Milovan Milic

Where do I start? Decision overload. Want some tips on optimising your operations? Read below. Spoke to a good friend yesterday. He called me up and was after some advice about his operations and how to streamline things.  For some context, he doesn’t use Clevero(although he should ;);). They use Hubspot, Monday, Clockify, google sheets and Xero. Around 15 staff I think.  He said he knows he needs to improve ops as his team were drowning. Some mistakes were starting to occur. This is a common growth pain problem. If this sounds like you, here’s the technique we used yesterday.  Go to each department or head of department.  Ask one simple question to each: What is the one manual task that takes the most time? Or: What is the one task that your team would love to never do again? No more no less. You’ve now got 3-5 new potential problems to try and solve.  Why this approach works: 1. Builds trust through collaboration 2. Team feels heard. 3. Focus on incremental changes. 4. Focus on the key pain point that causes the most frustration.  Rinse and repeat.  Give that a shot, then reach out to me when you realise your current tech stack can’t do what you want it to do because of its rigidity. 

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Some figures of the day for business leaders and potential tech founders: - An average organisation manages 275 SaaS applications - Spending on these apps averages $4,830 per employee - 53% of these subscriptions have not been used over the last 30 days - The average organisation wastes $21 million annually on unused or underutilised SaaS licenses (2.500 - 5000 employees) We need to stop the #SaaS madness. Thankfully AI is bringing us an alternative: Service businesses with SaaS margins (or closer, at least) Less logins! https://lnkd.in/dTcnNr6W

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Want to save money? Of course you do. Lots of businesses (like yours) waste hundreds each month on unused software. Here’s how you fix that… #BusinessSoftware #CostCutting #SoftwareLicensing www.abtec.net

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A great blog by Stuart Ashby and neatly explains why you can use a PopUp Mainframe to do things differently to address your biggest Mainframe challenges. #modernization #appdev #devops #mainframe #ITdelivery

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Beyond the Shiny New App: Structuring Your Business for Tech That Actually Delivers. Over the past two weeks, we've discussed the chaos that occurs when you purchase a new system without implementing the essential business changes, training, and process alignment. The final piece of the puzzle for UK SMEs is making sure your business is structurally ready for the technology you invest in. This means: - A Clear Tech Roadmap: Your tech decisions should support your 3-year commercial growth plan, not just solve today’s inconvenience. - Defined Data Ownership: Knowing who is responsible for the quality of key business data stops systems from delivering ‘garbage in, garbage out’. - The Right Leadership: You need senior guidance that can translate business needs into technical requirements, and vice versa—someone who speaks both languages. The Insight: True, sustainable tech success comes from creating a SOLID OPERATIONAL FOUNDATION where new tools seamlessly fit into your strategy and structure. Technology doesn't lead the business; the business must lead the technology. If you’re ready to ensure your tech spend isn’t just a cost centre, but a delivering asset, let's build that strategic foundation together. CTO Slice - a smarter slice of CTO thinking #CTOSlice #TechThatDelivers #TechWithoutDrama

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In the beginning, we had owned software: you pay for the softwe once, and you could use it for as long as you wanted, and produce as much work as you wanted with it, at no additional cost to the vendor safe for the annual upgrades ( if you so wished ) - you created value out of a fixed one-off cost, and only charged for the value created. Then we got software on subscription for a fixed monthly fee - you had a fixed, predictable monthly expense, and could produce as much work as you wanted with it, and get paid again for the value + a % of the license cost overhead Now we’ve got “work as a service”. The more you work, whether that work is producing value or not, the more you pay. You need to pay a model vendor to don your actual work. - so now, if you’re an agency, you’ll need to pay for the salary + the subscription + the tokens used for the project + all of the overhead tokens consumed overall ( useful or not ) apportionned to clients ( or take a loss ). - and if you’re a company using AI internally, you’ll need to pay for inference every time your employees are using AI to do their job, instead of just paying for their salary. So you’re paying for AI so that your employees can work… They just invented a business model where they get paid now, not for the softare you’re using, but for the work and value you’re producing with their software, wherever you’re working in the world. Every work produced in the future, valuable or not, they will get paid for it. Overhead and project cost overruns as a variable cost based on token usage and not on billable hours will be a nightmare to manage. But for those model and infrastructure vendors getting paid for the wasted tokens, i think it’s brilliant as a business model for them. And for every other country, it will mean that, every work and value they produce “locally”, they will need to also pay a model vendor, in foreign currency, for each token consumed to create that “local value”. As a country, if everyone wants to go for AI, we should focus on sovereignty of the solution, the capital, and the usage expense as well, and certainly not pay in foreign currency what we’re producing locally ( previously at “zero forex cost” ), else we’ll have another problem coming.

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We booked 23 meetings at RSA before the conference even started. Here's the exact playbook we used. Most vendors show up to RSA hoping to bump into the right people. We showed up with a pipeline already built. ━━━ 01 — INTELLIGENCE GATHERING ━━━ → Scraped LinkedIn for posts tagged #RSA2025, #RSAConference, and #RSAC — 6 weeks before the event → Identified decision-makers who publicly announced they'd attend (CISOs, VPs Security, IT Directors) → Pulled company size, tech stack signals, and recent funding rounds → Built a tiered list: Tier 1 = ideal ICP · Tier 2 = warm fit · Tier 3 = nurture ━━━ 02 — TRIPLE-TOUCH OUTREACH ━━━ 💼 LinkedIn: Personalized connection + value message. Reference their RSA post. No pitch - curiosity only. 📧 Email: Subject line "See you at RSA?" - short, specific, with a 1-click calendar link for a 15-min booth chat. 📞 Cold Call: Day 5 touchpoint. 45-second opener referencing their LinkedIn + the email. Pre-warm = higher pickup rate. ━━━ 03 — WHAT ACTUALLY WORKED ━━━ → Mentioning specific sessions they were attending = 3× reply rate → Sending the calendar link on a Tuesday morning drove 67% of bookings → CISOs responded best to threat landscape angles, not product demos → LinkedIn voice messages outperformed text DMs by 2× 💬 Comment EVENT below and I'll send you the full step-by-step process. Includes: ✅ LinkedIn scraping template ✅ Full 3-touch outreach sequence ✅ Call scripts that actually get picked up ✅ Email copy that books meetings ♻️ Repost to help your network crush their next event pipeline. Follow for more B2B cybersecurity GTM plays. #RSA2025 #Cybersecurity #SalesStrategy #B2BSales #ColdOutreach #EventMarketing #LinkedInSales #CISO

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☺️ Huge thanks to Rachael Wonnacott for joining me yesterday on the Syntasso webinar where she gave an amazing presentation titled “Your Platform is not an Island”. 🏝️ One of the discussions we had in the Q&A was around standardisation vs. optionality. When a platform team is supporting many application teams, there can be demand for different versions of the same thing e.g. multiple types of database. Sometimes the requirements for a specific “flavour” of database can be valid, but often this can come down to a team’s familiarity or preference for one tool, when another database would be just as viable. We compared this to a vending machine and a person’s desire for a packet of crisps. You might want a packet of crisps and you really want "salt & vinegar" flavour. But when you go to the vending machine, there are 3 types of crisps and no "salt & vinegar". Do you choose to have no crisps at all? Or do you decide that "ready salted" flavour is close enough and have those? By contrast, imagine you walk up to the vending machine and there are 50 different types of crisps available . You spend so long looking at them and choosing which ones you want, you end up wasting time and missing an important deadline, like catching a train. 🚂 And as well as the time lost for the developers in choosing the right option, there is also the huge increase of cognitive load and effort on the vending machine operators aka the platform team as they have to maintain and support all of these different options. It is always going to be hard finding the right level of balance between standardisation and giving teams flexibility to choose the tool that works for them, but this is where having a platform product manager and aiming for a thinnest viable platform is incredibly important. Thanks again to Rachael for the great discussion. Would love to hear other people's thoughts on this. #PlatformEngineering #FridayThoughts #PlatformAsAProduct

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I have seen many companies add more tools, thinking that more software will solve the problem. I have made the same mistake myself. It rarely works. What works is the right software, built around how you operate, not the other way around. That is what we focus on at Endevelo

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💡 Bespoke software isn’t what it used to be. Custom apps once meant: ❌ Huge budgets ❌ Long timelines ❌ Endless consulting Now? Thanks to no-code platforms like Kabyn, bespoke means: ⚡ Speed 💰 Affordability 🔄 Flexibility as your business grows The game has flipped: what used to be exclusive is now accessible. 👉 Bespoke isn’t a luxury anymore, it’s the smarter choice.

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3 personalised demos in a day tells me something simple. What we are building in Sitesamurai is not just another bit of software people look at and forget. It is solving pain that business owners already feel. That is always easier to see properly on a live call, because every business has its own pressure points, its own admin drag, and its own gaps between site, office, suppliers, invoices, and payments. That is exactly why I prefer personalised demos. When I can speak to someone live, I can show how Site Samurai fits the real workflow. From turning supplier quotes into draft purchase orders from mobile, desktop, or email forwarding, through to bringing invoice review, payment flow, and visibility back into 1 place, the whole point is to remove friction from the day to day, not add to it. And that is the real value of a personalised demo. It stops being a generic walkthrough and becomes a proper conversation around what your business actually needs. If that sounds relevant to you, book a personalised demo with me here: https://lnkd.in/ehubFtAW #Construction #ConstructionManagement #CivilEngineering #SiteManagement #ConstructionTech #DigitalConstruction

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Most businesses I speak to right now are looking at AI in some way. The common issue is not the technology. It is knowing where to start. I see a lot of teams jumping straight into tools, trying bits here and there, but not really seeing any meaningful impact. Usually, that comes down to one thing. There is no clear way of deciding what is actually worth automating. I have put together a short session to walk through a simple framework we use with SMEs to approach this properly. It is running a week today if you want to join: https://lnkd.in/e_iU2j6a

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🔍 Managing a field team is more complex than it looks. 📍 A pattern we hear regularly from SMEs across the UK. In 2025, disputes between service companies and customers increased sharply. The common problem is always the same: lack of verifiable evidence... 👉 https://lnkd.in/dXSQuYiv 💬 What's your biggest challenge in operational management? 👇 🔔 Follow for weekly insights on field service and workforce management for SMBs. #GeoTapp #GPS #FieldService #SMB #workforcemanagement #UK

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Unlocking Hidden Business Potential: The Overlooked Benefits of End-to-End IT Support for SMBs End-to-end IT support for SMBs boosts growth by enhancing efficiency, enabling innovation, reducing downtime, supporting digital transformation, and offering risk-free services with funding opportunities....

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Founders rarely burn out for lack of ambition. They burn out because too many hours disappear into tasks that smart systems could (and should) handle for them. I’ve had my share of “maybe I just need to push harder” moments. I’ve even tried winning the day by waking up earlier and stretching my work hours. None of that fixed the real issue. The problem wasn’t my drive – it was the way the work around me was organized. At a certain point, more hustle isn’t the answer. Clarity is. Prioritization is. Automating the busywork is. You shouldn’t need superhero stamina just to keep your store running.

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Why Buying 3rd Party Software is often just a 'Maintenance Waterbed' I often post about the urgent need to remove maintenance costs to fund innovation. On the surface, you might assume moving to 3rd party software is a good way to achieve this but be careful of the 'Waterbed Effect'. In enterprise tech, when you push down on maintencance costs by moving to a 3rd party vendor, the pressure often just bulges out elsewhere in your budget and operations: The Shoe-Horn Problem: You force your specific business processes into a rigid vendor box. To make it work, you either bodge an expensive extension,adding back the maintenance, you tried to cut, or you compromise your strategy to fit their software. The Version-Lock Debt: You aren’t free from technical debt; you’ve just traded code fixes for version migrations. These mandatory upgrades can be just as expensive and disruptive as the legacy code they replaced. The Punitive Pricing Tax: Traditional SaaS often penalizes your growth. You end up paying full-seat licenses for any and all intermittent users who only touch the system once a quarter. The Evolution: We need to move past this false choice between Generic & Locked (Buy) vs. Custom & Debt-Heavy (Build). Does this resonate with you? I’d love to hear how you’re balancing these tradeoffs in your current planning. #DigitalTransformation #FinTech #TechnicalDebt #Unqork #StrategicGrowth #COO #CTO

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How much productivity does your business loses to those teeeeny tiiiiny tech frustrations your team has simply learned to live with everyday? When most think about needing IT to fix things or provide support, it's when things have failed to the point things don't switch on, things not connecting to other things, things have blown up or that old favourite.. the blue screen of death. That's when we know for sure that productivity will get impacted... But dealing with the everyday frustrations is where I actually see a lot more time getting lost and a teams productivity being hit. Slow devices, broken workflows, manual input that could be automated and constant switching between different tools or apps. Here are 3 warning signs your technology might be holding your team back more than you realise, and what you can do to fix them...

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To niche or not to niche? 🤔 Our konversable tech is now in place with clients in over 12 different sectors. This goes against the common thinking in tech which is to make sure you “niche-down” on your product offering. But truthfully, if we had done this, I don’t think we would be here now. If you have a product which is specifically designed to solve a pain point in a particular sector, then of course it makes sense to focus on that. But that doesn’t mean to say all tech should follow the same principle. We have managed to find footholds with our solution across many different sectors, for many different use cases. Frankly that’s one of the reasons I love our tech so much, in that it can be applied in so many different ways to solve clients problems. So next time you are told that you must “niche-down”, don’t take the advice at face value, really consider if it’s worth doing, or if, as in our case, broadening your offering across sectors will allow you to scale much quicker. (Photo of me with a cuppa has nothing to do with this post but LI algo will prefer this to an AI generated gif 😂) #konversable #saas

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Most SMEs we are speaking with aren’t overspending on IT because they want to it’s because no one has shown them where the waste is. The biggest cost drains usually aren’t obvious: ⭐Licences no one uses ⭐Kit that’s patched together instead of fit-for-purpose ⭐Teams who’ve never been shown how to spot a phishing email ⭐Systems that can’t scale, so you’re forced into upgrades sooner than you should be. Getting IT costs under control is about making smarter choices that free people to do their jobs without disruption. IT stops being seen as a cost centre and starts being recognised as the enabler of growth. That’s the change we're seeing in the best run SMEs across Cheshire and North Wales they are more resilient, more secure, and more confident about scaling. When was the last time you really looked at where your IT budget is going? Have a great 4 day week!

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