VentureSum, from my perspective, is a monster, an accurate beast, an absolute data-collection machine. Though, when you walk in early on a weekday morning, there are no lights on; no smell of coffee brewing, no clacking of keyboards, possibly the most notable thing missing early in the mornings is music!
We are a musical bunch here, we like our church music, but as you walk around the office you might hear some NEEDTOBREATHE, Elton John, Mumford And Sons, Coletrain, Frank Sinatra, John Mayer, James Bay, 70s hits, and maybe the occasional Christmas song after Thanksgiving.
This beast awakens with the sounds of that music and the smell of freshly brewed coffee. You will hear people talking about their evenings, weekend plans, and the beautiful sound of collaboration, working to address new problems with innovative solutions. As for the strengths of VentureSum, they reside in the faithfulness, care, and expertise of these folks (i.e. their years of experience in software design, accounting, databasing, and “pole-counting”). There are project managers, data processors, networking and software gurus, customer-facing, and internal folks.
This is the monster, beast, and machine!
I love the role I get to play here, like a small puzzle piece amongst many others. I get to play a role in putting the big picture together. None of us are exactly the same shape, but when we all get together and focus our energy on a project, or on a client’s goals and objectives, we work through it, and make that objective a reality. We make the data look the way they wanted it to look–the way they pictured it in their head.
As Client Liaison, I often meet with our clients just as the idea of what they want their deliverable to look like begins to form. . The “…we were thinking it might look like this”, or the “…it would be really cool if we could see our poles this way” phase. A few months and a few hundred thousand poles later, we end up with a deliverable that shows the information as the client had described it months before. A dream becomes a reality.
Seeing our clients elated with the data in the form that we have presented it to them is my absolute favorite part. They get to see all of the puzzle pieces of fragmented, and often disconnected, data come together and paint the picture they have been waiting for.
After the first successful inventory, we have learned a lot about the type of data that best serves the specific needs of the client it was performed for and are able to put together a regular schedule for joint-use audits or streetlight inventories. Depending on the serve area that is covered by a provider, this inventory might occur every few years, or it might be on a rolling 5 year cycle as we spend time each year in part of a large service area. The data that is collected in the field is rapidly reported back to our systems and is transformed into data deliveries that are customized for each client. Simply put, good data that works well.
Notice that’s “Good Data” that “Works Well”. Sometimes we speak with prospective clients that have Bad data that works well, or Good data that doesn’t work well. The two have to be inseparable. The data has to be accurate – that starts in the project planning and data collection in the field. The data has to be delivered in a usable format to the client – that happens in the office.
At VentureSum, we believe in data. Well, we believe in good data that works well, data that tells the truth, data that we can stand behind, and data that our clients can rest assured in. There can really be a lot to it, but, this place, this team- these people make it happen every single day.
