Last year I wrote a blog “the cloud is a journey not a destination” and whilst many businesses are still on this journey, a new path towards business intelligence is emerging for many. 

Before I detail what the business intelligence journey looks like, it’s important to understand what I mean by business intelligence. The proliferation of data visualisation tools like Power BI, Looker and Futrli have provided a new tool set to gain insights into the information that has been trapped inside excel spreadsheets and legacy information systems.

However these tools have failed to give the full picture as many organisations have only been able to utilise them to visualise siloed business functions like finance or marketing. 

My last blog post detailed how Cloud Software Platforms are emerging as a core part of the tech stack for many companies. This blog goes into more detail on the features and characteristics of a cloud software platform.

There are a lot of software vendors who refer to their product as a software platform, however the reality is that most of these are software tools which manage a specific business function. The key concept to understand is the difference between software tools and software platforms. 

• Software tools - Focus on a narrow function of business such as marketing, finance, project management or collaboration.

• Software platforms - Consolidate information and workflows across a range of business functions. 

Over the past few years “moving to the cloud” has been a key objective for many companies. With full cloud adoption in SME’s expected to reach 60% by 2020, the next challenge comes through the integration and standardisation of business processes across the various cloud software systems, driven largely by the accelerating advancement in machine learning and predictive analytics.

The strategy to move to the cloud was a gradual one for many businesses, over time one business function after the other would be migrated to cloud based SaaS (software) solutions. However, as cloud technologies matured, many companies were left with an expanding stack of cloud software applications that became increasingly misaligned as business and user requirements changed. In fact it takes an average of 15 Cloud Software applications to enable an SME to be 100% cloud. 

At the end of last year I decided it was time to change course in my career and get back to what I love doing. 

The past six weeks has given me the time and perspective to reflect on my very unconventional career and discover the common threads that have lead to various opportunities and experiences since I launched my first business in 2006. 

Over the years I have started everything from a car detailing business, a gym, a real estate portal, a marina development, technology consultancy, even an “adult products” web site. Why? I love the the process of designing and executing new business ventures. 

For me, the process of developing a business goes back to my childhood obsession with Lego. I would spend hours tinkering away building models of cars and spaceships, which I would proudly display on my bookshelf. Rarely did I use the instructions, I always wanted to build what was in my imagination, I wanted to build the spaceship I dreamt about with the oversized wings and rocket launchers. 

Cloud software vendors are at war.

For the past few years, the cloud software world has been dominated by the concept of add on’s. Each software add-on will generally focus on a specific industry vertical or business function, such as retail, point of sale, reporting or time management. 

These front-end software applications focus on making a set of business processes more efficient than their non-cloud counterparts, before shipping pieces of information (data) into a complementary application such as Xero or Quickbooks, where further processing of the data occurs. 

Recently i've been reviewing past cloud software implementations to find trends in successful implementations. Through this process I have confirmed a theory i've had for a number of years, moving to "the cloud" is a journey, not a destination.