MooD International Ltd - Smarter Decisions

MooD® solutions are business-driven and model based. Configured from a common platform, they deliver clearer business insight and better outcomes

MooD International obtains UK Government backing for the next phase of its technology

– with MooD’s distinctive Causal Modelling approach already delivering significant value to major organisations

Innovation is vital for business growth, and the UK government-backed Technology Strategy Board is all about driving innovation. In July 2012, the Technology Strategy Board announced a Smart award to MooD International towards future development of MooD, the UK’s innovative software technology for Smarter Decisions.

The Technology Strategy Board’s aim is to accelerate economic growth by promoting research, development, and exploitation of key technologies to stimulate and support business-led innovation. Through the Smart scheme, the Board funds strategically important areas of science, engineering and technology.

Deciding on and taking the right courses of action to achieve the best business outcome is a critical capability in today's world. This is particularly the case for large, complex organizations, in which operations are under increasing pressure to drive out cost, deliver efficiencies, and improve effectiveness, often in a working environment that is weak in providing insight into how the different components of the business affect each other, directly or indirectly, and how these all add up to deliver the outcomes needed.

MooD is taking a new approach to addressing this need. Traditional BI approaches drive from the bottom-up, taking a data-driven approach. With today’s data volumes and dynamics, this approach can be effective in addressing tactical decisions, but the outputs generated don’t deliver the insights needed for the serious decisions now facing senior business roles. What’s needed is insight at a business level into the significant causal relationships that connect action with outcome, thus supporting decision making from the top-down.

Commenting on the approach, Alys Woodward, research director at industry analyst IDC: "MooD's approach is refreshing, distinctive and has been proven to be effective. This is a good time for the product: businesses in all sectors are contending with important and difficult decisions"
The approach is characterised by Serco's Mike Stone, CEO of Defence Business Services in UK Ministry of Defence: "Data, by definition, is about the past: information is the currency of the present, knowledge includes experience which is captured as data, and finally, there is insight. You reach insight by combining, or 'clashing together', data, information and knowledge. This is what MooD has allowed us to do."

MooD International has a strong track record of success through delivering innovation to its customers and partners, which include household names such as HP, MOD, Serco, Shell, BP and others. This innovation has been recognised through a range of key patents and awards, including a previous Smart award and two Queen’s Awards for Innovation.

Extending this successful track record, the Technology Strategy Board has now awarded MooD international with a Smart award, at the maximum value, towards the next phase of MooD’s innovative decision technology.

Dr Dick Whittington FREng, MooD’s Chief Strategy Officer: "One of the most exciting aspects of this Award is the focus on current priority areas for decision making, including cyber threat response at the business level, and performance management of complex, multi-supplier outsourced services. This aspect means that, from the outset, our great new ideas are being tested and proven to create real value in key areas".