In 2017, we launched our Innovation Advisory Team, which has led to multiple innovative ideas. Here are four of those.
Look at any “top 5 priorities for businesses” or “ranking of strategic objectives by executives,” and you’ll undoubtedly find innovation near the top of the list.
Even if your company isn’t specifically talking about “innovation,” words like “growth,” “transformation” and “new product development” all mean similar things. They’re all variations on innovation.
Centric Consulting is no different. We view innovation as a key aspect of our future, making it an integral part of our present.
Of course, we recognize several dimensions of how innovation will boost our efforts, so we are actively managing innovation to deliver impact. For this piece, I’ll focus on one of them – product offerings.
The reasons we pursue the development of innovative products may seem clear. But, in addition to providing new, valuable solutions for our clients, we also value the opportunity it provides our colleagues. It allows them to stretch and explore ideas they are passionate about while helping them expand their skills and abilities.
Innovation – when done end-to-end – with purpose is akin to problem-solving and learning, which enhances one’s intellectual versatility.
In 2017, we formally established our Innovation Advisory Team, designed to encourage innovation – internally and externally. This effort has led to multiple programs that are already live or still evolving.
Our Innovative Products
Here’s a glimpse into some of what’s nearing the final stages of the incubation period:
1. AI Virtual Assistant for Job Success, By Marc Johnson
What started as an exploration of how Centric colleagues could be more effective in our own virtual company mindset, led to a search for a simpler and better way to get employees the information they need to be successful in their job.
From there, a virtual assistant took shape. This assistant understands things like:
- The projects you are working on
- Clients and colleagues you interact with
- Your professional interests and goals
Our vision is to use all that information to surface insights and provide automation to help you be successful at your job.
We’ve been piloting the AI-powered assistant internally over the past few months, and we’re improving it as we learn more. Our target launch date for our minimum viable product (MVP) is the first half of 2019.
2. Virtual Reality for Healthcare Patients, By Carmen Fontana, Marcie Stoshak-Chavez, and Chris Martinez
Our healthcare lead has partnered with one of her trusted contacts in advancing a hypothesis that patients in palliative care can have improved experiences – including pain reduction – by introducing Virtual Reality into their holistic treatment plan.
There are more details to come. Our target launch is this year, too.
3. Machine Learning to Predict and Manage Human Resources, By Carmen Fontana and Jeff Kanel
Losing valuable contributors from one’s workforce will always be a firm’s challenge. But, by harnessing the power of Machine Learning and AI, we can help predict what resources are at risk of leaving and help reduce staff turnaround rates.
We’re already putting custom models, built on Azure’s ML platform, to test for some clients. And we’re using these predictions to create PowerBI visualizations that will help highlight trends and watch areas for human resources leaders.
The goal was to take this to market in 2019.
4. Robotic Process Automation to Increase Speed and Quality, By Mike Ryba
As an extension of our Process Excellence practice, we began to develop this service offering at the beginning of 2018, and we’ve created software robots for several clients to date.
The value RPA brings is that it allows business and IT personnel the ability to create software robots that are no-code, low-code solutions to process repetitive, day-to-day operations, that have traditionally relied on manual processing.
You can run these robots in attended mode (typically on a client desktop) or unattended (scheduled to run) mode. Both modes deliver the same level of speed and quality to allow a business to focus on more value-added and customer-centric solutions.
We are also providing thought leadership on best practices, Centers of Excellence, process and tool selection, and a host of other areas applicable to RPA.
The best part about this solution: It’s already available.
Final Thoughts
These examples are just some of the innovation pursuits we’re excited about.
Developing new and meaningful solutions for our clients helps us with our core purpose of delivering unmatched client experiences.
We’re equally excited about what we’re learning and how we’re evolving the pillars of our innovation program to explore, experiment and advance consistently.