"ISD Cascade 2nd February 1998" video

Video recording of the "ISD Cascade" meeting on 2 February 1998. The meeting featured presentations relating to the work and plans of Sainsbury’s Information Services Division (ISD), a presentation about the wider strategy across the company, and questions and answers from the audience.

ISD was responsible for the computer systems used at Sainsbury’s such as the point of sale (checkout/till) systems, ordering systems, and office computers. The meeting appears to have been attended by staff within ISD to inform them about new developments and plans, and answer questions. It appears to have been a regular meeting – a caption indicates the next "ISD Cascade" was scheduled for 2 April 1998. The video was perhaps intended for those staff within the division who were unable to attend in person.

Contents:
1. Introduction by Kevin Robins (Cascade Manager), providing details of the agenda.
2. (0:0:54) Presentation about the ISD business plan by Amanda Studd (IT Services). Includes details of the process for creating the plan and details of the objectives for 1998-99.
3. (0:10:09) Presentation about the SWIFT project by Dilip Popat (BSM for Serving the Customer). SWIFT (Serving With InFormation Technology) was a new point of sale (POS) system – the checkout/till computer system. Includes information about background and planning, features of the system, goals, plans for the release of the system, similar projects by competitors, and organisation of the project.
4. (0:30:58) Presentation about Sainsbury’s strategy by Chris Montagnon (IT Director). Includes details of the company’s overall strategy such as extended trading hours, extensions to stores, new stores, store formats (including convenience stores), remote shopping (including internet shopping), and the "offer development programme" looking at layout of stores.
5. (0:51:50) Chris Montagnon discusses working at the millennium and ensuring staff in ISD don’t take annual leave at that time [in case they are needed to help with issues caused by the "millennium bug" – computer systems where the date is stored in a two digit format failing to function correctly with dates from the year 2000 onwards].
6. (0:55:25) Questions and answers from the audience. Topics discussed: reducing the use of contractors and using Sainsbury’s staff instead; effects of the UK potentially moving to the Euro single currency; staff pay, training and retention; whether Tesco have an advantage over Sainsbury’s regarding ISAs (Individual Savings Accounts); action to speed up boot up/log in times on desktop computers; whether there are plans for Sainsbury’s to expand to other countries and challenges to deal with in UK.

Duration: 1 hour 8 minutes.