Operational Truth in practice
A specific problem. A practical change. A business outcome you can see.
These examples start with a real business problem, show what changed and explain the outcome. The details vary, but the principle stays the same: understand what is really happening, then make it easier to see, use or manage.
Problem / What we did / What changed / Bigger ideaFour recognisable problems
Start with the problem, not the technology.
Specialist information
See what your information is really telling you.
Businesses collect important information in places that only certain people know how to interpret. The information is there, but understanding what it means often depends on somebody who knows that particular field.
- What has changed?
- What should I know about?
- Is there anything here that affects me?
- What does all of this mean from my perspective?
We treated the underlying documents and systems as the source of truth, then created views for the people looking at them.
One unusual example used source code. A CTO could see architecture and technical risk. A business analyst could see changes to behaviour and capability. An executive could see what affected delivery, cost or risk.
People could understand information that had previously sat outside their expertise without having to become experts themselves.
Instead of waiting for somebody else to translate everything, they had a view built around the questions they cared about.
Businesses often have more information than they can readily use. The opportunity is to understand it as a whole, then give each person a clear view of what matters to them.
Take information you cannot readily interpret and turn it into a view you can understand and use.Business administration
Take the weight out of business admin.
Important information was scattered across accounting software, emails, invoices and attachments. Answering a simple question meant searching several systems, matching transactions by hand and trying to work out whether the information was complete.
We connected the different sources and gave an AI assistant access to search and work across them.
It could find transactions, locate supporting invoices in email, identify missing information and update the right business system.
A task that once involved searching, comparing and updating several systems became a conversation.
The information already existed. It was now accessible and manageable.
Businesses collect administrative information across systems that were never designed to work together. Once those systems can be understood together, a person can ask for the outcome they need instead of navigating every step themselves.
Turn fragmented administration into something you can ask about and act on.Messy workflows
Make a messy workflow visible.
A customer onboarding process had grown over time. Information moved between people, emails, spreadsheets and external systems. The process worked, but it was difficult to see where a customer was, what needed to happen next or where things were getting stuck.
We modelled the real workflow as a set of clear business states and steps.
It became possible to see what had happened, what was waiting, what needed human attention and what could be handled automatically.
The workflow stopped being something people had to remember.
The business gained a shared view of how work moved through the organisation. Bottlenecks, delays and useful automation opportunities became easier to see.
Many business processes exist partly in systems and partly in people's heads. Making that hidden process explicit gives the whole business something it can see, improve and automate where it makes sense.
Turn a process people carry in their heads into a system the business can see.Business commitments
See the commitments hiding across your business.
Subscriptions, renewals, recurring payments and other commitments were spread across bank transactions, invoices and online accounts. Nothing was necessarily wrong, but there was no single answer to basic questions.
- What are we paying for?
- What is coming up?
- Are we still using it?
- When does it renew?
- How do we cancel it?
We brought the fragmented information together and created a simple view of active subscriptions, costs, upcoming payments, renewal dates and the evidence behind each item.
A collection of transactions became a picture of the business's real commitments.
Instead of carrying the uncertainty in your head, you could see what existed and decide what to do with it.
Businesses constantly create financial, contractual, operational and regulatory commitments. Bringing the scattered evidence together turns disconnected records into something the business can understand and manage.
Turn scattered evidence into a clear picture of what the business is actually committed to.