Our goal at Centric Consulting is to solve problems your organization faces with business and technology solutions designed for your success. Meet your problem solvers from Charlotte who always strive to deliver an unmatched experience just for you.
While helping find solutions to our clients’ toughest problems, we’ve learned a thing or two. In this blog series, we share insights from our Charlotte team of seasoned problem solvers about overcoming today’s business, technology and industry challenges.
Business
Meet Your Problem Solver
Tara Pottow | Manager, Charlotte Team | Business Consulting Services
THE BUSINESS PROBLEM
One of the issues businesses face today is aligning their operating models, having their processes standardized, streamlined and aligned in the right areas so that the organization is structured to support their goals.
For example, we recently helped a client determine the strategy and identity of a newly formed functional group. Once they determined who they would be as an organization, they had to decide how all of the different processes within the organization would work together to achieve that group’s function.
OUR INSIGHT
We were able to go in and validate where their operating model needed to go and document the processes to the point where they could bring in technology to streamline those processes. The most important thing was to define the different roles and determine where the handoffs were – to look at it holistically to truly streamline the process and know where the processes were at all times.
To do this, we talked to the people doing those jobs every day. They know what works, where the pain points are, where there are gray areas and boundaries, and what is not working well. We not only talked to the stakeholders, but we had collaborative working sessions as a cross-functional group to hash out details and look at the process as a whole. We looked at each function, how they impacted other functions, and where they needed support from other areas to holistically support the process.
The question, now and in the future, is how do companies get out of the weeds and look at what they are doing holistically. How does one group affect groups in other areas? We need to get rid of silos, but that’s a challenge since everyone is already doing a job that takes up a lot of time, which requires additional time to get people where they need to be.
We can help by providing assessments to demonstrate where businesses can make improvements and show them how to right-size those solution. What works for one group may not work for another group.
Technology
Meet Your Problem Solver
Matt Laffoon | Local Data & Analytics and Technology Practice Lead, Charlotte Team | Cloud Architecture and Tech Solutions
THE BUSINESS PROBLEM
One of the difficulties many of our clients face is trying to get approval or funding for a technology concept but having to demonstrate the value of the idea before they can get the funding to move forward. Not only do they need to have the funds already available to do a demo, but demoing often is a project in itself, and many take on too much trying to get buy-in on the investment.
For example, we had a client that undertook numerous acquisitions and wanted to create a data warehouse to store all of the data from these different companies so they could show it in a unified, single lens. Before they could do this, they had to get permission from the board, but the board needed proof there was valuable data within these companies from the beginning.
Many companies struggle with this cart-before-the-horse scenario. They need to be able to run reports to demonstrate good data across different organizations. But putting something like that together is often a bigger project than they can get approval for. To show the value, they need to do the project. To do the project, they need to show value first.
OUR INSIGHT
We work with clients to help them define a single-use case that truly means something to the business. What is a question they don’t have an answer to today that brings business value? Then we help them focus on that question and develop a core set of fields or requirements to get that information from all the different acquisitions and pull it into a single place. By doing that, we show the value of the data and build excitement around how the company can use it to answer business-value questions.
We don’t go charging in with a technology-only approach, which is a temptation for a lot of other companies. They take what the client said they wanted at face value, a quickly created data warehouse.
We take a step back and combine business consulting with technology consulting to determine what problems we need to solve and what is preventing the business from being its best. We do these very high-value, proof-of-concept assessments to answer those questions instead of doing the entire project out of the gate.
As newer technologies become available, companies are realizing the tools they want to implement in the future are only as good as the data they have. If proof-of-concept proves the data is bad, they have to clean it up before investing in a data warehouse. We have the capabilities to not only clean the data, but we understand the processes that create bad data. We help our clients walk through the full creation of data and how they can manage it.
Industry
Meet Your Problem Solver
Rob Gonci | Senior Manager, Charlotte Team | Financial Services
THE BUSINESS PROBLEM
One of the most common issues I see facing clients is that they have all undergone — or continue to undergo — tremendous change. I work with many financial services clients that struggle to keep up with the numerous regulatory, personnel, strategy technology and digital changes they face.
As a result, their three-to-five-year plans are irrelevant, and their one-year plan is facing constant pressure and revision. Employees are suffering from change fatigue and are questioning if the company is doing the right things because it feels like things could be better.
OUR INSIGHT
We work with our clients on strategy, operational excellence and optimizing data and analytics to provide them with the insight they need to create a plan for their future. Depending on the client, this could mean taking advantage of process improvements, digital offerings or possibly AI to get that insight. The result restores value to tactical plans and brings companies alive.
The company feels more nimble because they’ve got something they can discuss and communicate. It’s not a “set it and forget it” strategic plan. We help them control the change, which results in better alignment, better internal communications and hopefully a better client experience.
The challenges of changing technology, productivity and employee engagement are not going away soon. We help firms overcome their own biases and truly identify the pain points and opportunities for their companies. We’re unbiased when we meet with them, and I think that’s refreshing for them.
We also have the expertise to build an operational, client, employee and technology roadmap customized to them, and we can add our knowledge of digital, AI, robotics and other solutions. We can implement these solutions quickly and successfully at a value clients can’t find anywhere else.
We partnered with Pharma Logistics to improve technology and business processes. Learn how they increased fulfillment center processor throughput by 98 percent.
