Go BackJason Kingdon joins Blue Prism as chairman
Blue Prism Limited, an operational agility software company, is pleased to announce that Jason Kingdon has joined as executive Chairman. This is part of a strategic investment from Kingdon's recently formed venture operations group which will take a double digit interest in Blue Prism, based on success.
"An amazing statistic is that the UK loses £2 billion each year in operational costs on something as simple as putting the phone down in a call centre. That's time taken by the agent following every call, to navigate and administrate different systems in order to wrap-up the call," says Kingdon. "To date, fixing this problem has cost more than the problem itself - requiring heavy systems integration and a constant IT effort. Blue Prism has introduced a new technology to solve this - making system integration and process management simple and empowering the operations staff to manage the changes themselves. This radically adjusts the economics of not only this, but many other IT bottleneck issues. So much so that we think this is the tip of a new market for operational agility - one that could recover 20-30% of operational costs based on efficiency and improvements in execution."
Kingdon is a UK technology entrepreneur and brings with him over 15 years' experience of building successful, international software business and technical and commercial advisory. Kingdon was most recently the founder and CEO of the technology company Searchspace, a 3i backed company, which he sold in 2005 to US private equity group Warburg Pincus as part of a $250m investment. He is an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and a member of the University College London Enterprise Board.
He joins Blue Prism to develop strategy and business execution. This is the first transaction of Kingdon's new group aimed at developing early stage technology businesses through venture finance and operational input.
"Blue Prism has a great team and has developed a powerful technology with an enviable set of customers in tough working environments - this is always the most exciting combination from which a product can emerge. With the right investment and right commercial partners we think Blue Prism has a very exciting future," comments Kingdon.
Alastair Bathgate, CEO of Blue Prism said, "We are delighted to welcome someone with Jason's experience and business acumen. There's a buzz in the market about a new generation of operations software that provides business users with a platform to react to and manage short term every day change in a new agile way. After extensive learning from real experiences with some of the world's biggest names in customer service, our product has reached a level of maturity. Jason is the ideal person to help us fully exploit the opportunities in the market, opportunities which go far beyond tackling the lost £2 billion in call administration."
Date - 18/04/2008
