Software for the parts of the job that should be simpler.
Miko researches how businesses and organisations actually get their work done, looks for the parts that are repetitive, manual or more complicated than they need to be, and builds focused software where it would genuinely help. We start with the problem, not the technology.
Understand the problem before building anything.
Most software gets built before anyone has properly understood the job it is meant to help with. We work the other way round, and we are willing to conclude that a problem does not need software at all.
How the work actually happens
We talk to the people doing the job and map how it runs today: the steps, the handoffs, the spreadsheets held together by habit, and the points where the current tools get in the way rather than help.
Whether technology helps at all
We test whether software, automation or AI would be a real improvement. Some problems are better solved by changing the process, and saying so is more useful than selling a tool that will be abandoned in a month.
The narrow thing that works
Where a problem is worth solving and the approach holds up, we build something focused and put it in front of the people who will use it. Small and genuinely useful, rather than broad and impressive.
What that turns into
It depends entirely on the problem. Some of the shapes this work takes:
Focused tools
A small piece of software that does one job properly, for a team currently doing it by hand, in a shared spreadsheet, or across three systems that were never meant to work together.
Workflow automation
Removing the repeated copying, chasing and re-keying that builds up between systems that do not talk to each other, and the follow-ups that depend on somebody remembering.
Information and records
Getting scattered information into one place so it can be found, trusted and reported on, instead of living in inboxes, folders and somebody's head.
AI where it earns its place
Language models are genuinely good at some tasks and unreliable at others. We use them where they hold up under testing, we check the output, and we leave them out where they do not.
These are the kinds of problem we work on, not a catalogue of products sitting on a shelf. Each piece of work starts with understanding a specific situation.
What we have built so far
Our most complete build to date is a voice system that answers business telephone calls: it works out what the caller needs, answers questions about the business, books the work into a diary and reports back afterwards. Most of the effort went into the parts that are actually hard rather than the parts that demo well, such as understanding regional accents, holding a sensible conversation when a caller changes their mind, and knowing when to stop and hand over to a person.
It is a fair illustration of how we work: one narrow problem, researched properly, then built and tested against real calls rather than a script. We are not currently selling it as a product, and we are now looking at other operational problems in the same way.
We talk to organisations about how their work really runs.
Before we build anything, we ask the people doing the job. In practice that means short exchanges with businesses, clubs, charities and public bodies about how one particular process works for them now, what is frustrating about it, and what they have already tried.
If we have contacted you about a research project, we are asking about the work itself, not about your budget or your plans. Answering does not commit you to anything, you can reply as briefly as you like, and you can ask us to stop contacting you at any point.
If you would like to take part, or you have a process in your own organisation that you think should be simpler, we would be glad to hear about it.