News
Budgets. The end of the headache
There are many types of software available for what is called “Financial Planning and Analytics” or FP&A software. A brief trip to Google shows 3.6 million returns for the search term. What’s interesting is that many of the companies who show up at the top of the...
What is Big Data?
In this article, we look to answer the question of ‘what is big data?’ looking at all aspects of history and applications.
Automation, Validation and Trusted Data
Azquo presents to the insurance industry a way to finally reduce their reliance on intensive manual data manipulation in Excel. We’ve created a world-first application for a major player in the Lloyds Market which has released an ability to grow the customer base...
Fictional P&L or Reliable Map of the Year ahead?
Imagine the scene. You are in charge of an online retailer with a huge array of products and a turnover of over £40m. Your main business manager has left the business and the spreadsheet for financial forecasting looks large, complicated and no-one understands it. It...
Understanding the numbers in a spreadsheet
How many of us have sat in a meeting when vast arrays of numbers are put up in a gripping stream of PowerPoint presentations either analysing the past or foretelling the future? I’d suggest that this is a scene that plays out very often up and down the land, currently...
Connecting Analysts to Software
As our business gradually expands, we ask ourselves why has no-one tried connecting analysts to software? One reason is that is that the core of our product, the database, is an original invention. Another reason occurred to us the other day as we heard about the...
Migrating to a New Database
Are you thinking of migrating to a new database? We all know that, whatever size of house we have, sooner or later we’ll run out of space. At least that’s what will happen to most of us, except those infuriating people who are so well organised that they take time to...
Spreadsheets Future Proofed
It is perhaps unnecessary to point out that there are problems with spreadsheets – others have done so better than I can – for instance here or here. So how do we go about ensuring your spreadsheets are future proofed? But if spreadsheets are so dangerous, why do...
The Cost of Cleverness
Recently I’ve been thinking more about architectural principles, why some projects get in a mess and why some don’t. One thing that keeps cropping up is the cost of cleverness in pretty much any area of an IT project. It could be code, supporting software (e.g....
Ending the Mystery Of Marketing ROI
Nineteenth century Philadelphia retailer John Wanamaker supposedly said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half. To prove the level of the unknown in marketing, this quote has also been attributed to Viscount Leverhulme...