How i4cu Ltd was born
The simplest of problems…Perhaps it is my scientific training and background but I 'hate' simple problems. Don't get me wrong, I am not referring to easy problems. I am referring to those problems that are fundamental and simple because you cannot break them to any further constituent parts. So, you are stuck! Either you can find a solution or you cannot. Ditto with Information Management. We broke down the problem to storing data, retrieving data, searching, creating specialised environments (the CRMs and CMSs...) and displaying all this is in a spectacular manner on very colourful and detailed screens. Have we solved the fundamental problem? Can we claim that we can use and manage our Information Assets?
I am very lucky to have a select few friends in life. They are not a lot, about 6 in number and all ruthless (in a good sense) to me and each other. They never, ever settle for the easy questions and they never, ever succumb to a comfortable answer just to postpone or to procrastinate or to avoid a difficulty. The most mellow approach I have seen them take is to admit that we cannot solve a problem now with what we have at hand and then agree a plan on how we will approach it and when. They epitomise the term critical friends!
This esteemed company was by the sea near my summer house and spontaneously decided to make my relaxing day difficult by asking: when is IT going to work? What? Who says that IT does not work??? What do you mean? IT gives you capabilities you never had before, you can see all your data, all your documents, your ERP and your CRS hold any data you want. What else do you need? Perhaps it is a question of training? Here, I said ready to enlighten them, you type an email and it is neatly stored in your email client and if you want to attach a document, get it from your file explorer or your document management system. You want to find something? Easy - type in the search window what you want to find. It doesn’t even have to be complete. You’ll get a list to choose from. What else do you need?
They all laughed! Now, for all of them to laugh in synch (implying that they all agreed without even debating!) is a frightening thing. It usually means that I am on the other side of a very strong collective intelligence which disagrees with my line of thinking. Not a good place to be... So, I followed the only strategically sound approach and asked: Tell me then what’s the problem. And they did!
You need to understand that they all have nothing to do with technology but they are very, very good in what they do: law, civil engineering, finance and medicine. Their metaphor to enlighten my technology-biased mind was this: when you go onto a journey (a business action), you pack a suitcase with everything you need (your relevant information) and you don’t go back home every time you forgot something (you trust the system and method of ‘packing’ everything relevant to this business action).
It took me a few seconds to home-in on what they were saying and they were right! Of course! Nobody wants to be an expert in all IT systems and nobody wants to have a dozen windows open on their monitor, jumping around applications to gather the information assets they need without even being sure that they've fount all of them and nothing is missed. But what to do? How this fundamental requirement is addressed in a simple, complete and elegant way? Time to tackle the problem and forget about the sea, the food and having a relaxing day...
And it worked! All together, we designed the principles, the key functions users will find truly helpful, a frictionless process and the looks of the app. All that remained was implementation - but that's easy, is it not???
This was the genesis moment of i4cu. We designed i4cu as business users of information and not as IT experts and we committed ourselves to a simple motto: Unify your information – See the full picture. This is what we do and what we offer: a simple (but not simplistic) answer to a very difficult problem.
