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Andy Paterson

Andy has accumulated over fifteen years of experience of consulting and computer systems engineering, working for a wide range of leading organisations. His chief skills are in the analysis and design of systems utilising Graphical User Interfaces, object oriented technologies and relational databases. These skills apply not only to the demanding technical aspects of these systems, but also reflect his key interest in the human-computer interaction aspects of these systems. His ability to translate high-level user requirements into sophisticated but easy to use and pragmatic computer systems has enabled him to gain consulting and design experience in a variety of business and application areas.

Andy’s development experience covers Microsoft Windows, Macintosh and Unix operating systems, and a list of development tools that includes Visual Basic, FrontPage and C/C++. He has experience of many relational database systems including SQL Server, Oracle, Access and Ingres.

Andy’s most recent work has been for Ladbrokes Racing Ltd. developing a betting shop automation system. He has been leading a team of six, responsible for the design and development of several core aspects of the system, particularly those components with which the users interact directly. He has been active in discussing requirements with users and modifying system functionality in the light of users’ experience with the system. An iterative approach has been taken to the development of the system. This has allowed the functionality supported by the system to grow in a way that is responsive to user feedback from the shops. Recent additions to the system are being design and implemented using the Rational Unified Process and the Unified Modelling Language (UML). The system is currently operational in 500 shops in the UK.

Last year Andy developed a system to assist in the pricing of finance deals for car dealerships. This multi-user system contained very complex calculations and was implemented using Visual Basic and Oracle.

Before this Andy worked for a computer training organisation developing a scheduling application linking a generic schedule viewer with customisable schedule ‘cells’ written in VB6. The application makes heavy use of OLE and ActiveX technology. As well as designing the distributed object architecture, Andy applied his HCI skills to ensure that the highly stressed end users have the best possible user interface. This system is now reliably operational in a context that, for the client, is ‘mission-critical’. One of the key factors in this development was the design and management of the incremental migration from an Access-based system to a full multi-site client-server system based on SQLServer. This involved designing the intermediate stages of the software so that old and new components of the system could always work together without any interruption to service.

Andy’s other recent work has involved the design of the client components of a large customer management system for an organisation with several million customers. Quality of service is a major USP for the organisation concerned, and therefore the applications used by the organisation’s call centre required a very intuitive user interface for managing complex customer enquiries and service changes quickly, bearing in mind the need for fast database response in a highly multi-user environment. Andy acted as design consultant to a well-known software house that lacked the skills and experience needed to design Windows based client server systems of this scale. The design was based on Visual Basic and SQL Server.

At J Sainsbury plc Andy was the team leader on a project of twelve people, developing an application that allows central buyers to evaluate purchase decisions for the entire Sainsbury group, and preparing the distribution chain for handling the purchased goods. The system has a sophisticated Windows graphical ‘front end’ connected to a Unix database. Andy designed the front-end system architecture and was responsible for its implementation.

Before joining ISA, Andy worked for OASiS, a strategic IT consultancy formed by Rob Wilmott formally head of ICL. While at OASiS Andy worked on a wide variety of consulting and systems based assignments, mainly for Government and Times 100 companies. Consulting assignments included advising clients on the opportunities for using object-oriented technology and knowledge-based systems; strategies for integrating knowledge-based systems into a mainframe environment and the analysis of information flows and personal responsibilities with a view to organisational change.