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Technology for bottom-line results
VISION finds simple answers to what at first appear to be complex technological problems and, as a consequence, creates substantial, measurable results for clients. At VISION, technology isn't just our business - it's personal.
What makes our approach to technology different is how we view it, how we deploy it and ultimately how it impacts on our clients' business. We put people, and the promises they make to each other, at the heart of technology design. This results in substantial business benefits, which can be measured in our clients' bottom line, market share, time to market, productivity and cost savings.
VISION's technology credentials include:
- some of the largest and most technologically-challenging systems deployed anywhere in the world
- building some of the first, most innovative Internet systems
- pioneering work in combining wide area network and client-server technologies
- demonstrating how a 'workflow centric' approach to business and system design and deliveries can produce real benefits.
Inconspicuous technology
At VISION we believe that the central challenge faced by technologists is to make the technology fade into the background until our users do not notice it any more. It should become a natural part of the way we live and work.
The irony is that the less intrusive we need to make technology, the more boldly we need to move into the world inhabited by the users of our technology. We must carefully examine how people interact and communicate in their network of working relationships, and we must be especially alert to possible breakdowns in that network.
This forces on us a new interpretation of the role of technology in people's lives. The traditional interpretation of technology sees it as a repository of information and of 'rules' for manipulating and reporting on that information. VISION's interpretation is that information technology is about coordinating people.
In this style of design, the rapid creation of role-playing applications, using prototyping tools that end-users can interact with immediately, is critical to getting the design right. We use a new generation of design tools which we can deploy over the Internet, making it easily available to all participants, regardless of their physical location.
Technology as co-coordinator
Traditional approaches seem to have worked well to automate administrative tasks. However, today's challenge of supporting 'knowledge workers' and improving how businesses work together is far less well served by existing design techniques.
We believe that as every party in the exchange joins the network, technology needs to become primarily a tool for co-ordination, with automated activities happening invisibly in the background. Such a tool will directly assist individuals to make that initial commitment to their customer - and subsequently support the delivery of the commitment to the clear and evident satisfaction of each interested party.
This approach to technology allows us to build and deploy systems more rapidly, with greater flexibility and with greater value to the investor. We believe that investment in technology, when not directly connected to its central role as a coordination infrastructure, is set up to be wasteful.
Innovative technology
The best showcase for our technology work is our project portfolio, which spans all of the major business systems innovations of the last 20 years, from central mainframes to global Web applications. This is a portfolio with a multidisciplined mix that includes music promotion, virtual newsrooms, retail banking, electricity, and utilities - to select a small sample.
For a major US music and media group the technology we built allows the promotion of music by hundreds of artists and dozens of brands. At TheStreet.com, we were among the first to use XML to enhance the value of storing Web content and support a 'write once, publish many' business strategy.
We've continued to be at the forefront of XML use in a Web services model for Me.net and at Intelligent Finance, which is recognised as the most successful new launch of a full-scale retail bank in the United Kingdom.
Living and learning through the technological advances and challenges of the past two decades has enabled our clients to benefit quickly from the innovations that have reshaped their industries.
VISION's technological breakthroughs and results
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