Lee Webb, Director, Group Resilience for Barclays, has been appointed to chair Sungard Availability Services’ European Customer Advisory Board (CAB). The CAB represents the customer viewpoint on policies and procedures, and influences the quality and direction of services to ensure they continue to meet customer needs. The CAB’s input is greatly valued by Sungard AS, with members consulted on proposed changes and among the first to hear of company developments.
Before joining Barclays in 2005, Lee worked for a number of organisations in both the public and private sector. These ranged from small independent operations to large multinational corporations. Lee spent six years in Hong Kong as a Director at Credit Suisse, during which time he was responsible for the rollout of the Asia Pacific segment of a global Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery remediation programme. Prior to moving into the business continuity field, Lee worked as a systems auditor and IT security consultant.
AVAIL got in touch with Lee to congratulate him on becoming Chair and to ask about his motivation for getting involved. “Having been a member of the CAB for a couple of years now and seen it in action, I believe it is a valuable two-way channel that allows customers to give open and honest feedback to Sungard AS,” he replied. “Equally, it gives us as customers an insight into the challenges facing Sungard AS and how the company plans to address them.”
We asked him about his plans for the European CAB, to which he replied, “While there are eight companies represented around the table, I want to raise awareness of the CAB and widen participation. Success comes from having a representative cross-section of customers on the board and for all those members to actively contribute. I’d also like to take the pulse of views out there to ensure the CAB is in sync with the wider customer base as it is so diverse.”
Among the initiatives Lee is currently working on at Barclays are innovations in crisis management, and looking at how intelligence techniques such as ‘near miss’ analysis can be harnessed and used proactively to improve the recovery response. He says, “I’m borrowing heavily from industries like oil, gas and aviation to see what we can learn from those sectors and identify any underlying trends that might have a universal application. The findings may be something all Sungard AS customers could benefit from – so watch this space.”
We look forward to catching up with Lee in a future edition of AVAIL and hearing more about his plans for the CAB.
The next CAB meeting is on Wednesday 8 November. If you have an issue or query you’d like the board to address, simply email the CAB before that date.