Insidus Approach
 

Today’s business environment is more fast-paced, competitive and challenging than ever before.  After riding the unprecedented economic wave of the nineties, businesses have had to deal with Y2K, a severe economic downturn and a major stock market correction.  Most businesses have had to restructure and downsize just to survive and remain competitive.  The number of bankruptcies, particularly high profile bankruptcies, have been staggering to say the least.  

The industrial age ended when the information age began in the early nineties.  We have been and continue to be in the middle of a paradigm shift where information represents power.  In the information age, twenty-somethings can turn into multi-millionaires or even billionaires in a few short years, something that was quite unimaginable during the industrial age.  To remain competitive, businesses have to figure out how to do what they do for more people for less work and at a better price.  Survivors in the information age will make better decisions because they have the right information at the right time.

Simply keeping up-to-date with current technologies will not necessarily ensure that your organization has a competitive edge because your competition can be up-to-date as well.  Understand that up-to-date does not mean being on the leading edge, or as many rightfully call it, the “bleeding edge” of technological advances.  Being a “first mover” in any new technology is an expensive proposition that will only keep your IT department happy, not your shareholders.  Up-to-date simply means that your organization is not still trying to operate on outdated technology platforms, but rather on proven and widely accepted platforms that do not carry huge risks.

To gain an advantage in the information age, an organization must strategically use technology to their advantage.  To illustrate our point, we’ll give you a simple example.  Microsoft Excel® is the spreadsheet standard throughout the whole world, and rightfully so.  It is a very rich and deep analytical tool that allows users to perform an unbelievable amount of analyses.  Every few years Microsoft will release the next version of Excel® that contains some new features and corrects some previous shortcomings.  If your organization installs the latest version of Excel® throughout the organization, then it is up-to-date with regard to spreadsheet application software, but there is no strategic advantage gained.  If very few people within your organization know how to use Excel® to provide meaningful analysis though effective spreadsheet programming and modeling on version 9.0, then they won’t be able to provide it for you when you give them version 10.0.   Excel® is a tool, and being up-to-date with this tool provides no strategic technological advantage to your organization.  If your organization then decides that it requires certain analyses performed by their employees and hires a programmer to create automated spreadsheets that allow any and all employees to input the latest data and then perform the desired analyses error-free with the click of a button whenever the analyses is required, then that is an example of creating a strategic technological advantage by injecting intelligence into the technology.  Even though your competition may also have the latest version of Excel®, they will not have the analyses that your organization has unless they too create a strategic technological advantage. 

For comparison purposes, think about a Formula 1 race car.  You can have the fastest and most technologically advanced Formula 1 racer, but if grandma is driving it, you can forget about winning any races.  The lesson to be learned here is that your organization should compile a strategic plan to properly utilize existing technologies and not look to throw good money after bad on the latest and greatest technologies. 

With technology, the landscape can be quite confusing.  It is impossible to keep up with all the new technologies and advances as it seems like we hear of new tech acronyms on a daily basis.  So how does an executive or a manger block out all of the noise and cut through the clutter to better understand what technologies their organization really needs?  Management needs to educate themselves about technology and be very involved in the strategic direction of their company’s technology needs.  This doesn’t mean that all managers and executives need to start writing code or reading every tech journal.  Many executives who realize that the technology that their company uses is an asset to their organization (revenue generating or cost saving) are educating themselves at least to a level where they can make informed decisions when receiving advice from others.  After many executives fell prey to the IT overspending of the nineties and the useless empire building within their own IT departments, they started attending tech conferences and asking more questions.  It is a trend that we hope will continue.

In the information age, your company’s technology is a huge asset.  Find good advisors, either within your organization or outside of it, who can explain your technology information requests in a language that you understand.  As an organization, you want your technology to work for you. 

One of our huge differentiating factors as an organization is that we can communicate with executives, programmers and everyone in-between.  We are seen as trusted advisors by our clients because we can describe software technology in a language that they understand, so they can in turn make informed decisions.   

Management should understand their technology as well as they understand their operations.  In fact, the company’s operations and the technology that supports or enables it are integrated.  To create a value-added software application, the developer has to understand the operations of the client.  Operational requirements really drive the software deliverables when developing a monolithic software application. 

Our overriding mission statement is to add value to our clients through intuitive, high quality software.  We solve business problems for clients who realize that we are now operating in the information age.  Some benefits that our clients experience as a result of our software are as follows:

• Massive cost savings

• Increased efficiency, operational and human resource

• Increased job satisfaction for employees

• Process automation

• Decreased human resource requirements

• Decreased training requirements

• Confidence in analyses

• Integration of department activities through information sharing

• Elimination of errors

• Integration of disparate data sources for more robust analyses

• Strategic technology-based advantage over competitors

• Increased revenue opportunities

• Streamlined operations

We are a very unique software company that knows how to add value to your business.  If you discuss your operational pain points with us, we will provide our unbiased opinion on how software can help eliminate those pain points.  Maybe for the process in question, you would be better served purchasing commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software if it is available.  If that is the case, then that is the advice we will give you.  We would rather not reinvent the wheel and we believe that you will call upon us again when you have a need for a high-quality monolithic custom software application to be developed.  Be sure to read our detailed white paper on the “Buy or Build” dilemma to better understand our unbiased view on the pros and cons of COTS software. 

We strive to make our clients feel as if we are just another department within their firm.  Our software-based approach to solving your business problems has much to offer and we would be pleased to discuss your situation with you.  Please call us today.