Stewart Marshall is “Mr SaaS”
I’m a commercial software strategist, coach, speaker, and the bestselling author of “Doing IT for Money – A business leader’s guide to improving profit per person“
I’ve spent most of my 30+ years in ICT at the sharp end of software research and development and digital transformation, creating, designing and building rapid development tools and solutions used by Governments and thousands of businesses around the world, including Proctor and Gamble, Kawasaki, Kellogg’s and many leading banks.
Life and Passion
For me, technology was a calling: it found me, and almost by accident. And when I first learned to make a computer do my bidding, I realised that I’d found my niche. But from the very beginning I thought it all unnecessarily complicated, telling a classmate that one day I’d create a programming language that would be much simpler. And so it was that some twenty or so years later I led the development of the ground-breaking and internationally recognised rapid development tool, Visual LANSA, a product with the tag line ‘Advanced software made simple’.
Today, I continue in the same vein, sharing my lifetime of front line experience in digital leadership with entrepreneurs and SaaS (Software as a Service) business leaders to help them cut through, complexity, confusion and chaos of the staggeringly immense world of modern technology.
Mission
My mission is simple. I want to help business and software leaders create exceptional digital futures.
But it’s not my career, knowledge and experience that enables me to do this. Neither is it my innate desire to educate, nor my love of sharing my passion for software. No, it’s the one skill I cherish above all others.
It’s my superpower.
I am a Gibberish Translator.
I’m one of a rare breed of technologists able to turn technical twaddle into easy English, gibberish and jargon into the meaningful and mainstream, and complexity and confusion into the orderly and the obvious.
I can do this because I understand that to be effective, technology demands human-centricity. It’s an exercise in empathy and insight; the essence of order and civilisation; a very human endeavour; and one undertaken to improve the lives of all those who use it.
As I say, “If you’re looking at the technology, you’re missing the point.”
I am an IT guy who speaks your language.