

We also run several initiatives to support high achievers - 'Hypo' for high achievers and the Talent Review Board aid this process.

We regularly involve high achievers to be involved in projects in areas that they are not usually involved in to increase collaboration and innovation. Hypo seems to be working with 50 per cent of the staff on the first course already receiving promotions and 30 per cent becoming company mentors. The mentor program is especially useful in enabling key staff to share and pass on their wealth of experience and knowledge with others in the company.

I also regularly hold 'skip meetings' which involve me skipping over mid management to speak to staff at the coalface. This gives me a thorough understanding of what's happening at the frontline of the business.

- Tony Armfield, Pacific area manager & managing director, Computer Associates

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