We Believe that Great Business Systems are Transferable
All businesses are built on systems – whether it is a series of notes in the boss’ pocket or a well-designed infrastructure for managing thousands of widgets and whatnots. Systems are transferable, although the industries may differ – how you do something remains remarkably similar. For example, the steps to design a product are reproducible (imagine, draft, fine tune, prototype, research) and a good process will allow you to create any product, not just the one in your particular field.
We build systems that are transferable.
We Believe in Learning Your Language
While business systems and processes may be similar, the language in your industry is unique. Specialized words, phrases and terminology define standard meanings which allow people within the industry to easily communicate. Sometimes these meanings translate across industries, while other times they remain specific and the lack of understanding will lead others to make the wrong recommendations for you.
We learn your language to make sure the solution is right.
We Believe in Making the Way Clear
Often people ignore the big picture because it doesn’t relate to them – they can’t see where they are in it – or it just plain scares them. When this happens, we get stuck and don’t know how to move forward. The only way to move beyond this type of paralysis is to take the big picture and break it down into the smallest components. This is what planning is, taking the complex and making it simple to understand and simple to execute.
We take the big picture, write it down and make it plain.
We Believe that Boat Rocking is not a Bad Thing
Change is inevitable in life. Technology changes alone can put you in prime position to succeed, or totally eradicate your business. 20 years ago, Kodak was the leader in their field – film – now they offer film as a novelty item. I bring up Kodak, because if they had not diversified, developed new product lines, and kept on the pulse of technology they would be completely out of business now.
That kind of innovation needs boat rockers, the people that ask “Why”, and when they hear “We’ve always done it that way” become champions for change. When complacency enters our businesses, then we are walking down the pathways of failure.
We provide the outside set of eyes, and always ask “Why?”
We Believe that Technology Should Make Life Simpler
So many times, people look for technical solutions without using simple evaluation techniques. Software is supposed to make our lives simpler, but sometimes we fall prey to the “more data/better decisions” challenge, and start capturing way more information that we will ever need or use. This often makes the accountants happy, but if you are bringing on more and more support staff to feed the “data beast” and your costs are rising, life did not get simpler. If you can’t tell in a few minutes where you are in your business, life did not get simpler. If the system is down more than it is up and nobody understands how to do their jobs anymore, life did not get simpler.
There is a balance to be found in technology solutions, we help you identify your needs to you can identify the right solution.
We Believe that Setting a Solid Foundation Matters
Planning for the future helps you to set the right sized foundation for growth. When you are planning, you can put the structure in place ahead of time, that will allow you to move forward without a lot of rebuilding or new investments. Taking the time up front to develop an easy to communicate vision and plan, helps to avoid confusion, and assures that everyone is on the same page.
We help you envision the future, do the research, and write the plan.
We Believe in “Bottom Up” Data Capturing
Since we help you decide on your technical solutions, knowing and understanding how information works and what it gives you is critical to our business. When you try to take a big chunk of information, and try to figure out how it came to be, you will get a jumbled mess of assumptions. However, if you capture information at the lowest LOGICAL level, you can always add it up to create your big numbers. We stress logical, because if you are paying someone $18 an hour to track .25 worth of bolts – you’re losing money and there is no gain for your business. You must be wise with your resources to grow.
We help you determine what data you need, and what to do with it.
We Believe Viewpoints are Important
When sharing information across your organization, data ownership and viewpoints are critical information. Knowing who owns what when, who is responsible for changes, and who gets the final “vote” when a change needs to be made in the information structure is critical to business success. But it even goes beyond that – because data has a timeline – it means different things at different parts of the chain. Planning, Development, Negotiation, Project, and End of Life data all can look the same, but have different meanings to different people based on where in the cycle it is, and their viewpoint of that information. In a well-defined system, you always know what you are looking at is pertinent to you – and what part of the life-cycle the data is in.
We help you define your information for your organization – not just one group – so real decisions can be made based off accurate and timely information.