The advancement of technology has had a profound impact on the way the world conducts business. Companies that effectively utilize technology for data analysis, automation, communication, marketing, and other areas, have a distinct advantage. However, with the ever-increasing complexity of technology, there is a need for ever-more skilled and specialized knowledge workers to implement it. Unfortunately, these knowledge workers may not have a clear understanding of what technology needs to be built, whereas the practitioners who perform day-to-day work and do have a clear understanding lack the technical skills to build it themselves.

This often leads to a challenging collaboration between knowledge workers and practitioners, as they lack a common language and process to effectively work together, which hampers innovation and ongoing work leveraging what innovation does happen. The company's best data, algorithms, processes, and automation end up locked behind knowledge workers that know how to operate them, but not when or why; and the company's best ideas never get realized for want of a clear communication channel.

The ToolForge Model

ToolForge provides a simple, standardized process for building and deploying new technology and exposing it via a simple interface that practitioners can use. This concept of "technology as tool" creates a clear, simple process for exploring new ideas quickly and efficiently that both knowledge workers and practitioners understand: the knowledge workers have a scalable, secure, robust platform they can build on with their language of choice, and the practitioners get an easy-to-use, self-serve tool with a consistent UX.

The Platform

The cloud-native ToolForge platform is built from the ground up to be:

• Stable -- ToolForge is always there when you need it.
• Scalable -- Users can run as many tools as they need to whenever they need to without worrying about limits, maximums, or coordination.
• Simple -- The tool interface is simple enough for users to learn in an afternoon.
• Standard -- The tool building process is standard, which makes architectural planning and deployment straightforward.
• Secure -- The platform uses industry best practices to keep business data and intellectual property secure.

The platform is designed at every level to allow both knowledge workers and practitioners to focus on just getting things done.

Tool as Lingua Franca

ToolForge's concept of "technology as tool" creates a clear, simple process for exploring new ideas quickly and efficiently that both knowledge workers and practitioners understand. This makes the tool a lingua franca that both parties can use to communicate.

When presented with a tool idea, a knowledge worker can build and deploy a (perhaps simplified) version of it quickly, often in an afternoon.

Presented with this tangible deliverable, a practitioner can give specific feedback couched in terms of the tool itself:

• Can I upload these files separately?
• The output needs another column.
• It would be great if the output included a pivot table for filtering.

...and so on. By focusing discussion on concrete changes to the simple tool itself as opposed to abstract concepts or complex flow charts and diagrams, both parties can finally speak the same language.

Iterate, Iterate, Iterate

Now that both parties speak the same language, they can focus on making small, specific updates to the tool and meeting regularly to discuss against the backdrop of real progress. This tight feedback loop ensures that the collective team continues to see forward motion and stay energized until the final deliverable is ready for production.

Release with Confidence

Once a tool is working properly, it's ready to release! ToolForge handles the stability, scalability, security, and reliability of your solution. Every prototype is already in the production environment.