Our goal at Centric Consulting is to solve your business and technology problems with tailored solutions designed for your success. Meet your problem solvers from Boston who always have your end goals in mind.
While helping find solutions to our clients’ toughest problems, we’ve learned a thing or two. In this blog from our series, we share insights from our Boston team of seasoned solvers on overcoming today’s business, technology and people-related challenges.
Business
Meet Your Problem Solver
Carlos Vazquez | Senior Consultant, Boston Team | Business Process Improvement
THE BUSINESS PROBLEM
One of the most common issues I see facing clients is that they are unaware of the intricacies or details of the processes they oversee. For example, in a lot of processes that I’ve come across, things are not documented at all, or the information is sparse or outdated. People also develop their own ways of doing things, which means things get lost in translation. This lack of standardization and transparency is across the board, which is why it’s so important to solidify processes.
When it comes to financial services in particular, companies often set aside the role of technology because it requires a large capital investment. Large institutions that have been around for hundreds of years are hesitant to make that significant investment, but plenty of small players are happy to do so. And as a result, they play an active role in disrupting the industry. Technology has always impacted financial services, and it continues to do so.
OUR INSIGHT
The first thing we do to help our clients is to have a conversation with the people involved in these processes daily. They have the most exposure to the processes, the ins and outs and the challenges.
We serve as a medium to relay those concerns to leadership or project sponsors. We put together process maps to detail to leadership what each process looks like from a granular level to a more organizational level. There is a huge benefit in gaining a clear picture of what their processes are like, what problems people are facing, and any opportunities that can benefit that process or the organization on a wider scale.
While many clients may have similar problems, the reasons for these issues may differ because of a company’s structure or how its leadership approaches problems. That’s why it’s important to build relationships within these organizations to get to the root cause.
Technology
Meet Your Problem Solver
Arindam Pal | Senior Manager, Boston Team | Technology Solutions
THE BUSINESS PROBLEM
One of the things the feedback we receive shows is that most mid-tier clients are experiencing a lack of infrastructure or a lack of planning.
For example, a healthcare client may be building out an intense software development plan but has not considered how a new rollout will impact the lives of their patients and caregivers. In the healthcare space, there are also a lot of government regulations to consider. Our clients know a lot about the business area, but when it comes to planning around technology, there are numerous gaps.
When third parties are involved — such as when they need other vendors to build on top of previous technology — or they face unique challenges like changing regulations, it’s often not easy for clients to react to them.
In a typical work scenario, a business may run like clockwork, but when you add these changes, it can create problem areas in multiple layers, making it difficult to get to the root cause. For example, the Centers for Medicaid Services (CMS) may create a new regulation that forces companies to modernize the platform for electronic visit verification that caregivers have, but there is a lot of technology involved. The client may struggle to understand where it will go and how it will work with other systems.
OUR INSIGHT
Centric is extremely talented at bridging the gap between business ideas and pure technology development. We start with an assessment to understand the landscape, identifying major players — not only our clients but whatever external entities are present.
In the case of healthcare, for example, that could include state government or CMS. We gain an understanding of who does what through rapid-fire interviews with clients and stakeholders that happen over the course of a few workshops so we can create an assessment from many different dimensions. Then, we create a scorecard as a measure we build upon from a technology standpoint, while other Centric teams build out a capability matrix to see where the gaps are.
We understand that technology is only one component — many other issues are also happening. Working together, we create a delivery plan based on the client’s timeline, working backward to schedule everything to execute the plan to meet that deadline.
People
Meet Your Problem Solver
Amanda Lettiere | Senior Consultant, Boston Team | Operational Excellence
THE BUSINESS PROBLEM
I believe being transparent is one of our clients’ biggest challenges. Within a company, there is usually a lot of anecdotal evidence about what is broken or working well. But, no one has documented how the processes flow, where the pain points are, or taken advantage of any resources or subject matter experts to give them insight. A documented baseline is missing.
It is often mind-blowing for our clients once they understand the complexity of these problems. For example, different groups within the business may be experiencing the same pain points, but because they are not communicating with each other across teams, they are totally unaware that each is having the same issues.
When facing a change in how business is done — for example, employees moving to a hybrid, flexible work environment — they need to fully understand the challenges on the horizon to stay ahead of the curve.
OUR INSIGHT
Simply having a conversation with an organization’s people can help us shape the problem. We’re extremely good at taking in a ton of information, simplifying it, and visualizing it in a way best absorbed by clients. We do one-on-one interviews with folks with a low-touch approach through video interviews or in short time slots so as not to take up too much of our clients’ time. Then we put this information into a process map or visual tool to present our findings. We adapt our approach to work best for each client.
Industry
Meet Your Problem Solver
Gabe Lee | Manager, Boston Team | Operational Excellence, Financial Services
THE BUSINESS PROBLEM
A common problem with our financial services clients is a lack of focus on increasing operational efficiency. When it comes to their keeping-the-lights-on processes, which include a lot of transactional or operational work, there are a lot of manual efforts involved, and companies have not made the proper investment in improving those areas.
Previously, financial services companies focused on being stable and secure, but today, security in financial services is an expectation. For the millennial generation and younger, there needs to be a massive focus on ease of technology, ease of use, the speed of technology and how well it operates.
From my perspective, financial services clients will have to make a serious effort in identifying and realizing how they’ve operated and done business in the past is not going to cut it for future generations of customers.
Prior to the last five-plus years, it was okay if a transfer to another account took a few days or there was a delay in stock quotes. Customers weren’t looking at their iPhones every day to review stock performance. But that trend is shifting, and today’s customers are willing to sign up with riskier companies if they provide better iPhone experiences.
OUR INSIGHT
To combat this challenge, we interview a lot of the employees who handle mission-critical work at the client’s company to see how we can improve these processes. A lot of that work is still manual because it is considered a high-risk area, and companies are scared to touch or improve it. Nowadays, technology can reduce that risk tremendously.
The challenge on our part is to go in and perform the assessment, then support our recommendations to leadership on where they can automate, incorporate technology, and improve processing speed.
While I do not work in Centric Consulting’s technology arm, I understand what our other teams can provide. When necessary, I can suggest technology solutions like robotic process implementation (RPA) and more to improve their systems.
We partnered with Pharma Logistics to improve their technology and business processes, increasing fulfillment center processor throughput by 98 percent.