How to know what you don’t know

From data deficient to data dominant: how to bridge the information gap in your business

Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve looked back and said, “if only we had known what we know now, we wouldn’t have made that decision”? Or perhaps you have found yourself looking back at specific trends and realised you had missed your chance to capitalise on them.

Many things help a business grow, but as the environment for growth becomes more and more competitive, one of the things that can set you apart as a business is your access to information.

Information is Key

There are many reasons why it might be hard for your company to get access to the information you need. Businesses can be as varied as life itself. However, as I interact with companies in my role as Software Development Director for Nitec, I have come across two major recurring themes: Some businesses are not employing software in any meaningful way, and so access to information is not centralised but hidden away in the heads of many skilled people throughout the business.

Some businesses have engaged with software and may use best-of-breed, off-the-shelf packages. However, the chosen software applications do not talk to each other, so there is no easy way to get real-time information across the business.

There is no quick fix to the above challenges. Still, to differentiate your business, you must at least consider how software might finally begin to uncover the kind of information about your business that you need to know.  

Your Knowledge and our Experience are a Match made in Heaven

At Nitec, our speciality is working with businesses to find those solutions. Whilst we can’t snap our fingers and immediately bring you into a bright nirvana-like future where your business lives in perfect harmony with software and where you have access to answers to all your questions on day one, what we do have is the experience in building software systems that can sit at the centre of your business. These systems can collect and distribute information to allow your business processes to be implemented and enforced throughout your organisation. They can encode your business logic and knowledge to make it easier for people to plug into new positions without too much disruption. And they can give you answers to your questions in real–time. So we can write this software, and you know the business processes, logic, knowledge and questions that need answering. Together it is like a match made in Heaven. 

My challenge is to look at your use of software and information throughout your business. Ask yourself now where you want to be at the beginning of 2024. Where do you want to take your business, and what role do you see software having in that? What do you not know now (or cannot easily work out) that would help if you knew it in real–time going forward? How can we partner with you to help you get there?