The Razor DATA Sprint - Faster solutions, Maximum Potential

The Razor Data Sprint is for organisations which are ready to break down the silos and unlock the power of their data. Whether you already have an idea you want to make a reality, a strategy that needs refining, or you just don’t know where to begin - our team can help.

Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine.

Peter Sondergaard

During the Data Sprint we produce a tangible solution you can use, test, and iterate. Your data is the key to improved efficiency, productivity and ultimately - survival - as industries and economies adapt to new ways of working.

We will accelerate your data roadmap and help you stay ahead of the curve in a world where the gap between leaders and laggards is growing.

I’m ready now! Let’s talk!

How a Razor Data Sprint works...

Phase 0 Exploration

We start by identifying your starting point and we’ll meet you where you are before you invest in a solution. When we’re evaluating, our team is mindful of the wider business context and your objectives.

We’re excited by innovation and strive to stay on the cutting edge of technology and consistently invest in R&D. It’s a critical resource we tap into when we encounter new challenges as we move quickly through the data exploration stage and throughout the project.

Activities

We establish the starting point by assessing your current data estate, challenges and ambitions with a pre-session questionnaire.
An open discussion with our data experts around your goals and concerns.

Outcomes

Documentation of the outcomes of the session in a proposal outlining your data journey and how we will help you achieve your goals.

Phase 1 Challenge

We observe the existing data processes and ask the simple questions: where, why, who, what? We also ask, why not?

Data and information is the lifeblood of any organisation. We’ll take a deep dive into understanding how it flows through yours. Where are the bottlenecks? Is there duplicated effort? Is the data being used to its potential? Is it being used at all?

We challenge each other and your team to provoke different thinking. We recognise the biases people carry with them and we question groups to think differently about the business, their customers and themselves. We don’t revert to “we’ve always done it this way” thinking.

Razor sits on the cutting edge of technology so you don’t have to. We’ll bring our expertise to speed up understanding and provide clarity of what’s possible. You have the knowledge to deliver more and better value to your users, our team will help you unlock it.

Activities

Observe existing processes and ask the obvious questions
Map the data flow through the organisation
Identify and understand the business challenges your data has the potential to solve
Understand the maturity of where you are now and where you want to be

Outcomes

A shared understanding of your internal data processes
A list of problems to solve
Agree what success looks like and how it can be measured

Phase 2 Select

Having challenged our biases and broken down the possibilities, we begin exploring solutions. Together we will select the key challenge we want to tackle - the ones that will show your organisation the greatest return if resolved.

Often a simple solution holds more value than a complex one, our team brings balance by helping you think big whilst remaining realistic and pragmatic.

If there is missing data, our team will go start collecting it, be it sensors, extraction or something more straightforward and digital, we will make it happen.

Activities

We identify the most valuable business challenge that we want to solve
If we’re building a model, we’ll highlight the key variables that need to be analysed or predicted while defining the questions we want to answer.
Understand how the solution fits into the data flow of the wider business.

Outcomes

Determine whether the data can answer the question posed. We’ll carry out an initial analysis of the data and start to lay the foundation of the architecture that will surround it.

Phase 3 Build

With the optimal business case chosen, we’ll engineer, train and tune the architecture and models, before evaluating them and selecting the best. We accelerate the build by leveraging our vast experience and broad knowledge of the existing models, tools and frameworks within the Microsoft Azure Ecosystem.

Our aim is to build a fast minimal viable product (MVP) so you can quickly assess the business impact. This is your first step to unlocking the power your data holds and we’ll show you the potential it has to transform your business. Our team strikes a balance between planning and speed - data doesn’t always play nice and we have to be agile to adjust as we discover more.

When the solution is ready to go, we’ll sit down collectively and assess before moving on ahead. Does the model meet the required standard? Is it going to achieve our aims? Is there an alternative approach? Can we improve the data?

Activities

Our data engineers will design and optimise an architecture while our data scientists select the most appropriate model and features. We’ll create, tune, train and evaluate the model against the criteria identified.
We will assess the performance of the solutions that have been developed. Are they answering the question? What can we do to make them better?

Outcomes

A tangible solution we can take into the real world and test
Documentation detailing the data analysis and model creation process to avoid a “black box” solution

Phase 4 Validate

The first stage is to demo the prototype in a controlled, operational environment, allowing people to get hands-on and experience it. We also run it alongside existing systems to prove the solution works in the data flows we mapped out.

We create and deploy dashboards to monitor metrics enabling your business experts to get real insight into how the solution is performing. During testing our team has their eyes trained to spot the inefficiencies and opportunities for growth.

We can then start to think about the future. We help you develop a strategic roadmap of next steps, whether that’s how we scale or iterate the solution we’ve built, or how we take what we’ve learnt to the wider organisation. AI is rarely perfect from day one so we ensure that learning can be constantly fed back into the solution to ensure consistent improvements.

Activities

Deployment and testing of the solution in a controlled environment
Deployment of dashboards to monitor performance
Longer term strategic planning

Outcomes

An operational tool your staff can use
A dashboard for your business experts to assess the performance
A strategic roadmap of next steps

Let’s get started

Are you ready to step ahead of your competition? Or are you going to wait until you’re forced to play catch-up?

The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.

Peter Drucker

What else do we do?

From web applications, to bots, machine learning and computer vision. There is a lot we can do, what can we do for you?

User Experience & Design thinking

We take the importance of people using technology seriously. User Experience & Design thinking play a vital role in how we understand and design new software.

Discovery - Gaining clarity on where you are going

Not knowing where you are going can be disastrous for any business or project. Our unique Discovery process lifts the fog and provides the clarity needed.