We all use software. Since its advent in the 70's, 80’s it has slowly become an indispensable part of our everyday lives. Even our refrigerator now has fairly sophisticated software embedded in it.

My kids, who were born in the new millennium, grew up with tablets and an array of technology. They don’t even call it software, or technology any more, they simply call them apps, and accept them as integral to their lives. They take good design for granted; if an app or a technology is not designed well, they simply won’t use it.

So why are so many business software applications still boring, ugly, non-intuitive and slow? Some of the newer software is, admittedly, easy to use and fast. As a general rule of thumb, the newer the software, the better the design and the better the software. Just like my kids, employees have come to expect the same improved performance from software.

Software updates shouldn’t just improve the technical functioning or mathematical capabilities. Developers have learned that a critical part of software rewrites is the design of the user interface. Without a good design, software, no matter how functional, is doomed to fail or become irrelevant over time.

Our experience perfectly illustrates this. In 1995, we designed a new reporting software for Turkish banks. On the back of its advanced technical capabilities, we reached 50% market share over 10 years. Not satisfied, we completely redesigned our software in 2005 and reached 85% market share, a huge achievement. But we didn’t stop there. In 2014, we again redesigned the reporting software and reached 90% of Turkish banks, as well as 8 new international clients.

The lesson we learned is that you can’t wait for the competition to catch up with you. To stay ahead, you need to continually be thinking about updates, in terms of functionality and design.

I am surprised to see some big companies, banks, insurance companies or consumer service providers still designing ugly looking software and websites. Trying to fix a problem, they spend most of their money focusing on the technical aspects, rather than a friendly user interface. To make sure both work and interact seamlessly, the details are important, as the tiniest mistake can ruin the user experience.

Times have changed. You can’t sell a software which often crashes and brings blue screen, or ones that take up more time than they should. Our software engineers have to become designers, writing better software and focusing on providing a better ‘experience’.

To stay ahead, you can’t just meet the business requirements of your customers. You have to exceed these requirements through innovative ideas, creativity and solutions that can’t be solved through simple automation. Otherwise someone else will do these tasks better and your clients will be gone forever.

Does anyone still remember the 1 megabyte (1,000,000 bytes) storage capacity of a 3.5 inch floppy disk? Today, most of us think of storage in terms of Gigabytes (1,000,000,000 Bytes). But to understand the total amount of data in the world, we have to look at Zettabytes. Yes, a 1 with 21 zeros.

Much has been made of the fact that we doubled the amount of data in the world in the last 2 years. For a more accurate depiction of the amount of data we are creating, think of 2012, when the amount of global information humanity created was 2.7 Zettabytes, according to IDC. Jump forward to 2020 and this number is expected to reach 44 Zettabytes, a near 20-fold increase! We live in a world awash with data, not just for consumers, but also for enterprises.

Ask any business person whether they would like to have access to more granular data and the answer is always yes. More details, down to the product level, the outlet level, to the individual component and resource level that can ultimately help calculate sales and profitability.

What most people forget is that data itself is not an achievement. According to the research firm Forrester, between 60% and 73% of all data within an enterprise goes unused for analytics. That’s almost 3 quarters of data that never gets used. This is because less time is spent on analyzing this data -and understanding the assumptions that go into any successful software and financial model- than it is on collecting the data.

Data means nothing without insights. Data will tell you if something is profitable – but you should always ask why. Most of the time the answer lies in the assumptions we make when we build the software.

Some are betting that computers will soon be able to do this analysis independently. Probably the most underreported story of 2017 is the Google AI computer learning much more about GO than we did in the last 3000 years. Here is the kicker – it only learned more once we stopped teaching it. Yet, technology is still a long way away from analyzing and making sense of divergent data sets that do not apply to a single game but to life itself.

Undoubtedly, there will be untold opportunities for AI and deep learning solutions to provide value to businesses in the years to come. But, in the foreseeable future, companies need to work with software enterprises that are able to connect the dots by processing billions of disparate sets of data points and gaining meaningful insights. This is where we exceed expectations.

In a world awash with data, we help you use it to your advantage...

Around the world, enterprises will spend almost $351 billion on software this year.

Think about that for a second. More than the GDP of Israel or Hong Kong, and just slightly behind Norway. That’s a lot of money to spend on something that is fundamentally only helping you improve your productivity and effectiveness.

It’s no wonder that in this environment companies are looking for standardized software solutions that are easier to deploy and cost less. Makes sense. Large corporations are turning to Work Day, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, SAP, ADP and other massive enterprises to take care of their needs.

While this trend continues, my experience tells me that there will always be a strong need for companies like ours that provide customized solutions to make sense of an ever-growing amount of data. We operate in a niche segment of the market that focuses on connecting dots, on finding opportunities in data from different sources so that companies can gain a competitive edge.

In 2010, one of our competitors invented some ‘standardized’ software for banks to do their financial reporting. Up until then, we had more or less customized the solutions for each bank, as many were using different software, servers and data sets.

Our competitor turned out to be an excellent marketer as well, and sold several banks on their inexpensive, off-the-shelf solution. But we knew it was too good to be true. Not only had their solution only been deployed and tested at one single branch, we knew from experience that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for this type of work.

Initially, we had a hard time convincing our clients that this short-cut didn’t exist, that exporting the bank’s data to the software was only part of the work. There was data cleansing, exception handling and cross checks to be done.

Fortunately for us, of the 5 biggest banks in Turkey, 4 stuck with us, and even today we continue to have a strong relationship with them. As for the one that choose our competitor, after 7 years they finally learned the hard way there is no magic bullet. Last month I heard from a friend they are investing a lot of money in a new project - to customize their financial reporting software solution.

Experiences like these make me wonder how much of the $351 billion enterprise spend on software each year is actually spent on customizing these so-called ‘standardized’ software solutions...

My mother and I used to have a long running joke between us. We called it "I'm very hungry, but really not THAT hungry" joke.

I don’t remember exactly how it got started, but it went something like this: It’s 1985. I’m trying to load an impossible game from a cassette tape to my Commodore 64 computer, an all-engrossing task. Enter my mother. Without any regard to the "delicate" coding work I was doing, she would shout: "Are you hungry?"

Was I hungry? Sure...14-year-old boys always are. So, without looking away from the monitor, I would shout back: "Yes, I am hungry!" Naturally, this would kick off the next series of questions: "What do you want? A quick snack or early dinner, or maybe something sweet?"

"Yes, a snack would be nice," I would answer, already discouraged about how long this was taking. But again, this would merely take me to the next phase: "So we need to get some cookies, some bread and cheese, and you need to go to the grocer to get them!"

By this point I had lost my hunger. "You know what mom? I can wait until dinner," quickly going back to the task of deciphering the error message on my 8-bit loading utility screen.

Obviously, I had more important things to do...

I always think of this situation whenever I ask a client about their needs at the beginning of an IT project. They need a situation fixed, or see an opportunity to use data, but they also have a lot of other important things to do. Point is, they don’t need to go to the store and buy stuff. They don’t need the distraction any more than I did back in ‘85. Forgive this analogy, but this happens a lot. It is tempting for any software company to ask the client to provide additional data, or even fix the inevitable software and hardware issues they may have. You know, the ones that you weren’t hired to fix; the ones that would make your life so much easier.

But that’s not why they hired us. They hired us to make their lives easier, not ours. So, whenever I am faced with this situation I think about this hunger analogy. I know they are hungry, they have a need, but I also want to make sure they do as little work as possible.

If we can do something on our end that will reduce the work they need to do to complete the project or capture an opportunity, we do not even ask them. We just do it.

As developers we really need to strive to be the perfect mother: One who knows her children, who anticipates what they need, and one who can do the grocery shopping and do the cooking, so that they can concentrate on what is important to them. We will provide the nourishment...

When people think of successful entrepreneurs, they think of talented individuals who made the most of the opportunities they were given. If only it were that simple. What few people teach you is that the most important trait of an entrepreneur is never giving up. It's not taking no for an answer. In other words, it’s grit, determination and a dose of good fortune. My story is living proof...

Just like the US financial crisis of 2007-2008, Turkey had a bad crisis in 2001. GDP was down 6.5%, unemployment rose to double digits, and over half of small businesses went under, almost overnight.

My business was in trouble, too. More than half of my clients had vanished, as had my revenues. It was the 6th year of my company and I had already invested a lot of time and money. Maybe it was time to give up?

Luckily, I had a small client that happened to also be the biggest brand in the world, Coca-Cola. I say small because the initial contract I had with them was for a few hours. Yet, I had a lead.

I thought to myself - opportunity isn’t given, you have to earn it. That's just what I did. For the next 4 years, I worked more hours than I invoiced, and focused on over-delivering for Coke. In the process, they became my biggest client.

Just as I thought I'd turned a corner, disaster struck a second time. Coca-Cola sunset one big project I had worked on and was about to do the same to another one that I had successfully worked on for 3 years. A big software company (won't name names), had taken over.

This time I had enough of adversity. After 10 years of being overworked and underpaid, I thought that maybe I needed a career that provided a regular income and some stability, so I signed up for a $35K, 9-month pilot course, thinking people will always fly planes. The one thing I had clung to - my determination to succeed - was fading...

Then fate intervened. Just as I was about to start the private pilot license course, I received a request from a large Coca-Cola Bottler in Greece. Could I adapt and install my financial model and software for them? Yes, of course. I accepted the assignment and cancelled the course. The next month I was in Germany, installing their new software, and the following month I was doing the same in Belgium.

I kept traveling like this for the next 6 years, visiting 30 countries in 4 continents and in the process distributing my software to over 150 countries. My latest banking software was also very successful and Vega kept growing.

All told, it took me roughly 15 years before I could think of myself as a successful entrepreneur. Looking back, what took me there - in spite of the small odds- was my grit and determination, along with a little bit of good fortune. After all, fortune favors the brave...