Ask HN: increasing business profits through software

I'd like to start working as a contractor, my idea was to focus on increasing the profits of a company through software. I have a programming background(web development, machine learning, web crawling...) but I don't have any business and finance knowledge. I think that in order to get good results and to talk with customers I'll need that kind of knowledge. So I'd like to know experiences from people that were in a similar situation and what resources I can get to increase a particular and needed knowledge. This course looks interesting but it starts on september: https://www.coursera.org/course/strategy101