Client Success

Client Context:
Our client, a technology development company, struggled to adopt new generative AI technologies. Despite investing in licenses for several platforms, developer and analyst usage remained low, limiting the perceived benefits of their investment. They needed a partner to accelerate AI integration and demonstrate tangible value.

Our Approach:
We conducted a comprehensive assessment of the development organization, including interviews, observation, and analysis of their data and development artifacts. Our initial findings quickly identified “quick win” areas where we could immediately demonstrate meaningful benefits to developers. We also proposed tool changes to enable the use of generative AI for new user segments.

A key part of our approach involved implementing “AI Guilds.” These brought together key and respected development team members, empowering them to “own” driving benefits from AI and run structured experiments with the tools as part of their daily work.

Key Outputs:

The establishment of AI Guilds transformed interest in generative AI work, making membership a highly desirable role benefit.

AI approaches matured within the Guilds gained rapid adoption as they spread to the broader development team.

Teams demonstrated a new passion for exploring the boundaries of the tools’ capabilities, creating internal spaces to share ideas and experiences.

Key Outcomes:

After a 3-month engagement, the company achieved a 60% improvement in AI tool adoption across their development organization.

Measurable quality improvements in business requirement and testing artifacts were observed.

Achieved a 20% increase in test coverage for their core platform.

Unit test results showed a 25% improvement in code quality, laying a strong foundation for future development throughput gains.

Client Context:
A major company secured a critical acquisition, but the deal hinged on a complex, high-risk commitment: migrating all acquired data to their existing systems simultaneously with the acquisition’s close. This demanded an enormous, synchronized effort, with immense strategic and operational risk tied to the success of the data migration.

Our Approach:
We partnered with the client during their due diligence phase to thoroughly assess the scale and viability of this complex migration. Our approach focused on structured planning and execution:

Establishing base guiding principles to streamline decision-making across the program.

Dividing the immense workload into specialized workstreams, aligned with the organization’s existing knowledge silos.

Implementing a strict project cadence across all workstreams to drive visibility and enable rapid issue escalation.

Key Outputs:

A meticulously designed migration project structure tailored for a high-risk, high-volume data transfer.

Established clear decision-making frameworks and communication protocols to ensure alignment across diverse organizational silos.

A transparent project tracking system that provided real-time visibility into progress and potential roadblocks.

Key Outcomes:

Despite the enormous risks involved, our deliberate project structure and delivery approach enabled each workstream to execute independently yet collaboratively toward the common goal.

The result was a successful “close and convert” event, with over 99.7% of all data automatically converted to the client’s systems precisely at the time of the acquisition’s close. This critical success mitigated significant operational and financial risks, allowing the acquisition to proceed seamlessly.

Client Context:
Our client, a manufacturer of retail displays, faced significant challenges with their core technologies. Their decade-old ERP platform, combined with dozens of side systems and external databases, had created a fragmented patchwork of business data and disconnected processes, hindering continued growth.

Our Approach:
We worked collaboratively across the entire business, from sales and marketing to design, manufacturing, and finance, to map key business processes. Our goal was to understand the critical flow of information and data throughout the organization. We then partnered with the internal IT team to assess the existing patchwork of systems and how they supported (or didn’t support) these processes.

Our engagement included:

Designing an optimized “North Star” vision for an ideal, integrated solution.

Leading a procurement process to source a new ERP platform capable of delivering this foundational vision.

Key Outputs:

A successfully designed “to-be” process and accompanying guiding principles.

Achieved executive buy-in necessary for the successful completion of the implementation.

Mentored and coached the internal IT team to significantly grow their capabilities for the self-completion of the implementation.

Supported the contracting for the new technology platform and implementation partner.

Key Outcomes:

Through our work to align all parts of the organization and grow internal IT capabilities, our client successfully implemented their new ERP system on time and on budget with minimal direct engagement from our team.

This strong outcome was directly attributed to the strength of the upfront planning and structured foundational work we completed.

Client Context:
A Regional Government’s Economic Development team aimed to boost the visibility of their region’s manufacturing industry. They sought a partner to develop compelling visual data, highlighting local companies’ capabilities and supporting key industry groups in international conferences and trade shows.

Our Approach:
We partnered with a local data company, leveraging their technology to summarize and visualize relevant information. Our process involved:

Collecting all available data from industry associations, regional sources, and public company information.

Augmenting this data with in-depth interviews with key industry leaders, association heads, and company representatives.
This diligence ensured a complete understanding of the manufacturing industry’s language, capabilities, and growth areas within the Region.

Key Outputs:

The resulting data visualizations and summaries created the foundation for strong, new industry marketing material.

These materials were delivered in both digital and print forms, effectively highlighting the strength and capabilities of the region’s manufacturing industry and its companies at trade shows and conferences.

Our diligence ensured the data and summaries were both relevant and compelling in a competitive industry landscape.

Key Outcomes:

The marketing materials produced from our data generated an immediate 25% improvement in sales leads and opportunities from the three major trade shows and conferences attended directly after our project’s completion.

Client Context:
Our client faced a critical situation with a new product technology platform implementation. After over 18 months, the program was severely off track, significantly over budget, and destined to miss crucial internal and external deadlines. Industry regulators were growing concerned, and a strategic acquisition, dependent on this project’s success, hung precariously in the balance. We were brought in to lead an urgent program recovery.

Our Approach:
We moved swiftly to understand the program’s true status, conducting cross-workstream interviews and reviewing all progress. Our findings revealed a project in complete disarray, with teams fearful of reporting actual status due to potential repercussions.

Our immediate actions included:

Removing key leadership resources that were hindering progress.

Implementing a rigid cadence of daily project reviews to drive transparency.

Establishing transparent reporting to bring the true program status to light.

Working with each individual workstream to review scope and key decisions.

Building collaborative “pods” to inject agile practices into the work.

Most importantly, driving uncomfortable, yet vital, discussions with executive leadership to make critical trade-off decisions, giving the project a genuine opportunity for success.

Key Outputs:

Our project delivery process and pod structure immediately fostered a culture of open communication and collaboration, encouraging direct discussion of problems and swift escalation of issues requiring executive attention.

A revised “definition of success” was established, enabling appropriate and realistic communications with regulators and external partners.

Key Outcomes:

We successfully completed the project, achieving alignment with critical regulatory dates and supporting the related acquisition as planned.

While the success criteria needed significant revision – including a substantial investment in manual product operations teams for the medium term to handle technical complexities that could not be resolved before implementation – our project recovery was ultimately deemed a “raving success” by the executive team, achieving the core business objectives amidst extreme pressure.

Client Context:
Our client, an imaging platform provider, traditionally specialized in highly customized commercial imaging equipment. They embarked on a new product concept relying heavily on commercial off-the-shelf components to significantly drive down price. We were contracted as project leaders to guide this unique product development to completion, with a looming defense department demonstration approaching.

Our Approach:
We quickly assessed the project’s current state, identifying key issues blocking progress. Our analysis revealed significant “over-engineering” rooted in traditional custom development, alongside high standards for component success that were misaligned with the new product’s lower-end market target.

We leveraged rapid prototyping approaches, unique “assumption breaking” exercises, and audacious, time-based deadlines to drive new thinking and break project logjams. This strategic shift enabled a collaborative approach to tackling complex challenges.

Key Outputs:

Leveraging low-fidelity prototyping to break down complexity stemming from detailed design issues.

Building collaborative approaches between competing departments (mechanical, systems, and electrical engineering teams) to resolve complex power and systems challenges.

Developing and implementing a key set of guiding principles and decision frameworks to align project groups with the new product’s market needs.

Key Outcomes:

Our unique rapid prototyping approach drove a complete physical redesign of the product in just two weeks (the original design had taken six months).

Collaborative solutioning enabled teams to push key electrical and physical components to manufacturing three weeks ahead of schedule, creating valuable timeline slack.

Ultimately, our project leadership resulted in the successful completion of the demonstration unit in time for the scheduled defense department event.

This success directly led to an initial sales contract for five units, marking a strong market entry for the new product.