Our vision, mission, values & interests

Intro

Quite a long page, looking at our:

Vision

Digital nervous systems & information supply chains

Our vision can be summarised as helping customers create ‘digital nervous systems’ which allow information to flow around their organisations. This involves both the Office and PDF files that we use every day, but also the data that machines exchange and which are commonly stored in databases.

Digital nervous systems can also be thought of as ‘Information supply chains’ which, in the words of George Marinos, address a situation where:

“business executives are rarely presented with a clear picture of exactly how digital data flows into, through and out of their organizations.

This is a crucial point, because in order to tap into the value of data, executives must understand how this flow of data – across what represents a highly dynamic "information supply chain" – drives the creation of value across all of the critical business processes that impact their organization’s performance.

When presented this way, this is a concept that is intuitively understandable to business leaders. Just as raw materials move through a physical supply chain on their way to becoming finished goods – or an equity trade is executed from the inception of trade through final payment – data moves in a very similar manner through an information supply chain on its way to becoming actionable business knowledge and insight.

What is the information supply chain (ISC)? It is the full set of elements – technology-based, process-specific and organizational in nature – that are necessary to 1) collect information from discrete processes, 2) transform this information from data into knowledge, and 3) distribute this information efficiently and in a timely manner to the appropriate data consumers.”

Return on Information

Having been exposed to the ‘benefits realisation’ approach, where technology implementations are seen only as routes to deliver business benefits, Souter Consulting agrees with George above when he talks about tapping into the ‘value of data’.

As this short video from Google’s search division attests, we believe there is tremendous value to be unlocked in the information and data you have to hand – if you only you have the right arrangements in place. Typically these need to address people, process, and only then technology issues: probably in a ratio of 70:20:10 in terms of effort.

We want you to make the most of what you know and can help you with managing the people change, mapping and improving your processes, and helping with IT (as a high level) and configuring your information management and collaboration tools.

Mission

Our mission is to occupy the emerging space between packaged and bespoke software to provide customer solutions quickly, in a cost-effective manner, and with a low total cost of ownership. To help customers get the most from their technology investments, and achieve business improvements.

We aim always to keep business benefits and return on investment in mind in our consultancy work. To help make the best of what you’ve got already and where possible, use modular, off-the-shelf solutions that fit with your existing infrastructure and are straightforward to manage and maintain.

Values and interests

A quick search of Google suggests that it was Samuel Goldwyn that said “the harder I work the luckier I get”: we agree. Honesty, a sense of fun, along with continuous improvement are also important, but the overarching goal is, wait for it, a happy customer! A happy customer is the key to prosperity on both sides of the consultancy equation.

In terms of interests, our background in knowledge and information management, community building, and collaboration have brought us to social media and what it can do to help people communicate.

We want to see information flow, so easy-to-achieve integration between systems have led to an ongoing interest in XML, Microsoft BizTalk server, and latterly with mashups. We’re interested in the people, process, and technology to support innovation (e.g. Spigit), and related principles set out in books like Wikinomics etc., e.g. crowdsourcing, open innovation, agile development and how this mindset can be applied to other business challenges.

We’re interested in the potential that Web 2.0 can bring to an organisation, or as Andrew McAfee has coined, ‘Enterprise 2.0′. The downside is a challenge to the typical way of managing, and I’ve recently spotted a couple of books to help understand this trend – “Open Leadership” and “Enterprise 2.0 – The Art of Letting Go” (on my Amazon wishlist!).

What this means for you

We believe we can help you get more value out of how you share information already; use new technologies that fit into your existing infrastructure; help you with people and process change; and make you more effective as an organisation as a result.