“In the Spotlight” - Brainnwave

Company Background

Brainnwave is made up of a team of data and technology experts who are disrupting the way in which companies use their data to deliver competitive advantage. There are twelve full time employees who are headquartered in the heart of Edinburgh, which was recently named the UK’s third top tech innovation destination. Brainnwave operates on a global platform. Its current client base is made up of large, international companies working in the Oil & Gas, Mining, Utilities and Housing sectors.

Why was the company formed and by whom?

The company was co-founded by Steve Coates, CEO and Graham Jones, CTO.

Steve has been named UK Entrepreneur of the Year, recognised for founding a social enterprise by creating a circular IT economy from large corporate IT waste. He has over 20 years’ experience in business strategy working as a consultant for Accenture, Boston Consulting Group and at Gazprom Marketing & Trading.

Graham is an expert software engineer with over 24 years’ experience delivering state-of-the-art solutions for some of the world’s leading information companies. He has led large development teams building global data management systems for the likes of Bloomberg and Acxiom Corporation and was a consultant to DARPA and the FBI. Graham was the architect of Bloomberg’s market data feed framework, which routes over 16 billion market events, daily.

Brainnwave was created in order to address the significant levels of opportunity that businesses are missing out on due to the way they manage – or don’t manage – their data. Despite being on the business agenda for over a decade, very few companies successfully use data to improve performance.

Tell us why clients should be interested in Brainnwaves’ products and services?

For any company that deals with data, extracting true outputs from it and using that information to drive and deliver viable business decisions can be a complex and lengthy challenge. It’s not well known but most companies only analyse 12% of the data they have. With 450 billion business transactions expected to take place via the internet every day by 2020, the challenge is becoming business-critical. For those looking to get ahead of the competition and ensure they remain relevant and fit for the future, unlocking untapped data is an opportunity that shouldn’t be ignored. This challenge is where some of the biggest companies in the world are increasingly investing their time and talent.

Brainnwave leverages its unique combination of intelligence-led expertise and with software engineering skills to make sense of data for businesses. It is led by highly experienced technologists who have enjoyed successful careers in military intelligence, information technology and consulting, all working on disruptive technologies in those fields.

Brainnwave’s champion product, Ossian, is a tool for businesses to use their data for competitive advantage. It blends proprietary customer data with relevant open data and commercial market data sources and visualises and simplifies the outputs. It harnesses complex information and makes it useful. In a nutshell, Ossian;

• Provides one ‘true’ source of data intelligence

• Is a human-led, data-driven and machine-assisted intelligence platform

• Helps find hidden patterns in data to unlock valuable business opportunities

• Incorporates geospatial analytics through the mapping interface to answer the critical “where” part of the intelligence problem

• Provides clients with a clear competitive advantage

• Provides users easy-to-use tools to extract valuable insights

• Cuts through complex, multi – layered information to provide actionable insights

• Allows businesses to make faster, more confident decisions

How big is the market for Brainnwave in the Energy sector?

Vast. To date, Brainnwave has successfully deployed its unique technology to a number of customers in the energy sector. Any company operating in this field that is looking for ways to make smarter business decisions ahead of the competition, to maximise revenue or minimise wider cost outlays would benefit from the service provision that Brainnwave offers.

Are you able to tell us about any current projects that are being worked on?

Brainnwave has several projects on the go, some of which are commercially confidential.

A highly successful project was recently carried out for Aggreko plc. Brainnwave was engaged to help transform Aggreko’s sales organisation as part of its strategy to prioritise customer focus, improving its data usage and instilling a culture of analytics throughout the company. Brainnwave initially focused on their mining, oil & gas and utilities verticals, plugging into their existing data sources for these industries and overlaying the data with new sources.

The first step was to connect everything up to the Brainnwave platform. The middleware technology connected, joined, enriched and cleaned the data from many internal and external data silos to create a single source of the truth across the business.

This project was not just about putting data together; Brainnwave wanted to create a culture of analytics across Aggreko. Being outcome-focused was critical. They codified the internal business logic into their algorithms to search, sort and rank hundreds of thousands of opportunities across the world based on elements important to Aggreko. They integrated geospatial data directly into the analytical process, enabling Aggreko teams to use satellite and mapping data without needing specialist skills or analytics tools.

Brainnwave continues to work with Aggreko to identify other opportunities where data and analytics can create a step change in the way they do business and give them an advantage in the market.

The company is also about to embark on a project of its own using its unique platform, Ossian, to identify where the greatest levels of gas flaring are taking place around the world.

What differentiates Brainwave from their competitors?

Brainnwave’s platform, Ossian, is a unique product. There is no other platform that can deliver the same depth of insight to companies that enables the C-Suite to filter information and drive effective decisions quickly.

The team has helped some of the largest companies in the world solve complex challenges. They understand the true value of data and the impact that having the right data at the right time can make.

Crucially, Ossian supports businesses in unlocking some of the 88% of data that is currently untapped. Translated into a commercial position, you can only imagine where that information could take you.

What type of skills are required to work with Brainnwave and how do they attract and develop top industry talent?

Experience has demonstrated you can achieve exponentially more with less if you have the right people. We like people who dare to be different – who like solving difficult problems and who have the ambition to reach their full potential. We like people who have a genuine perfectionist attitude to software engineering, tempered by just enough pragmatism. Top talent is attracted through word of mouth as well as more traditional routes of outreach. Individuals can come from a range of backgrounds and experiences. Brainnwave provides development on the job through practical experiences and mentorship. We believe a big component of personal development is to give people the space to pursue their interests, this is why we give unlimited holidays and encourage regular “interest days”.

How is the company funded and what is the longer-term growth strategy?

The company is currently funded through VC and private individuals. Our mission is to build practical, engineering-led, intelligence platforms that empower professionals to answer complex questions confidently and at speed. Our strategy it to partner with clients where our existing technology can be rapidly deployed to solve their existing problems and then work with those clients to help develop new features that add to our core data-led intelligence platform.