Why MoreThanDigital Insights Is Revolutionizing Business Diagnostics: The Only True 360° Business Health Platform

Seven years ago, I was confronted with a problem that fundamentally changed the way I think about business management. The Swiss government approached me with what seemed like a straightforward challenge, but which revealed a systemic flaw in economies and economic development, especially in terms of supporting business growth: current management is failing. This conclusion came from the simple realisation that their economic development programmes, which cost billions of Swiss francs, were failing.

Companies were receiving support, attending programmes and implementing initiatives, but the results were disappointing. Resources were being wasted, businesses weren’t addressing their real problems and, despite good intentions, the economic impact remained limited.

This issue became clear through a medical analogy: it’s like giving everyone cancer medication without first diagnosing whether they actually have cancer. You risk serious side effects, waste valuable resources and miss the opportunity to treat the actual problem. This was exactly what was happening in business development: generic solutions were being applied without understanding the underlying issues of each organisation.

The Black Box Problem: Why Traditional Management and Business Tools Fail

For decades, businesses have been operating with what I call the ‘black box problem’. We meticulously measure inputs, such as investments, costs and people hours. We obsessively track outputs such as revenue, profit, market share and customer acquisition. But what happens between these inputs and outputs? This remains largely mysterious.

Traditional ERP systems, KPI dashboards and business intelligence platforms excel at showing us what has happened and how we are performing. They reveal our symptoms: sales are down, costs are up and employee turnover is increasing. However, they don’t explain why these things are happening or, more importantly, how to fix them.

It’s like having a car dashboard that shows your speed and fuel level, but not the health of the engine, tyre pressure or brake condition. You can still drive, but you have no idea whether your vehicle is fit for the journey ahead.

This approach, which focuses on symptoms rather than causes, creates what I call ‘KPI inflation’: we have created thousands of metrics that describe various aspects of business performance without ever addressing the fundamental question of what the underlying health of the organisation producing these results is.

The Genesis of a New Approach

When the Swiss government presented their challenge, I realised that we needed to do things completely differently. We had to stop treating the symptoms and start diagnosing businesses’ underlying health across all critical dimensions. My first thought was, ‘We just need to ask the right questions — it’s easy!’

However, this was not a problem that I could solve alone or using traditional consulting approaches. It required a fundamental rethink of how we measure and understand organisational health, and of what we consider to be ‘healthy’ (which, by the way, was the biggest challenge that broke most models and frameworks).

Over the next three years, I assembled a trove experts of over 120 organisations, institutions, and government agencies. The aim was not just to gather opinions, but to create a scientifically rigorous framework that could reliably assess the underlying health of any organisation, regardless of its size or industry (and seemed there was limited research on that – mostly scattered and fragmented but no “big picture”). After two failed attempts and two models that could not fulfil the need for consistency over time, holistic assessment, easy flows or non-human logic that clashed with human reality, I developed the current framework.

So, in the third attempt, we needed to find a completely new approach. I then developed the current framework based on the central question: What if, instead of measuring ‘how fast are you running’, we could measure ‘how fit are you to run the marathon’?

Why Existing Solutions Don’t Cut It

Before diving into what makes MoreThanDigital Insights revolutionary, it’s important to understand why existing alternatives fall short:

1. Traditional BI/BA Platforms: Symptom Obsession

Business intelligence and business analytics tools are highly effective at processing data and creating visualisations. However, they are fundamentally reactive. They tell you what has happened after the event, focusing on symptoms rather than causes. It’s like having an excellent thermometer but no understanding of what causes a fever — it measures the temperature perfectly, but does not explain the underlying sickness.

2. Management Experience: Human Limitations

Experienced managers can offer invaluable intuition and wisdom. However, humans are subject to inherent biases, blind spots and limitations. Even the most seasoned executive may focus too heavily on their area of expertise, overlooking critical issues in other domains. It is simply impossible for one person to have deep expertise in strategy, technology, culture, operations and finance simultaneously – so something that can be used later, but inherently bad for diagnosing problems in a company.

3. “Fake Analytics”: Consulting Upsells

When looking for solutions to learn from or copy (yes, I know, bad bad Ben), I was most angered to discover that many platforms masquerade as diagnostic tools but are actually designed to identify opportunities to sell consulting services. They offer a limited analysis that highlights problems, and then require expensive human intervention to provide real solutions. I call these ‘fake analytics’ — they’re marketing tools disguised as diagnostic platforms and designed like traps; they’re not helpful tools.

4. Elite Consulting Frameworks: The 99% Problem

Premium consulting firms such as McKinsey, Bain and Gartner have developed sophisticated diagnostic frameworks based on their teams of consultants. These approaches are genuinely powerful, but they require multimillion-dollar budgets and teams of five to ten consultants working for months or years. This creates what I call the ‘99% problem’: 99% of companies simply cannot access these high-quality diagnostic capabilities. Therefore, this approach does not solve the problem of economic development or the issue faced by the millions of businesses around the world, with all the elite paywalls in between.

MoreThanDigital Insights: A Complete Paradigm Shift

MoreThanDigital Insights is the first truly holistic, AI-powered business diagnostics platform to be made available to all companies, not just Fortune 500 ones. Here’s what makes it fundamentally different:

True 360° Organizational Health Assessment

Unlike tools that focus on specific functions, Insights analyzes over 1,400 business dimensions across 300 topics, organized into 12 critical categories:

• Strategy & Innovation: How well-positioned is the organization for future success?
• People & Culture: What is the health of human capital and organizational culture?
• Operations & Processes: How efficient and effective are core business processes?
• Technology & IT: How well does technology enable and support business objectives?
• Data & Analytics: How effectively does the organization leverage data for decisions?
• Customers & Engagement: How strong are customer relationships and market position?
• Finance & Performance: What is the financial health and performance trajectory?
• (Soon) Sustainability & Future-Readiness: How prepared is the organization for long-term success?

AI-Powered Root Cause Analysis

But the magic behind the platform is not just that it collects data; it also uses advanced AI to identify patterns, uncover hidden relationships and provide actionable insights. I would say that it identifies the ‘optimum strategy’ for every industry, company size and location. The AI acts as both an internal researcher and a strategic advisor, transforming raw assessments into clear, prioritised recommendations that help you to focus on what really matters, rather than getting lost in the noise.

Benchmarking Without Compromise

Another groundbreaking development is that, for the first time, organisations can compare their health metrics against those of their industry peers, size categories and geographical regions, while maintaining complete data privacy. Our anonymisation technology ensures that sensitive information remains protected while enabling valuable comparative insights — nobody knows the names or exact numbers of other companies, but everyone can access insights based on peer averages and spreads. Such benchmarking data, even for financial metrics, was usually unavailable, or costly and exclusive.

Speed That Enables Agility

But let’s be honest — nobody would do it if it took a long time. However, we have found ways to make it happen. You simply sign up, invite your team and contribute 10–15 minutes. From all the inputs and assessments, you get a complete picture. What once required months of consulting work now takes hours. The platform generates comprehensive diagnostic reports that would usually require teams of analysts and take weeks to produce. This speed enables organisations to iterate, adapt and optimise continuously, rather than conducting expensive, infrequent health checks.

Universal Accessibility

And, of course, the big challenge is that there are so many company sizes and industries, and almost endless complexity. One of the things we are most proud of is that Insights makes world-class business diagnostics accessible to organisations of all sizes. From start-ups to global enterprises, every business can now access the same level of diagnostic sophistication that was previously reserved for the largest corporations. The system fully adapts to you and is agnostic to industries. You grow – Insights grows.

The Underlying Health Revolution

But for many, one thing is actually the most important factor. Once you understand that the fundamental innovation of MoreThanDigital Insights lies in its focus on organisational health rather than just performance symptoms, everything becomes clear. This represents a complete paradigm shift in how we think about business management and will help businesses to view their future survivability and corporate health differently, rather than blindly following outdated KPIs.

Traditional approaches ask, ‘How are we performing?’ Insights asks: ‘How healthy are we, and what does that mean for our ability to perform?’

Read my article on MoreThanDigital: Strategy Doesn’t Need Another Dashboard. It Needs a Diagnostics and Insights.

It’s like the difference between checking your running time and checking your cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength and endurance capacity. The former tells you how you did, while the latter tells you what you are capable of and what you need to improve.

This health-focused approach reveals insights that symptom-based analysis misses.

• Why some companies consistently outperform despite similar resources
• Which investments will actually drive sustainable growth
• Where hidden risks might undermine future performance
• How different organizational dimensions interact and influence each other
• What capabilities need development to achieve strategic objectives

Beyond Diagnostics: The Future of Organizational Intelligence

MoreThanDigital Insights is not just the best business diagnostics platform available today – it’s the foundation for something much larger. We’re building toward a future where:

• Continuous Health Monitoring: Organizations will monitor their health as continuously as they monitor their performance
• Predictive Health Analytics: AI will predict organizational health trends and recommend preventive interventions
• Personalized Improvement Programs: Development initiatives will be precisely tailored to each organization’s specific health profile
• Ecosystem Health Intelligence: Companies will understand how their health relates to their suppliers, partners, and customers
• Real-Time Optimization: Organizations will optimize their health dynamically as conditions change
• And so much more …

Why This Matters More Than Ever

Everyone is saying that the business environment has never been more complex or fast-moving, and they are right. Companies are facing unprecedented challenges, including technological disruption, changing workforce expectations, supply chain volatility, evolving regulations and shifting customer preferences.

In this environment, organisations cannot afford to operate blindly. They require clear, comprehensive and objective evaluations of their performance across all critical areas. They need to understand not just what is happening, but also why and how to address it.

Above all, this intelligence must be fast, affordable and accessible, rather than requiring months of consulting and millions of dollars.

The Only Real Business Diagnostics Platform

Today, MoreThanDigital Insights stands alone as the only platform that combines:

• True 360° coverage across all critical business dimensions
• AI-powered analysis that uncovers root causes and patterns
• Underlying health assessment rather than just symptom tracking
• Comprehensive benchmarking with privacy protection
• Enterprise-grade insights accessible to organizations of any size
• Rapid deployment that delivers results in hours, not months

While other tools measure symptoms, Insights diagnoses health. While other platforms require expensive interpretation, Insights provides clear, actionable recommendations. While other solutions serve only elite enterprises, Insights democratizes world-class business diagnostics.

This Is Just the Beginning

What we’ve built with MoreThanDigital Insights is revolutionary, but it’s just the beginning. We’re creating a future in which every organisation, regardless of its size or resources, has access to the insights it needs to optimise its performance, maximise its potential and achieve sustainable success.

The transformation in how businesses understand and optimise themselves has begun. Companies that embrace this new paradigm and move from symptom management to health optimisation will thrive in an increasingly complex world.

We’re not just developing a diagnostics platform. We’re building the future of organisational intelligence.