Meet Finn: An AI Assistant for Your Business Data

Every AI product needs a name. Most sound the same. A short, techy word. A capital letter dropped in the middle. Something that hints at speed or brains and means nothing.

We went another way. Our AI is called Finn. The name comes from a story older than software. Older than the businesses we build for. Older than writing itself.

It is worth telling. The story is also the clearest way we have to explain what Finn is: an AI assistant for your business data, built into your ERP.

The Salmon of Knowledge

In Irish myth there is a salmon that holds all the wisdom of the world. The Salmon of Knowledge, or An Bradán Feasa, comes from the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology.

A hazel tree grew beside a well. Its nuts carried everything there was to know. The nuts fell into the water. A salmon ate them, and took in all that knowledge. Whoever caught the salmon and ate it would gain the same.

A poet named Finnegas wanted it. He spent seven years on the bank of the river Boyne, trying to catch it. At last he did.

He handed the fish to his young apprentice to cook. He gave one instruction. Do not taste it.

The boy obeyed. But the salmon spat hot fat, and it burnt his thumb. Without thinking, he put his thumb in his mouth. In that moment, the knowledge went to him instead.

The boy's name was Fionn.

After that, Fionn never had to go looking for an answer. When he needed to know something, he put his thumb to his mouth, and he knew. He grew up to become one of the great figures of Irish legend. The wisdom he carried runs through every story told about him.

Why the story fits

Strip the myth back. What is left describes something ordinary about running a business.

The knowledge already exists. It always did. It was swimming in the river the whole time, whole and complete, long before anyone caught it. The wisdom was never missing. Reaching it took seven years and some luck.

Most businesses sit with their own information the same way.

Everything you need to know about your business is already inside it. It is in your sales. Your stock. Your ledgers. Your service history. Your purchasing. The answers to nearly every question you might ask are there, in the data you make each day just by trading.

The information is not missing. Reaching it is the hard part. You have to know which report to run. Which filter to apply. Which system to open. Often, which colleague to ask. The knowledge is in the river. Getting to it is the work.

An AI assistant for your business data

Fionn did not gain new knowledge. The knowledge became part of him. He no longer had to search for it, or wait for it. He asked himself, and the answer was there.

That is the idea behind Finn.

Finn is the version of your business where you just ask. You put a plain question to your business and you get a straight answer. The intelligence lives inside your data, not beside it.

Which overdue accounts need attention this week. Which products are selling faster than you can restock them. Where a margin slipped last quarter. The kind of question you would ask a colleague who knew the whole business by heart. If such a colleague existed, and had the time.

Why Finn

We chose it because the story says the thing we would otherwise have to explain.

Your business already holds the answers. Finn is the one you can ask.

Why Finn? Because someone had to be the one you could just ask.

The story of the Salmon of Knowledge has been told many ways over the centuries. For a fuller version, Ireland's heritage archive has one of the more complete tellings.