Deloitte Success Story – Jordan Sim
Deloitte defines innovation as “fresh ideas that create value. It’s about coming up with solutions to problems that are timely, relevant and valuable. It’s also about more than the idea – it’s about making the idea a commercial reality.”
Jordan Sim is an Analyst with Consulting Technology,within Deloitte’s Online practice in our Sydney office.Here he offers some insight into what innovation meansto him.
What does innovation mean to you?
Innovation is part of our DNA at Deloitte. Innovationallows us to legitimately act and think like we were askids but within a corporate environment. It allows youto ‘shake off the suit’ and be creative, inquisitive andchallenging – all the characteristics that we had as kidsbut seem to gradually lose with age.
How do you display innovation in your work?
I don’t actively seek to display innovation in my work.What I do though, is observe and attempt to innovatemy thinking style. This allows me to identify alternateopportunities and offer new solutions.
Why is Innovation important in the workplace?
Within the context of business, I think innovation isimportant as it shows that the business is not sitting inone place. It is a change of state, which can be eitherpositive or negative. Either way it demonstrates thebusiness has been active/pro-active and more than likely,lessons are learnt.
What does Deloitte have in place to develop andpromote innovation in the workplace?
Deloitte has multiple initiatives to promote innovation inthe workplace. There’s the Innovation Academy, whereemployees can submit and rate ideas. There are alsoInnovation Cafes which bring individuals from differentservice lines together to generate new ideas andsolutions for our clients.
Although these initiatives exist, the most importantthing that Deloitte has is a senior leadership team whichacknowledges the value of innovation and stronglyencourages it within the workplace. Without this beliefand support, innovation would not be where it is today.
What’s one of the most innovative projects/assignments that you have been involved in?
One of the most memorable innovative projects I wasinvolved in was the Flight Centre Innovation Initiative.Innovation cafes were run nation wide and we were ableto directly engage with the Chief Financial Officer (CFO)of Flight Centre, Andrew Flannery over a private YammerInnovation group.
Why did you choose Consulting as a service line?
I wanted to work on multiple clients in multipleindustries within the web/online space. Deloitte’s OnlinePractice addressed this need.
What do you like most about working in theSydney Office?
I love the people that I work with. I’ve worked indifferent offices around the country and even withsome of my international colleagues. Hands down,my experience with all of these Deloittians has beengreat. However, my career started as a summervacationer within the Sydney Office, and I’ve ‘grown up’with the Online team.
Get to know Jordan a bit better…
What is on your must-do list?
The list is epically long, but the top item right now is learning the subtle intricacies of Malaysian cooking.
If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
A small village town just off Granada, Spain.
If you could invite four famous people over for dinner who would you choose?
Dwayne Wade, Wayne Cordeiro, Heidi Klum, Tetsuya Wakuda.
What would you choose as your last meal?
Some fresh sashimi and a good quality Sencha green tea.
Who do you admire and why?
Tetsuya Wakuda. For a man who came from nothing but has achieved some of the most acclaimed awards in his industry, Tetsuya Wakuda remains a humble, hard-working man. Humility is such a rare quality these days and it’s a core value of mine.

ACS Foundation Success Story - Andrew Ng

Hi there!  My name's Andy and I'm a 4th year economics student majoring in BIS, economics and finance (well, technically I'm an 8th year uni student, depending on how you look at it, but that's another story I'll get into in a second...)

The reason I chose to study BIS is...well, it actually really chose me.  I actually started out as a medical student, but when I was eventually placed in a hospital full time in my 4th year, I found that I was more interested in the "information systems" side of things...for example, how to convert the hospital's largely "paper-based" x-ray results into electronic forms accessible anywhere in the hospital (rather than how to actually correctly interpret the x-ray's themselves!).  After transferring into Economics at USyd, I found myself thriving in the compulsory first year BIS subject, winning an ACS Foundation Scholarship and an award from IBM for the best group project in the lecture stream in the process.  The rest, as they say, is history...

I'm currently employed as a full-time business analyst at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA).  CBA have been fantastic in allowing me to pursue a career as a business analyst (which I feel I'm ideally suited to), while at the same time completing my undergraduate studies.  My aim is to continue to be engaged in important, challenging and stimulating projects throughout my career; so far, projects that I've been a significant part of include implementing an anti-money laundering payments filtering system to help the Bank avoid fines of up to hundreds of millions of dollars (of which quite a few prominent banks worldwide have been subjected to recently), as well as replacing the bank's primary payments processing system used to process over $80 billion of payments each day.  Amongst my mid to long-term goals include entering project management and mid to senior level management - I'll push myself to achieve this as soon as I can, but want to make sure that I have a solid foundation in the "fundamental" skills and experience of being a business analyst/project manager first - I want to do this the "right" way!

Being a member of BISA will provide you with many important career and social benefits.  So far, these are just some of the ways in which BISA has helped me: -
* BISA were the ones who alerted me to the opportunity to initially join CBA through an ACS Foundation Scholarship (which I subsequently converted to a full-time position)
* BISA also provided me with support and the opportunity to contribute back to the BIS community through mentoring (I am currently mentoring a fellow USyd student looking at becoming a business analyst in the future, and am also being mentored by an executive manager for risk, who coincidentally also works at the CBA as well!)
* BISA also provided significant support for an event I coordinated, "The University Apprentice", where university students presented solutions to real-life business challenges to a panel of judges including senior managers at IBM and BankWest.

I think it's a great time to be studying BIS - the avenues are really endless.  There is a massive demand (and will continue to be) for graduates with the ability to be a trusted advisor to "business" people, while also able to interact and communicate with "technical" people - studying BIS and being a member of BISA will provide an ideal training ground for this.