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Helping to get faster and better results ; Technology is exciting and often beautiful. And, of course, it can completely transform your business if... [Newcastle Journal (England)](Newcastle Journal (England) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Helping to get faster and better results ; Technology is exciting and often beautiful. And, of course, it can completely transform your business if it's built in the right way. That's what has inspired the founders of AYO Media since they formed the company in 2008. JOHN HILL finds out what they're up to in the Northern Design Centre IF you're a fan of Terminator or 2001: A Space Odyssey, there's something you should probably know. Over in Gateshead, in a clean, open room in the Northern Design Centre, there's an ambitious company being run by a talking computer system. Assuming it doesn't try to raise a robot army any time in the near future, AYOWare is a pretty neat example of what North East digital agency does for its clients. AYO Media, now renamed AYO Digital, built the system to manage its own business, keeping track of everything from what tasks each employee has to do each day to what potential contracts are in the pipeline. Company founders Tony Olanipekun, Rob Mathieson and Kevin Reece regularly refer to it in company meetings to see how the firm is getting on. They've been improving it since the company formed in 2008, and recently they even decided to allow it to talk. "We kept having to go into AYOWare and click between menus during meetings", says Mathieson. "That was a bit inefficient, so I started working on voice recognition software built around technologies similar to the Microsoft Kinect. "It means I can talk to the system and ask it about the progress of a project, or look at how many hours a certain member of staff has put into a project. We're teaching it all these different variables so it can understand projects, staff and time. "The idea is that we can eventually start using it to run our whole business. I can be out in the field, access it on my phone and ask it a question. Eventually we hope to be able to ask it things like what projects need to be closed this month." The system is the efficient heart of the AYO Digital business, logging the workloads of staff, keeping details on clients past, present and future, and keeping track of projects on the horizon. This is the type of work that inspires the team at the digital firm, which was created when the founders left creative agency Th_nk four years ago. "Everything that we build has a purpose", says Olanipekun. "It isn't just about building a nicelooking brochure site for a client that doesn't actually have a benefit to their business. "Everything that we build either makes a company more efficient or helps it sell more, so it helps them to get to where they need to be. The companies we like working with are really exciting and embrace technology, but they've also got high growth potential. We ask a lot of questions that a lot of other web development agencies don't ask, such as where they want to be in the next five years and what their end game is." AYO Media builds systems that helps its clients collect, access and analyse their data quicker and more effectively. Being able to herd and understand the data in your business is becoming more and more crucial, and AYO's clients span the sectors from medical to financial services, digital, manufacturing, engineering and e- learning. For example, AYO has been working with global air filter company AAF for several years, and has designed a system allowing sales and quotation staff to access a dedicated intranet from anywhere in the world. It has developed a set-up which helps Newcastle-based Real Time Claims to process a huge amount of claims from people mis-sold payment protection insurance, speeding up the process with features such as SMS claim notifications and electronic signatures. It has worked with training provider e-Quality Learning to build the UK's first website offering comprehensive one-to-one training for people with disabilities, which allows them to complete and re- visit recorded sessions and access multi-media knowledge libraries and training materials. Other clients include Gateshead College and online retailer Urban Celebrity. AYO currently boasts 17 staff, and is likely to be at 20 by the end of June. It also brought in three apprentices recently, who are already making their mark in the business. "We're actively looking for staff right now", says Mathieson. "We can't find enough developers and account managers, and we're also looking for user experience staff. "We've got a very fixed plan on how we're going to grow, both through new channels and working with existing clients." AYO first came into being in 2008, alongside another operation called Tipstar. Olanipekun, Mathieson and Reece set up Tipstar as a software application that delivered market intelligence for bookmakers and gamblers. It provided users with access to tipping services, odds comparisons and up-to-the-minute sports news, and was taken on by hundreds of gambling websites. We learned a lot from building that system", says Olanipekun. "The edge somebody got over the competition in the sports betting industry by having data half a second faster than the rest was phenomenal. You could make millions of pounds by just being half a second faster. "That gave us a bit of insight into where we are now, in terms of the quickness of the system and allowing people to interrogate it in the way they wanted." Mathieson added: "The only reason that business didn't succeed is that it ran out of money, and we just couldn't compete with the might of William Hill and Ladbrokes. They just have infinite pots of cash to keep spending on advertising. "However, we looked at that technology and started applying that knowledge to other areas, and that's really what's caused the business to explode in the way it has done. "You could say we're somewhat of a niche business, but actually once you realise the scope of what we deliver we're not that niche at all." AYO is increasingly discovering the benefits of working in the cloud, as it allows data to be stored online and provides essential back-up when things go wrong. A good example of this is the work it's doing on a system for the next Great North Run. As runners of the annual race will know, participants are given a chip that's attached to their shoe. As the runners pass over mats placed around the course, data is collected on their progress which is stored on a laptop and analysed after the race. AYO Digital worked with Manchester timing solutions firm HS Sports to develop a system which goes one better, collecting information on individuals which can be analysed in seconds. The system will be in place for the next Great North Run, and has been trialled in Ireland. Mathieson says: "At the moment, all of this data is collected on a laptop and isn't accessible until the very end of the race when everyone's crossed the line. "HS Sport has developed wireless technology which pushes the data out as people cross these mats. What we've done is put together a set of cloud services which collects all this information and lets people analyse it before it's pushed out to the websites. "It's much more real-time. It allows you to track where people are as they're running the race. We've built part of the system specifically for commentators so they can drill down to particular runners, find the elite runners, see when they crossed the mats and find out what their average speed is. "We're doing it with cloud technology, as being scalable is important when you've got 50,000 people running over those mats. It also provides back-up, because if one of the laptops goes down it's been pushed out to the cloud as well." An important element of AYO's work is putting together an idea of what an individual client needs. "The first thing we do is go in and model their business, from their staff and projects to the workflow and how it all fits together", says Mathieson. "It's not about just sitting down with the management team. It's about sitting down with the people on the floor and asking what challenges they have each day, what they have to produce, and what takes the longest to do. "If you're used to waiting two hours to get hold of data, and we can build something that makes it available in three seconds, the efficiencies there are phenomenal." When you look at the amount of detail stored in the AYOWare system, it's easy to get a sense of the discipline and attention to detail in the company. For example, information on the sales pipeline, outstanding queries, bugs, targets and the performance of the systems they've built are all displayed to all staff on big screens in the office. According to Mathieson, it's being able to access and analyse relevant information quickly that's really attractive to businesses now. "I think there was a huge thing a few years ago when everyone wanted to get into mobile, but it died off a little bit because people weren't seeing any financial benefit. "What's interesting now is that people are going back to looking at the operational uses of mobile technology, and they want to know if their employees can see their tasks on their mobiles and how many meetings they have to go to that day." AYO gets a lot of work through referrals, but it sometimes finds it hard to explain the slightly different service that it provides to companies unfamiliar with its work. As a result, it has changed its name to AYO Digital to better reflect what it does. A select group of companies are also trying out a stripped-down version of its AYOWare platform called Salestorm, which allows firms to track their sales pipelines efficiently. And they've also got an eye on exploring how what they've learned with data management can be applied to the non-web world. Mathieson says: "We're looking at the ability to start working with manufacturing businesses as well, with the work we're doing spilling off the web and into the hardware. "It's not just about the website or the database. It's using that data to control and manage physical activity outside of it." AYO firmly believes that the solutions it provides can help companies in all sorts of sectors grow quickly, and make a large impression in their market. It already has a satellite office in Manchester, and sees itself growing noticeably in the near future. "I think it's going to be significantly larger in a few years than it is now", says Mathieson. "We've got a very strong strategy for growth for the next year, so I definitely don't see our growth stopping." (c) 2012 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved. |