Purple Frog Systems Ltd a Telford-based business intelligence consultancy, and Microsoft Valued Partner (MVP) were amongst the first cohort of companies to be engaged in the SOLVD project.

Purple Frog attended four half-day workshops hosted by SOLVD. Our digital business consultants identified & analysed the company, resulting in the development of a bespoke technology strategy and a roadmap for the company’s digital future.

As part of this, we identified a specific need to build competencies around deep learning. 

Jonathan Fletcher, Business Intelligence Developer for Purple Frog Systems, attended further deep-dive workshops; the content was delivered by SOLVD and our delivery partner, the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute, providing training that was tailored to their need. 

Jonathon commented:

“The NVIDIA tools that were used on the course were great, really user friendly. The speaker was good, and spent time explaining the how the deep learning tools worked behind the scenes.

The admin staff in the chat that were helping individual problems were excellent and solved all issues I had.”

SOLVD is continuing to collaborate with Purple Frog Systems Ltd through the project to deliver collaborative research & development for their next business endeavour.

Purple Frog Systems Ltd have recently seen high company growth as a result of the demand for business intelligence systems on an international scale: The future is indeed bright for digital companies: 

https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/business/2019/09/17/demand-from-overseas-results-in-new-jobs-at-big-data-firm/

Virtual Reality Simulation Systems: (VRSS)

Telford-based company, VR Simulation Systems were amongst the first cohort of companies to attended the SOLVD business support workshops.

Whilst VRSS were already considered to be industry leaders in state-of-the-art Virtual Reality, the company had evolved organically over many years, and the company had lost sight of some fundamentals of business strategy, with many internal processes no longer being fit-for-purpose. The workshops were therefore a useful bootcamp of forgotten fundamentals.

Through this initial diagnostic session, SOLVD also identified a need to provide VRSS with 1-2-1 bespoke business mentoring. We used the critically-acclaimed Innovate UK Innovation Canvas to provide a structured approach to business improvement and innovation, initially as a self-diagnostic tool to gain a better understanding of the company’s current challenges.

The innovation canvas adopts an iterative and non-linear model of innovation in a clear and logical way, allowing the company’s business leaders to critique their approach to innovation. This identified the key action points to improve and strengthen VRSS’s capacity to innovate, providing a clearer vision of the company’s admittedly already bright future.

Tim Luft, CEO of VRSS, commented: “We found the support offered to be first class. The project has allowed us to take the time to re-evaluate our commercial strategy and has enabled us to design a new sales process going forward, and harnessing the increasingly global opportunities of digital enterprise”

Lockdown Cyber Security is a provider of Cyber awareness training for all levels of business and a facilitator for obtaining comprehensive insurance cover, both helping to reduce business digital risk. They are in the process of developing a SaaS platform to widen their service offering.  

The company developed and structured their roadmap to build their platform but they haven’t got the expertise to build in the functionality and make it prototype. The company also wanted to validate the proof of concept, to help design additional layers of functionality.   

The SOLVD workshop was therefore a useful boot camp of understanding different ways of achieving and learning new technologies bringing a pool of expertise from the academia, advisers and other businesses to exchange experience and to widen their views of different industries.  

By the end of the workshop the company was able to refine their sales pitch, modify their roadmap and expand on their initial methodology, having had it validated through academia. 

Karen Morrall, Co – founder of Lockdown Cyber Security commented: 

"This programme made clear our business proposition, uniqueness, sharpened our pitch to stakeholders whilst providing the correct road map to build our prototype. The  SOLVD workshop provided us with new technology to use within our business, which adapted our business plan and brought it to life, maintaining our business agility and creating the roadmap to assist in the creation of our software prototype. 

Being Entrepreneurs in a start-up can be a lonely space. This initiative provided us a support mechanism. This experience has shown the value the University can bring, to start-up businesses, throughout its business journey. 

The expertise, technology, support and industry acumen which the University provided were invaluable for Lockdown Cyber Security."  

Lockdown Cybersecurity Ltd would like to thank the University for its on-going support and would highly recommend any organisation to go through this process. We look forward to working with the University in the future.