The Business Exchange Bath & Somerset Issue 4: Summer 2017 | Page 26

TECHNOLOGY
MEET TEAM OJO
ojo solutions is a young, dynamic company based in Glove Factory Studios, Holt.
The team have a passion for embracing the latest technologies to empower
business. From building digital applications to transformational change, they like
to place themselves at the cutting edge of technology.
Nathan Baranowski
How did ojo begin?
Nathan
Kevin
way, especially not in an app and not for that
purpose.
It reduced their delivery time on a quote from
three weeks of drawing time to a matter of
days. This had a huge impact on their business
and their customers too. I love how embracing
technology in the right way can make such a
difference.
Tom and I met at university in the late 90s
and began building websites as a professional
hobby. Mainly for fun, then for friends in
return for beer or holidays. After the dot com
bubble we started building bespoke web
solutions on a small scale in 2008 and in 2012
we brought all of our passions together, took a
deep breath and ojo solutions was born.
Nathan and I met through mutual friends. We
attended a family wedding together and over
several games of pool established we had a
lot in common. At the time, I was running my
own sole trader business, creating brochure
websites. We started working on projects
together and after a few months it made sense
to bring our companies together and I came
on board as design director at ojo.
Nathan
Nathan, Solutions Alchemist is an
interesting title. What do you do?
Nathan
My work is about understanding business
problems and translating them into solutions.
The Alchemy is about understanding how and
what needs to be mixed together to make it
happen.
Tom
Kevin
Nathan
What’s the most exciting
project you’ve worked on?
Kevin
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We were involved in a great project for a local
company called Playforce who design and build
educational playground equipment. We built
them a Windows-based app, so that they could
design playgrounds and schemes for schools
out on the road. Enabling their consultants
to engage with the client in the meeting,
rather than fumbling through presenters and
scribbling on paper. It also allowed them to do
the work there and then, rather than sending
it back to a design team in the office. That
involved us creating a full design application
that didn’t exist, the raw technology was there,
but it had never been put together in that
THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2017
It is great to hear how impressive in operation
the app has been. The project was trying to
push the boundaries, there were lots of apps
or technologies that we could have tried to
manipulate, but actually translating crayon and
graph paper into delivering a basic version of
what an artworker can do back in an office, for
someone who’s not an artworker, in the field,
was a real challenge and an achievement.
Tom
Tom
We’ve been working with Corsham Primary
School too, on a Virtual Learning Environment.
It’s been great to get involved in this and give
something back to the local community and
work with kids on developing technology.
What projects are you working
on currently?
What kind of clients do you
like working with?
I guess the most interesting ones are
entrepreneurs with a great idea, but with no
idea of how to get it to market or how to
deliver it. These projects allow us to really get
involved and help shape and develop the idea
into a great solution.
Tom Passmore
Kevin Triggle
Kevin
We’re doing an environmental children’s game
at the moment. Our work is generally in the
corporate space, so this is a different project to
get involved in.
It’s also forced us to think differently and put
our fun and quirky hats on and think about app
development in a different way. All the stuff
we usually avoid such as noise and whizzy stuff
we’ve had to introduce to make it appealing
to the kids. It’s been great fun; we’ve created
some cool little characters too as part of the
project.
We’ve created a mobile application designed
to re-invent the recruitment process in the
education sector. Cutting out the need for a
recruitment company altogether and the large
fees they charge, the app allows schools and
teachers to find each other directly inside the
app. Its recently launched and has currently
got over 9,000 people using it and is growing
rapidly each day!
For more info:
www..ojosolutions.com
Nathan
We’ve also been involved in creating an
online portal for a company who specialise in
providing financial commentary and investment
advice. Their existing processes were very
old fashioned and relied heavily on email
newsletters and PDF documents. We’ve created
a portal which allows agents from around the
world to collaborate, create commentary and
have it automatically pushed out to their clients
in a number of different ways.
The VLE is a piece of software that allows
children to share projects and interact online
and enable social learning using modern
technological tools.
It is like LinkedIn and Dropbox for primary
school kids. They can create personal journals,
share documents, take pictures and video
and share them online with their friends and
teacher. It brings the collaborative digital
element into the classroom, rather than looking
at a flat PowerPoint presentation on a screen
and enables the school to take learning beyond
the classroom.
It was built in a not-for-profit way and is
available on the market via a sister company -
Blue Turtle Learning. As the idea evolves and we
get more schools onboard we aim to develop
the product into not for profit social enterprise
focused on technology and app development
for schools.
Who would be your dream client?
Nathan
My dream client would be the government. I
see so much waste going into improvement
initiatives and it’s a typical scenario of not
embedding change in the real world.
I particularly think ojo could help the NHS.
There’s some amazing initiatives going on in
the NHS, some great innovation, but because
there’s a lack of cohesive change, it’s just
difficult