We were recently named a Gartner Cool Vendor in Information Innovation – an honour indeed, which you can read more about here www.linq.it/cool-vendor
It’s not only Gartner who thinks we are cool – we think we’re cool too and this is why…
Cool Fact #1 – The LINQ Language
The LINQ Language sits at the heart of everything we do. Surprisingly simple, it consists of only four nouns and seven verbs. We know that you can describe the Information Flow in any organisation using this simple, clear and concise language. The LINQ platform will help you to rapidly sketch out the flow of information in your business using the LINQ Language. Once the sketch is captured LINQ delivers “instand insights” to help you understand what’s really going on — and how to make it better. The LINQ Language is so cool we even took out a patent on it!
The language models the relationships between these 4 entities. It is also the foundation for delivering the value lens across your business.
Cool Fact #2 – The LINQ “Graph”
Words, words, words. Words are very powerful, but sometimes it helps to see a picture. That’s what the LINQ Platform does – it takes a description of the Information Flow in your organization, using the LINQ Language, and presents it as a beautiful visual graph. You can see how different components relate and interact. We bring a rare level of graphical sophistication right into your web browser. And because a directed edge graph underlies everything we can use graph algebra to run algorithms such as value cascading and cost allocation. The graph is also used to show the downstream usage and upstream pedigree of the information flowing through your organisation.
The graph is what we have applied our unique methodologies against; showing information value and allocating cost to the production of the information assets you rely on.
You can read more about Cost Allocation here.
Cool Fact #3 – The Capture Experience
It doesn’t matter which system you use to undertake modelling of your enterprise, there is always a cost; the time it takes to capture the current state of information in your business can be significant. Fortunately, LINQ does this in a very cool way. The LINQ Canvas is designed entirely around making it easy to express yourself without the tool getting in the way. Drag nodes onto the canvas, drag edges between to link them up. Drag nodes onto other nodes to quickly link them. Or drag nodes onto edges to insert more detail. Or for an even quicker LINQ we have Quick LINQ – simply link an information input to an information output and we fill in the bit in the middle. Our customers have said that with LINQ, in an hour, they can capture what would take a day’s effort in other tools.
LINQ is ast enough to enable capture to happen in real time as the conversation is taking place. This is a huge benefit! As you find new things based on the questions you ask, these can immediately be represented in the sketch If things need to be changed, these can immediately be validated with the person you are talking to. Gone is the need to run workshops where content is on the whiteboard, or on PostIt notes; instead you capture directly into LINQ – digital from birth – and everyone leaves the meeting agreeing that the content is accurate.
LINQs capture experience is up to 10 times faster than other techniques, but even more than that, it prevents a huge amount of rework from happening as you move towards the all important business case for the change you want to undertake within your business.
Cool Fact #4 – Instant Insights
As you capture content into LINQ, our dashboards deliver “instant insights” to you based on the content within the sketch.
The cost/value dashboard helps you identify areas of high cost / low value; this helps you shine a spotlight on the areas of the business needing your attention. The value lens is the enabler here – you are looking at your business based on the value of the activity performed at any point. That also leads to instant prioritisation of change you may wish to consider.
The People dashboard slices the sketch by person and provides key information such as what they’re working on, how long they spend on it and what systems they rely on. Here you can see the impact of your most important resource on your business. Are they over or under utilised? Are they performing valuable work? Are there activities they do which could be automated releasing them to add more value to the organisation?
The System insight slices the sketch from a Systems perspective – comparing the manual and automated parts of your supply chain, and cataloguing your information. Here you get to see how critical your systems are to the provision of the information you need and which are critical, but perhaps not so pleasing to see…Excel perhaps!?
There are insights into the cost of producing information and the potential cost savings from eliminating low-value outputs. All in all, it’s amazing how much insight you can get out of an information supply chain sketch!
Cool Fact #5 – It’s all about Value
At LINQ we take value very seriously. Data that has no Value can never become Information. When Information has value, that becomes true knowledge. Knowledge is what we need to be able to make the best possible decisions. But how do we measure the value of information whch is helping to increase our Decision Intelligence?
We could make it really difficult but instead, we didn’t. Rather we decided to put a value from 1 to 10 against information outputs. The information assets you rely on to delvier your business outcomes by defiition must have a measurable value to your organisation. We can apply several value methodologies to come up with value on that scale, and once you know the value of the Information Output, you know the value of everything that contributes to that value.
The rest is done by LINQ. Our philosophy is simple – if a piece of information is used to support an information output it inherits the value – and if it supports more than one it gets the value from all. This leads to a really accurate picture of where the important activities are in your organization – the ones that might not seem all that critical but actually support a number of key information outputs. We (and Gartner) think it’s cool! You can read more about how our value cascading works here.
Bringing it all together
The real reason that Gartner made us a Cool Vendor in Information Innovation www.linq.it/cool-vendor is what happens when you put the 5 elements we have discussed together.
The workflow for LINQ accelerates you to the point you can make a decisive decision about what to do next. The traditional approach to building your business case for change takes an age and costs a massive amount of money. We’ve modelled this in LINQ and that shows us in can cost close to $200k to get to business case using round-table sessions to capture content on a whiteboard, have someone collate that information, share it for approval, run more workshops, etc.
If you apply LINQ to the same process, things change for you. You capture digitally immediately and that means you can validate your thought process as you go, in real time, with everyone involved. Our value lens means you are prioritising as you go, so when you find an opportunity in a high value area, you can build the future state, generate the ROI and TCO, and get to work. This process costs less than $50k. So not only do you save money, you save a huge amount of time as this process takes weeks, not months. Check out our sketch here: https://lnkd.in/ftY4rEd
If you’re ready to try something new and accelerate the level of understanding of how your business works so you can prioritise your change, you can try LINQ out today with our free trial.