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Our experience

Why EOS as a basis for building a "smooth running engine"?

We love to help enable good SMEs to succeed and thrive and become great businesses.  Technology is a key ingredient, but IT on its own is not enough.  We recommend that companies have good business practices - a "Business Operating System" - combined with appropriate technology.  We help with the technology part.  Aligning the right technology to a clear business plan, multiplies the effect of the technology, and multiplies the effect of the business plan. 

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There are a number of different "Business Operating Systems"  that you can choose from to give you a good core business structure.  It doesn't really matter which one you use.  If you haven't implemented a business operating system, we recommend EOS - the Entrepreneurial Operating System, as described in the book Traction by Gino Wickman.

  

I didn't write Traction.  I wish I had!  Traction distils the key ingredients of running an SME that I've observed and learned through training and practical experience, and writes them better and clearer, than I've seen anywhere else.  And puts them into one joined-up simple model of running a business.

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EOS brings it into clarity:

  • Have a clear vision, shared by all

  • Have the right people, in the right seats

  • Ensure your data is visible in a scorecard, with the right measurables - a data democracy

  • Ensure key processes are documented, followed by all

  • Ensure Issues are identified, tracked, and solved

  • Get traction with appropriate weekly meetings, to guide quarterly objectives

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If you're interested in sorting out your technology, but not yet decided whether to implement EOS or something similar, don't worry.  Feel free to get in touch, and we can guide you on our experience.  You can implement EOS simply based upon your own experience and learning, and a book.  Or you can use an EOS "Implementer", and we can introduce you to someone appropriate.

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How did we settle on EOS and our technology choices?  Below is my story, starting with the most recent.  In the process, I realised that of all the roles in a business, I am an "Integrator" in EOS terminology.

How I realised I am a naturally good "Integrator" in EOS terminology 

IS Online Ltd is led by Dave Abraham.  My story below shows how I ended up using EOS and similar business principles to run businesses.   And how did I realised I am an "Integrator"?

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I'll start with the end: I read a book called "Rocket Fuel" which describes the different roles and personality types of the "Visionary" and "Integrator" in any business.  It reads as a standalone book, but it also adds more detail and context of what it the terms mean in EOS, in more detail than the book Traction has space to describe. 

 

As I read it, it was immediately clear "I'm a natural Integrator" - I have performed that role (though not using the term) as Managing Director at Cambridge Networks since 2021.  I had previously performed a similar role as CEO at Signify from 2006 - 2013, prior to successfully selling Signify. 

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My journey to that conclusion: I'd read "Traction", "What the heck is EOS?" and "How to be a great boss". All of which are great books, which I highly recommend reading which make up the Traction Library. I was leading the management team at Cambridge Networks, where we selected and implemented EOS.    

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Reading Rocket Fuel, I realised that prior to Cambridge Networks, I have also been extremely fortunate over my career.  I have been lucky enough to have worked with several great Visionaries over the years - John Stewart at Signify, Simon Quarendon and June Dawson at Words Group, John Stewart at ElectricMail, as well as the leading edge teams at Eurotunnel and Iceland Foods in the late 90s. And I was originally inspired by my visionary IT teacher Mr Burdett who created a computer lab in his maths room in the 1980s starting with his own personal BBC micro, and my business analysis lecturer at university, Luke Fitzgerald, who helped me be able to quickly visualise almost any business in terms of the entities, relationships, and processes.

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Reading Rocket Fuel, it was clear that for each Visionary I'd worked with, I'd been doing "integration".  In my early days, I wasn't "the" Integrator - I was helping and observing the MD, operations director, Marketing director, IT director, or some other "integrator" type person to implement the company vision., with a combination of technology and business skills.  At ElectricMail it was initially Leo Smith as the Integrator to John as the Visionary, and then as the business scaled, Peter Houlder was the outstanding integrator, to add rocket fuel to John's visionary role. 

   

That had culminated in my most recent roles with me being the Integrator (as well as shareholder), working with a great Visionary.

For those of you that have read Rocket Fuel - you will know that being the Integrator comes with some frustrations, such as accepting that you are the "number 2" to the visionary, and that the visionary will probably get most of the adulation.  At the time, it was frustrating.

Now I realise that suits me well , now I understand the 2 roles - I'd rather be quietly in the background making sure the engine runs smoothly.  And help the visionary be a great visionary. 

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After discovering EOS, but before committing to EOS, I re-read "Rockefeller habits" by Verne Harnish and other books, "Emyth Revisted" by Michael E Gerber,  "Good to Great" and Built to Last by Jim Collins, and of course "Start with why" by Simon Sinek.  These confirmed that the EOS concepts are not new or one man's ideas, but are distilled from many people's work and established practices.  But just because it's based upon those, does not mean EOS shouldn't be used. 

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It confirmed that:

EOS gives me, and all the teams I work with, a consistent language and structure to help each business, without every person having to read all those business books! 

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EOS therefore makes it quicker and easier to communicate, and implement a successful business strategy, to build a business that is a smooth running engine.  And to achieve success, with "success" meaning different things to each business owner.  

Why EOS?
Simple but not simplistic

There is not much new in EOS.  But that's not to say it's not a useful and valuable tool.  What EOS does, is bring together the best principles from many management models and books, combined that with experience using them specifically in thousands of small businesses across the world with 10-250 staff, and simplify and distil them to a system that can be fully implemented by small business owners and their teams.

 

It's simple, but not simplistic.

    

As noted below, we'd implemented many of the concepts in my various roles previously.  However they'd each had different names or terminology.  With each new company I started working with, one of the challenges is always to agree on consistent terminology, e.g. "what do you mean by vision and mission?  That sounds more like the mission?  I prefer to call it a goal.  That's not a KPI.  I've seen OKRs working, let's use them" etc.

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EOS defines a clear terminology, so you and your team can focus on doing things.

It makes communication easier.

Ultimately it brings the best parts of some of the great business books - Emyth Revisited, Good to Great, Built to Last, Rockefeller Habits, 7 Habits of Highly Effective people, into one structure - giving some standardised defined terminology and a process for consistently implementing them.

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What's really good is that you can then choose to implement them yourself "self implement" or be guided by an "implementer".  There are many experienced Implementers,  

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There are a few things that EOS is prescriptive of.  Some people may think it is restrictive, or doesn't tell you how to do some things that they think are important.  I take a different view - it is flexible on most things.  It doesn't say "how to do sales", or "how to pay define a pay structure".  There are lots of things it doesn't say.  And that is part of it's power.  It focuses on the most important things that every business should do, but many don't.

 

It does say you must do a weekly management meeting, at the same time every week, start on time, end on time, and follow a standard agenda.  It says you should master the 5 core foundational tools before you worry about the other 15 tools.  It says you should master all 20 tools.  But there are only 20 tools.  And I would argue that 1 or 2 of those tools can be replaced by equivalent but equally simple tools if you already use an alternative (e.g. Belbin in place of Kolbe). It doesn't claim that EOS is everything.  So given that our teams already did daily stand-ups, then we've kept those for exactly the reasons that Rockefeller Habits describes.  There's nothing wrong with that, EOS doesn't tell you not to.

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EOS describes the minimum that every good business should do, in a simple, but not simplistic way.  It is then part of the judgement of the management team - and especially the Integrator - to work out what you already do that you must keep doing.  EOS brings a way to simplify and prioritise that process.

Dave's lucky journey to EOS and beyond

Since adopting EOS:

  • 2023 - present: Integrator, leading the self implementation of EOS at Cambridge Networks Ltd.  With Steve Collins as the Visionary.

  • 2024 - present: Virtual CIO for Scudamore's Punting in Cambridge, shaping internal ICT team to run using EOS principle, aligned to the vision of Rod Ingersent, and coordinating with Operations Manager James Barton-Williams, who is effectively the integrator.

  • 2025 - present: Integrator of Hand Crafted Cupcakes in Ely, to my visionary wife Laura that started the business, and her incredibly talented son Ben who is the future leader of the business

  • 2025 - present: interim virtual CIO to DSA Electrical in Essex, helping implement an ICT strategy using EOS principles, aligned to the Managing Director's vision and goals.

Before adopting EOS:

  • 2021 - 2023: Managing Director at Cambridge Networks Ltd, implementing improvements as it turns out very similar to EOS.  All IS Online clients transferred to Cambridge Networks and IS Online becomes largely dormant again. 

  • 2016 - 2021 - Dave becomes Chairman of Cambridge Networks, coaching the MD and management team, implementing and guiding the strategy using the business plan format that I had evolved which is very similar content to the V/TO of EOS.

  • 2013 - 2021: IT Strategy for various SME businesses in and around Cambridge, UK, primarily around CRMs, dashboards, and setting and implementing IT Strategy.  IS Online Ltd had been a dormant company since 2000, so after selling Signify, this was the umbrella and brand to take everything that has been learned so far, and take it wider and to be "more than just Dashboard Dave".  IS Online took on a meaning - IT Strategy for an Online world.

  • 2006 - 2013: CEO of Signify, the Secure Authentication Service (2 Factor Authentication as a cloud service. ) I would now be clear that I was the Integrator, and John Stewart, my co-founder, was the Visionary.  We grew to over 90,000 end users, across 350 customers, including 3 of the top 10 law firms in the UK.  Attended Cranfield Business Growth programme in 2007, which contained many elements similar to EOS, but different names. Developed a business plan structure similar to a V/TO, with dashboards (like scorecards), and implemented "SIG Groups" equivalent to Rocks in EOS, weekly, quarterly and annual planning meetings where we refreshed the business plan. I became known as "Dashboard Dave"  because all the other elements were in place - vision, people, processes, meeting pulse, to ensure we had the right data to hand, my answer to many things was "can we get that on a dashboard".

  • 2000 - 2006: Co-founder and CTO of Signify, with John Stewart as my co-founder, CEO, and Sales & Marketing director.  John had sold ElectricMail in 1998, and had started selling IS Online's services to a few customers, the first being RSM Robson Rhodes.  As we pitched the eCommerce services to prospects in early 2000, it became clear that there was a common requirement for all of them - security, and specifically 2 factor authentication.  That vision came clear to John and I.  I was also working on a start up, Aerodeon, with the idea of doing SMS marketing.  With the visionary there, Chris Burke, one of my clients from Words Online days, and his brother Kieran and colleague Andrew we got hundreds of phone numbers, dates of birth, names, from a small advert in Smash Hits and very little technology investment.  In March 2000 it became clear that either vision could be big.  I had to pick one, and I chose to focus with John on Signify, to launch "2 factor authentication as a hosted service". John drew the service with the customer and a cloud, and we put our service "into the cloud".  We were one of the first companies to refer to the cloud. 

  • 1997 - 2000: IS Online Ltd: IT and web development/backend database and ecommerce strategist for various customers including Iceland Foods, Eurotunnel, and RSM Robson Rhodes.  We launched a web-based restaurant booking system ResRes for Eurotunnel's call centre staff to book meals in France for Eurotunnel customers to encourage day trips to France for Eurotunnel, whilst they were developing their eCommerce site - an agile project which was the vision of their visionary UK MD, Bill Dix.  For Iceland we developed an eCommerce site for white goods, integrated to their RS6000 database systems, as another agile project whilst the main part of the business trialled interactive food shopping on the Sky platform.  In this case Iceland was a visionary in the supermarket sector, being the first major UK supermarket to launch online shopping and home delivery, under the visionary direction of Malcolm Walker.

  • 1995 - 1997: Words Online - Set up and ran the Wed design studio Words Online, as part of The Words Group Ltd, a high tech PR and marketing agency in London, with clients such as NEC, Autodesk, Antares Alliance Group and Netscape.  My first "Integrator" role as it turned out.  As part of this role, working with the MD, I helped "turn around" a small acquisition, IQ Information Services, to be profitable within 3 months of acquisition, by applying process improvement supported by technology (Lotus Notes).

  • 1993 - 1995: ElectricMail Ltd: Rolling out Internet e-mail gateways to major corporations in the early days of the Internet - including Channel 4, Gordon Breach Publishing, several central government departments, Psygnosis, and many more.  Involved in installing the first CheckPoint Firewall-1 installation in the UK (Foreign and Commonwealth Office), and set up the promotional website for Pulp Fiction, with promo video compressed to be watchable over a 28.8k modem.  John had the vision that "in a few years time, no-one will use faxes, it will be replaced by email." John was a true visionary.  Richard Davies was a client who asked us to do the Pulp Fiction website - he was a music producer, that saw an opportunity to create interactive visual websites, and gave us the project to do the Pulp Fiction website.  Another true visionary.   

  • 1993: Acorn Computers: Software testing of their RiscOS operating system

  • 1988 - 1990: McDonalds Training Squad, and payroll at very good franchised store. Used the daily stock take process as the topic for writing some software for my A level project.

  • 1989: Sold my first software "CircDes" under the brand DJA Enterprises - GUI based circuit design software for the Acorn Archimedes as part of the "Mini Enterprise" 2 weeks at school.  Advertised it in Beebug magazine.

  • 1985 - 1988: Multiple paper rounds (daily and weekly), harvest work on the family farm, and trying to apply technology to make each more efficient.

 

In many ways - EOS is doing for every small business now, what McDonalds's gave to the owner of my franchise back in the 1980s: a structure and minimal set of operating guidelines in which to  start and run a successful business. McDonalds was much more prescriptive than EOS:

  • McDonalds defined the core values and target market, branding etc that it wanted it wanted every franchisee and staff member to adhere to. 

  • Including how to make the food. 

  • as we all know - the food is normally fast, but not necessarily the healthy or flavoursome meal that you want. The owner just had to buy have enough money to buy a franchise and follow the process. 

  • EOS is much better for you and me - we can come up with whatever core values and products that we want to sell, and how we want to run a company to serve our customers with the quality of product or service that we want to serve. 

  • EOS just gives every business owner the core structure of how to run a a business - and you can decide how profitable, how efficient, how scalable you want it to be, aligned to your customers, your vision, and your core values.    

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I don't want to run a McDonalds.  But the experience means that whether you want to run a highly efficient, "operationally excellent" scalable business like McDonalds, or a small niche "customer intimate" business such as a PR or marketing agency, or cake decorating business, or anywhere in between, I believe that EOS has the tools and structure to help you.  

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If you are that sort of business, I and our team can help you use technology as a multiplier, to really enable your business to be efficient, resilient, successful, whatever success means to you.

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