720285System SyncClosedGRD Development of PrototypeInnovate UKThis project will create a prototype software product that will combine common business tools such as Excel Spreadsheets and cloud storage media (like Dropbox & Box) into a technology system that will make the process of collecting data from small businesses faster, easier, cheaper and better for the environment than current processes. Collecting data from small businesses is a real world problem facing many organisations. For example, the Office of National Statistics collects financial data from small companies; the Scottish Food Quality Certification collects manufacturing information from small food producers; and TSB Catapults need to collect detailed project information from the businesses that they engage with. These are three examples that we have investigated. There are thousands more. The aggregator typically meets the cost of collecting the data. Very often those costs run into millions of pounds. Example expenses include the salaries of the staff needed to gather the data and enter it into IT systems; the cost of running large IT systems to store the data and in some cases the cost of travelling to meet companies in person. The current processes are expensive, bad for the environment and very slow. Our observation is that the smaller the organisation from which the data is to be collected the harder the work is to gather that data. However, those small businesses are gathering and storing data for themselves all the time using free cloud file storage technology such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft SkyDrive. We believe it is possible to exploit this trend. Our idea, which we need to technically research, is to combine cloud file storage systems with data management services and create a brand new type of inter-company data aggregation infrastructure.