One of the strange things about the world of technology is how it can be simultaneously dizzyingly fast-paced and almost static. Cybersecurity and preventing your data being accessed by the wrong people is a matter of constantly staying one step ahead of rapid development. Your telecommunications have probably changed beyond all recognition in a remarkably short space of time. The networks and IT infrastructure in your workplace are now the stuff of science fiction, and GDPR was unheard of just a few years ago. All these things are now part of our working day. Underneath them though are the same basic needs as ever. The data you hold needs protecting, you need to speak to the world, your workplace must be operational, and you must meet your legal requirements. It seems to be a constant cycle of fast changes affecting longstanding processes.

Maybe one of the driving forces then is that the top-level change, the fast-paced development, is often driven by outside forces. Legislation, the actions of criminals, technological advance and so on, all mean we need to react quickly to stay commercially viable. Whereas the basic principles and the underlying needs of your business, are driven by the people in it and of course, your customers.

Here is the problem. The top-level, fast-paced, changes that you need to react to are vital to a successful business because if you get them wrong, usually you are looking at expensive downtime or potential legal issues. However, they require a level of specialist knowledge that you are unlikely to be able to access internally in your team. To add to the problem, there is the issue of making sure that any changes you introduce to meet your business needs, also meet the needs of your team and your clients. To ensure that the human beings who will use these changes, can actually use them and preferably use them easily. Your business is like a living thing that needs to be looked after to keep it healthy.

This widespread scenario was something we realised we could solve with Datasense

As a group of specialists in our fields, we were aware that the more specialised we became, the more we needed to integrate. Take compliance, for example, if you want to meet your compliance requirements, Gayle Parker, our compliance specialist, could easily take you through what you need to do and design and implement appropriate data protection policies and procedures. Then she could move on to the next client, right? Well, no. She could if that was the whole story, but it isn’t. Compliance requires that your systems are secure and appropriate, so you need to consider your data security. This is where Dean Holgate comes in, who will test your system for vulnerabilities which, in turn, impacts on your IT systems and comms. Next, you need the help of someone like Rob Bright for your telecoms and Chris Lambert to look after your IT on an ongoing basis. Which, in turn, means occasionally upgrading and of course ensuring that your security is meeting the required standard. So, you call in Gayle and Dean again to… well, I am sure you get the picture.

We started talking about this cycle and it soon became apparent that there was a real need for us to collaborate far more. Not only so that our clients are in the hands of people we trusted, but also because, as we become more specialised in our fields, the more having the input of the others helped us develop our services.

In the end, the solution was obvious. We needed to become something more than individual providers. We needed to merge our unique understanding of data and technologies into one combined service. Together we knew we were much more than our individual skillsets. We could be something that had a more immediate response, something that was flexible and able to offer everything from small tweaks to an existing system, through to installing major projects from the ground up. If your business is like a living thing, then we wanted to act like an extra sense protecting your IT and data. A ‘Datasense’ that worked for our clients to predict issues and fix them in advance, as well as being able to react in a crisis.

In fact, to quote Charles Darwin (who knew a thing or two about how things evolve):

‘…those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.’  

We wanted to help your business prevail, to do that, we needed to evolve.

Evolution for us was becoming the new Datasense.