People of Perficient: Meet Rekha Bhardwaj, Lead Business Consultant

Rekha Bhardwaj is a lead business consultant at Perficient with a decade of experience in information technology. I recently sat down with her to learn more about a typical project in this role. I also learned what motivates her in her work. I loved hearing about how her team supports one another, and I’m sure you will too.

Rekha, thank you for joining me today. What does a typical project look like in your role as lead business consultant? How do you deliver solutions that meet all the client’s needs?

I am a lead business consultant in Perficient’s healthcare business unit. When I joined Perficient in March of 2021, I brought hope, positivity, dedication and around ten years of information technology experience spanning multiple domains – banking & financial services, education, non-profits, and healthcare.

At Perficient, I am continuing to grow my knowledge and experience in the healthcare industry. I am currently on a project with a large payer client. My team acknowledges the sincerity and dedication I put into every responsibility and task assigned to me. We contribute to each other’s growth constantly.

I work with some wonderfully compassionate and supportive people at Perficient.

I play a significant role in the product space, especially during the requirements and user acceptance testing phases. As soon as a project kicks off, I facilitate initial discovery meetings with the client to gather high-level information about the solution they want to build. I follow these meetings with deep-dive sessions that help me understand and document the following:

• Current state processes
• Pain points
• Automation needs
• Future state vision
• etc.

Rekha spending time with her son, Sameer.

I use several tools from my business analysis arsenal, depending on the need, to create artifacts, that are valuable to both business and technology teams. I am blessed to be appreciated by both teams for my creativity with the artifacts.

Once we are well into the requirements phase, I start converting the requirements into user stories. I review these with the business and technology teams and send the approved stories to the development team. While the technology team is busy developing the solution, I am getting prepared to put on the quality assurance hat.

When the development team is finished, I perform a round of initial testing to make sure the solution meets the requirements. Then, the business team performs a thorough UAT (User Acceptance Testing). I coordinate the UAT with the business and development teams. The UAT includes:

• Defect logging and resolution
• Re-deployment
• Re-testing

This ensures a fully functional solution that meets all business requirements.

Meet Another Lead Business Consultant:  People of Perficient: Wayne Ause, Lead Business Consultant

What motivates you in your role at Perficient? 

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I love being able to use the expertise I have acquired over the years in requirements gathering and documentation. Before I reach out to the client, there is prep work I must do. I plan what questions to ask to get the information I need and what tools to use during the meetings to balance being a questioner, a scribe, and an analyst. I very much appreciate the subject matter expertise I gain from these deep-dive meetings.

I value the trust and freedom I get from my Perficient team and the client team to facilitate and lead workstreams. The developed solution is as good (or as bad) as the captured requirements!

My team’s involvement and participation is key, and they never hesitate to acknowledge team members’ contributions.

I am so grateful for Perficient! I value the opportunity to represent Perficient to clients through my work. I get to learn so much more about the healthcare industry every day.

LEARN MORE: A Culture of Collaboration at Perficient

Why did you choose a career at our global digital consultancy?

Rekha’s kitten, Simba, with his favorite toy.

I was excited when I was offered this role by Perficient. My initial interactions, during the hiring period, with Priyal Patel (Director, Healthcare) and Michael Porter (Principal, Healthcare) were just amazing. The energy and warmth we exchanged made it easy to say yes! Their love and support continues, and I am super grateful for it.

What makes me stay is the creative satisfaction I get from the work I do and the desire to reciprocate love and support to my leader, Priyal, by being a strong and dependable member of her team.

I am proud to be working at Perficient. I am committed to the company and look forward to our collective growth.

What do diversity and inclusion mean to you, and why are they important to our culture at Perficient?

It is valuable that Perficient practices diversity and inclusion. I believe talent and experience supersedes gender, race, color, age, religion, disability, nationality, etc.

In fact, having a diverse set of talented employees adds to the beauty of the company culture.

I see it first-hand on my current project team. We all come from different areas to bring our contributions together into one culturally and professionally diverse team. It is like we are all different colored paints, and each one is uniquely contributing to form a beautiful painting. It feels good to be included!

READ MORE: DEI in Healthcare

Healthcare Leaders Turn to Us

Our healthcare practice is comprised of experts who understand the unique challenges facing the industry. The 10 largest health systems and 10 largest health insurers in the U.S. have counted on us to support their end-to-end digital success. Modern Healthcare has also recognized us as the fourth largest healthcare IT consulting firm.

We bring pragmatic, strategically-grounded know-how to our clients’ initiatives. And our work gets attention – not only by industry groups that recognize and award our work but also by top technology partners that know our teams will reliably deliver complex, game-changing implementations. Most importantly, our clients demonstrate their trust in us by partnering with us again and again. We are incredibly proud of our 90% repeat business rate because it represents the trust and collaborative culture that we work so hard to build every day within our teams and with every client.

With more than 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Perficient is a trusted, end-to-end, global digital consultancy.

SEE MORE PEOPLE OF PERFICIENT