We have long since stopped being surprised by how many companies think they can effectively manage their business with the following pieces of software.

- Email

- Internet browser

- Microsoft Word

- Microsoft Excel

- Microsoft Powerpoint

- Quickbooks

If that looks familiar, please call someone. Urgently.

Any business that is worth the amount of effort that every business demands, cannot fulfill its potential - or its owner's - by emailing .html, .xls, .doc, .ppt. or .qb stuff to each other - no matter how carefully you rename each new version.

Your business collects a lot of information every day. And you need to be able to use it. Easily. And insightfully. If it's captured in the right systems it's unbelievably powerfully and liberating.

When we work with a company the information systems are one of the first things we look at.

Sometimes that means developing entirely new metadata taxonomy. Sometimes it means improving what's already there. Sometimes it means throwing one or the other away, entirely.

By the time we finish, your information systems will, in fact, inform. And you will think this would have been a good thing to do a long time ago.