How do you help your clients build an organisation that can keep up with the pace of change? 

From a technical perspective, there are a couple of ways we help clients keep pace.

One is to build things in a modular way, treating things as much as components that can be switched in and out. Don't build some great blob of a system that can’t be adapted and upgraded.

Another key thing is to embrace automation, especially around testing. I’ve written a blog on this very subject! If you automate your testing, when you do have to make system changes, the testing will confirm that the system still runs and operates as you'd expect. This saves time and headaches!

From a product perspective, we advise building a product function that engages all stakeholders and sits across (i.e. is a peer to) IT and Sales to make sure all voices are equally heard. Why is this so important?

Well, the danger is if you're too sales-focused you'll potentially over-index on exciting new features but may miss servicing existing customers properly. If your too tech-focused you’ll potentially build a beautifully engineered platform that may not be what your customers actually need. So, it's vital to make sure all voices heard and feed into the development process.

Finally, from a delivery perspective, I would say adopting a pod structure gives development teams the ability to be autonomous while also understanding the big picture. It supports innovation and provides flexibility for keep the platform up-to-date.

How do you keep up with new technologies? 

One of the joys of being a consultant is that you’re always given new challenges by a diverse range of people and organisations. You never quite sure what's going to be thrown at you next, so there’s a real need to stay abreast of new developments in your sector and specialisms.

Personally, I enjoy researching and reading a lot of technical blogs (although I am finding they are increasingly becoming more sales and marketing-led). I use my team and the projects they’re working on too and hire people who are genuinely curious and in the habit of asking questions all the time. In my role I tend to be across things, so not always into the detail, so I’ll ask the developers on the team (or during the hiring process) things like “What’s the latest thing in Java?” and get an idea of trends to research from there.

What's next in SaaS? 

The cheeky answer here is that everything is cyclical. Everything comes back around again!

In the SaaS industry, we’ve had two or three years where everything has been SaaS, and now we’ve ended up with a proliferation of lots of small, point solutions. Sometimes the struggle is integrating these solutions – so I think we’ll see more of a focus on SaaS integration in the future. A step on from this would be different sets of providers working collaboratively to integrate their solutions into a hybrid.

We're already seeing that with Private Equity investment firms; they’re looking to build portfolios of similar or compatible SaaS companies and then join them together to create more valuable services.

This was a topic at this year’s SaaStr conference - read my five takeaways from the conference here.

What technologies do you think stand the most chance to change your clients businesses in the next 3-5 years?

I think you’ve got to say AI here. Even though we see a lot of bad AI about, we’re also seeing some game-changing stuff emerge and this will fundamentally change how products work. Collectively, we’re only just starting the AI journey (even though AI has been around for a long time), in terms of it coming in a form that will be really useful.

I think there may be a backlash against AI too, because of large language models hallucinations giving wrong answers. But AI will get better and we will get better at using AI and understanding what it’s capable of. It’s almost as if we need to catch up with what AI can do, in the same way, it took us a few years to work out what the internet could do, and then the same with mobile phones. So, what we’re doing now with AI will see primitive in a few years.

There’s a quote we’ve all heard that “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.” Bill Gates

I think reflects how technology has evolved in the last few decades. You would never have thought Yahoo! Messenger would have been replaced, and then Whatsapp came along.

What kinds of technology problems do you think will drive the next wave of innovation?

Security (and avoiding data breaches) is an evergreen problem. Whatever security you put in, there will always be bad actors trying to corrupt that piece of security. As we live more of our lives online, there’s more data to hack.

I think people will become more cautious about how much of their identity they put online…especially with the rise of AI and facial recognition and a rising awareness of deep fakes. As the social media giants embed these technologies into their platforms, we’ll see their users be more considerate of what they share and more suspicious of what they see – changing people’s behaviour on social media.

What client projects are you particularly proud of, and why?

I’m incredibly proud of all the work we do for our clients.

A recent project with BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board), who we’ve partnered with for a couple of years now, comes to mind. We developed an API for them to distribute and democratise data so other firms can search the data more easily.

Another recent project, helping RegGenome with an initial proof of concept on LLMs, also comes to mind as it spurred on further development and they’ve managed to build large language models into their business to get full advantage of that in managing regulatory data well.

Why did you set up Blue Hat Associates?

I’d worked in large enterprises throughout my career and used nearshore teams who we’re awesome. But when I joined a small startup as a CTO, I couldn't deploy those nearshore developers because I didn't have the bandwidth to manage them effectively.

So, I saw a gap in the market for a consultancy, with experience in managing nearshore developers, who could support technology and product teams in scaling businesses to get the same benefits (of using outsourced specialists) that these enterprise businesses do. Plus, I really wanted to work with scaleup businesses, entrepreneurs and founders to try and solve their problems. I find this very motivating, and they are the kinds of people I enjoy working with.

And this approach, the Blue Hat model, works.

We have lots of clients who’ve made the move to augment their teams with nearhouse specialists. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, we work with clients on a case-by-case basis providing options that meet their unique needs. And sometimes, it’s hard for clients to know what is the right approach – which is where we come in as the “honest broker”. We won’t do work if we don’t believe it’s the right thing for our clients to do.