Speaker 1: The first thing I'd like to ask you is about this concept of not having an IT plan that actually supports the business plan. Elaborate on that for me.

Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, John. So basically, most businesses today have some form of business plan, or some form of growth plan. And it's very rare that a business would look into the future without really understanding what it's trying to achieve, what goals it's actually set itself, and what strategy it's putting in place to achieve those goals. Quite often what we find is that in today's world, where technology is so fundamental to businesses achieving those growth goals, they don't necessarily support those with an IT plan. And so what we often find is this kind of thinking, this kind of IT strategy is often lacking in many small and medium-type organizations. What we try and help and what we try and do with the leaders of these types of organizations is show and explain and support their business growth strategies by implementing and designing custom IT strategies, which can include things from managing risk, from understanding the type and scope of applications, from automating certain business processes, from digitizing where appropriate away from paper, and also helping them to understand the questions to ask of other vendors and of other suppliers. And not just those questions, but helping them understand what good looks like and what the right answers should be.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so it sounds to me like the biggest thing is that many business owners think of IT strategy and business strategy in isolation, it sounds like. So they're looking at their business strategy and saying, it serves its purpose here, and my IT plan serves its purpose here. What you're talking about is marrying the two together. So you've got one plan that supports the other, right?

Speaker 2: Absolutely. And what we often do is follow the business plan. So what we try and do is support what the business seeks to achieve. And this could be any number of things. It could be opening up a new office, it could be hiring more staff, it could be implementing or developing new products, or just general growth. We work with a lot of manufacturing organizations, lots of light industry organizations, where there's stock, where there's raw materials, where there's inputs. And as they grow, either existing systems aren't scalable to meet their needs, they're typically using things like spreadsheets, or in some of the businesses that we support, they'll use paper even. And what we try and do is, yeah, indeed. So what we try and do is help introduce systems that make sense in a pragmatic way, that doesn't necessarily have to be overly expensive. But what we try and do is help shape them for the future. And in doing that supports that overarching plan as to what they want to achieve. And the reason why this is important is because for many leaders or CEOs, managing directors, or what have you, they are focused on the business, they're typically sales-led, finance-led, or BD-led. Technology isn't necessarily a strong suit. And so it's often these kind of things that get left behind, to the point where it then becomes a problem which needs to be fixed. And what we try and do with organizations is help solve these problems before they become

Speaker 1: serious challenges. So it sounds like the really simple action step here is essentially to review that IT plan and make sure it marries up with this business plan. If you don't have an IT plan, then you need to think about it much more strategically and in the framework of the business. The last one I'm going to throw in here is, if you're running a $10 million plus business and you're still living off spreadsheets, you're a disaster waiting to happen. So move away from that. Would you agree?

Speaker 2: I like spreadsheets. They obviously have a place, but they're not collaboration tools. What businesses really need is access to data and to be able to make decisions from relevant sets of data. And unfortunately, spreadsheets just don't really lend themselves to being able to provide that in the way that modern leaders need. Modern leaders need proper dashboards. They need real-time information, not waiting for people to meet to then update a spreadsheet to then be able to work out what the latest information was. What business leaders need is the ability to make decisions quickly, effectively on real-time data. And that's where we help implement those kinds of systems where necessary and in a pragmatic way that really supports the leadership teams being able to make effective decisions.