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Roger Whitehead

Roger Whitehead

Associate Analyst
Geographic Location: United Kingdom
Focus Area: Search & Collaboration

Roger Whitehead has been for over 20 years an independent consultant in the use of computers in business. He advises organisations on the strategic aspects of information technology, and on system and supplier selection and implementation. A particular area of his expertise is in the effects of computing on people and organisations (and vice versa). Roger now focuses on Search and Collaboration for Bloor.

Search refers to the use of computer software to find known information held on computers ('recovery') and also to reveal unexpected information ('discovery'). Search software can typically search in one or a combination of three domains: corporate servers, desktop computers or accessible areas of the Web. Roger’s focus is on enterprise-wide search systems which can find information in all three domains. Collaboration refers primarily to the software which is designed to aid group communication, decision and action – and hence encompasses what used to be referred to as groupware. Areas include are: electronic mail (including SMS phone text and voice mail), electronic conferencing (text, voice and video), shared editing (including Wikis), chat and instant messaging, and shared diaries.

Roger has consulted to organisations in a range of sectors, including: banking, broadcasting, food processing, professional services and central government. He works with systems suppliers leading internal seminars and carrying out product, industry and competitor analyses. He has been a frequent speaker on IT and its use at British and overseas conferences and leads public and private seminars on the topics he consults in. He was for several years a guest lecturer on IT in business at Ashridge and Roffey Park management colleges and at ABIN, an international bankers' school near Frankfurt. He has designed industry conferences including the Windows Show, EMAP's Workgroup Computing Show and the conference part of CMP Europe's annual Webcom event.

The third main part of Roger's activities is writing. He: edited and co-wrote Transforming Organizations Through Groupware, a book of case studies on the use of Lotus Notes (publisher: Springer), edited and was the major contributor to Adding Value through Intranet Applications (publisher: Business Intelligence), wrote Strategic Workgroup Computing (Cambridge Market Intelligence), edited and was the major contributor to Mastering Your Organization's Processes — A Plain Guide to BPM (Cambridge University Press).

Roger writes privately commissioned reports and white papers and contributes articles to IT and management periodicals and writes and publishes Office Jotter, a 'blogazine'. He previously published and edited the newsletter Groupware News and the online magazine eComWatch which commented on policy and trends in electronic commerce.

He was for several years the chairman of the British Computer Society's office automation specialist group and also set up the Office of the Future Information Exchange (OFIX), which connected people interested in office automation, and ran seminars on the subject. Roger has been a judge at several IT industry shows including for some years a judge for the annual Information Management awards. He has appeared on Dutch television speaking about teleworking and twice been interviewed on BBC Radio 4 about the Internet.

Roger's a-vocational interests include mud-wrestling, pole vaulting and macramé work, but never simultaneously.

Recent work includes these 3 papers:

To contact Roger Whitehead, please email: