The L&D Tech Ecosystem is a group of interrelated tools, assets, platforms, and networks to help our colleagues in LatAm (México, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay) learn and develop themselves. The idea behind the Tech Ecosystem describes a strong and comprehensive landscape full of resources and educational tools that encourage colleagues to learn tech abilities, sharpen and keep updated their skills, contributing to their upskilling and reskilling.

Taking the Lead in Digital Transformation

This approach contributes to Perficient’s success in leading digital transformation.

Perficient is a global digital consultancy transforming how leading enterprises and biggest brands connect with customers and grow their businesses. Our teams bring an end-to-end approach to digital transformation through our comprehensive portfolio of digital solutions.

With unparalleled strategy, creativity, and technology capabilities, we bring big thinking and innovative ideas, along with a practical approach, to help the world’s largest enterprises and brands succeed. Our teams span national, industry, and geo business units across nearly 40 global locations and deliver compelling digital experiences for our customers.

To develop a solid portfolio of digital solutions and unleash creativity and innovation, we broaden our capabilities, expand our knowledge, and take the thought leadership pathway.

A Way of Working in Our Technical Capabilities

We have multiple ways of improving our technical capabilities. One of them, which has proven to be highly relevant, is the way that the L&D LatAm team talks to the business. At Perficient LatAm, L&D is part of the Tech Team. That means that our learning strategy and decisions are made with a technological mindset, allowing us to align the strategy with the execution in the learning and development dimension.

Making a Difference

Aligning goals, devising and co-creating L&D strategy with the Tech Team was a big bet, but after we did it, we immediately realized it was a game-changer move. It allowed us to improve the technological ecosystem and make a difference by moving even faster than we did in the past. As we moved forward, conversations between L&D and Tech became more straightforward, more frequent, and exclusively tech-oriented. L&D rapidly incorporated the tech mindset, managing to grasp the business strategy and needs clearly and without effort.

The Impact on Our People

The move also had a great impact on our people. After some months of working this way, we realized that colleagues were noticing the learning opportunities of the Tech Ecosystem to improve and grow as professionals. They quickly saw the benefits and started to take advantage of all the learning assets, easily identifying the resources and support to learn, develop, and get certified. Therefore, people started to learn and get certified at an unprecedented pace.

Final Thoughts

Aligning goals and devising and co-creating L&D strategies with the Tech Team proved to be a faster and easier way to progress. This pathway has proven to be a game changer with a tremendous impact on business and people. The L&D Tech Ecosystem demonstrated to be a highly valued tool for faster progress. Our boldly advanced technical capabilities became even more robust and burst with health. Certifications started to go to the sky, meaning that not only were colleagues learning and improving their careers but also that Perficient strengthened their technical capabilities, adding accredited skills to our solutions portfolio. As a final thought, this alliance between L&D and Tech Team has shown us to be a win-win strategy to drive growth for everyone.

What should an AI business strategy be, and how should it implement AI tooling? Many entities struggle, finding cost, security, and benefits failing to square. Problems like the inability to collect and mobilize internal data, and cost/workflow hurdles with years of work hold companies back. If desiring a custom implementation leveraging the power of AI and minimizing those pitfalls, Perficient can help.

However, the landscape shifted in two significant ways over the last couple months, with OpenAI releasing ChatGPT Enterprise, and Microsoft enacting strong legal protections for its tooling. This enables a practical, powerful strategy:

Turn it all on.

No Implementation, All Benefit

Data strategists argue that a company’s propriety data is important to integrate with AI. However, there are massive benefits from AI, regardless of integration.

ChatGPT had 100 million users in January, 2-3 months after release. Released soon after were Bard, Claude, and Bing. Those using AI — only the chatbots — could be closing in on 400 million.

The internet took eleven years  to achieve 400 million users. This implies that AI is instantly useful, and the upfront work required to make it accessible has surpassed the inflection point. A Harvard study validates this hypothesis.

An examination from the university found that a group of consultants completed tasks 25% faster with 40% higher quality when using ChatGPT-4. With the flip of a switch, an employee gains a 25% productivity boost, and a near 50% increase in output quality. Importantly, ChatGPT did not have access to propriety data other than what the consultant gave it while prompting, meaning that this increase in productivity is not based on expensive data integration processes.

Security, Legality, Pricing

If the implementation and processing is not on premise, how secure is it, what kind of legal protections exist, and how much will it cost?

Security

Security is extremely important, and most major players in Enterprise AI capabilities promise the highest compliance and protocols available. Microsoft’s Azure cloud, and offerings like M365 are already industry standards and widely adopted. Copilot, Bing Chat Enterprise, and everything else AI-driven Microsoft offers is held to the same standard and kept within the Microsoft Compliance Boundary. ChatGPT for enterprise is certified to the same standard, offering SOC 2 compliance, AES 256 encryption and TLS 1.2+.

Neither Microsoft nor OpenAI keep the data or use the data to train. ‘Data’ encompasses both inputs and outputs.

Legality

Microsoft announced that they now legally protect everything their AI tools output. This includes Teams Copilot, Github Copilot, Bing Chat, and everything else Microsoft offers with AI. If a client or customer takes issue with something the AI created, organizations are not responsible, Microsoft is. OpenAI has not made promises around legal protection at the time of this writing.

Pricing

Currently, enabling the Microsoft stack comes at a price of 30/person/month. ChatGPT for Enterprise is unlikely to be much cheaper. Is this price quantifiably justified?

The Harvard study indicated that across a group of over 700 consultants, they averaged 25% higher output and 40% higher quality. As an average, this ensures that it does not take an expert user to achieve results, making the cost easily covered by the gained output.

Justification

The low end for the average billable consultant is $150. Assuming a lower utilization of 65%, this consultant would bill roughly $200,000 in a year. If they only managed to achieve a 15% boost from AI tooling, this translates to an additional $30,000 a year in productivity. This does not include the effect that an increase in quality would also have on billable rates and ability.

In contrast, the investment is $360 a year. Even if organization-wide access is not feasible, allowing individuals to opt in makes a valuable investment. The future of knowledge work is AI-assisted, and organizations that move first will find immediate advantage.

Closing Thoughts

Integrating new technology into an existing workforce is tough. AI enables companies to avoid that headache altogether, offering out of the box tools with enormous benefit.

Not all workers or tasks benefit at the same level from machine integration, but the data indicate rarely seen and immediate benefits for companies that can identify even a fraction of the workers and tasks that will. Unlike technologies in the past, the approach should not be “wait and see” but start and find.

If you enjoyed reading this, Drew Taylor often writes about AI, from using it in the workforce to the theory of singularity.

I’ve been using the Eisenhower Quadrants of Productivity with my teams for many years now. You may also hear it called the “Eisenhower Decision Matrix” or the “Eisenhower Box”. It is a method that helps people understand the differences between “urgent” and “important” tasks. You can use it to create principles on how to best manage time as an individual or as a team.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States, is quoted as saying, “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” Holding demanding roles like Commanding General in Europe during World War II and his two terms as President (1953-1961), he certainly had the need to figure out time management for the scores of people reporting to him. He found ways to reduce the unnecessary and focus efforts on what was truly important for his teams.

The Productivity Matrix

If you’ve been following my blog posts, you’ll know that intentionality is important to me. I love using the Eisenhower Quadrants of Productivity because it gives an easy way to think about tasks so that you can intentionally focus where you need to.

The graphic above shows the quadrants presented in a two-by-two grid where the Y-axis represents importance, and the X-axis represents urgency. You’ll notice that the top-left quadrant (Q1) is both urgent and important, the top-right quadrant (Q2) is important but not urgent, the bottom-left quadrant (Q3) is urgent but not important, and the bottom-right quadrant (Q4) is neither urgent nor important.

Interpretations – What Does it Mean?

There are several common interpretations of the quadrants of productivity. You’ll often see them labeled as Do Now (Q1), Schedule (Q2), Delegate (Q3), and Remove (Q4). Or some people prefer Reduce (Q1), Decide (Q2), Automate (Q3), and Delete (Q4). You may find other variations on it too. These may seem like subtle differences, but the language used and the interpretation can cause teams to prioritize differently.

My preferred interpretation is based on Eisenhower’s quote listed at the beginning of this article. It tells us that things that are urgent are seldom important. In the graphic above, I use Fire Fighting (Q1), Productive Time (Q2), Distraction (Q3), and Down Time (Q4).

I like to view Q1 and Q4 as both needing to reduce time and effort, which is why they are shown with just 5% of your recommended time on each. This may make you nervous about Q1 because it is also considered important. It screams for your attention. But my view is that fighting fires is a terrible place to spend a large amount of your time. Your attention is far too valuable to be chasing every urgency placed in front of you.

I view Q2 as the epitome of productivity and recommend 75% of your time be used here. The important things that are not urgent are where you’ll find prevention, innovation, experimentation, planning, and strategy. These are the things that can reduce or remove unwanted urgency. Q2 is where you’ll find competitive advantage.

That leaves Q3 where I recommend the remaining 15% of your time. This may seem odd given that it is defined as not important. Q1 is important but only receives 5% of your time. This is the difference between Q1 being unintentional urgency and Q3 being intentionally urgent on someone else’s behalf. I think it is worthwhile to help others if it isn’t stopping time on Q2 activities.

Understanding Urgency

Q1 and Q3 are both urgent quadrants.

Q1 is also important, so it includes things like crisis management, triage, and production-down scenarios. These are things that cannot be ignored, they need to be fixed now.

Q3 is urgent but not important. This includes other people’s priorities or helping with things that perhaps should be done by someone else. Sometimes these tasks keep you from focusing on the things that are truly important.

Understanding Importance

Q1 and Q2 are both important quadrants.

Q1 is also urgent, but for those who view Q1 as items to do first, I’d argue that you’ll find far too many hours being spent fighting fires. Consider that Q1’s importance only comes from its urgency. There will always be a new top priority that gets wedged in under the guise of urgency. The urgent becomes detrimental if it rules for too long.

Q2 is not urgent, and some view it simply as tasks to be scheduled. I disagree. I view Q2 as the area you should intentionally spend the most time. Its lack of urgency doesn’t reduce its value. In my experience, Q2 is the only quadrant that is truly important. You must spend time in Q2 to find ways to reduce Q1 and Q3 activity. My post on human biases addresses this as well.

It may be helpful to keep in mind that important things don’t always have to be perfect. Innovation can be a messy thing at first with trial and error. Don’t let the importance get bogged down with a desire to make it perfect in the first iteration.

Finding Optimal Productivity

You can’t avoid the urgent, but you can break the vicious cycle. Intentionality toward your use of these productivity quadrants can help. Use the matrix here to help yourself identify what’s truly important and make sure you regularly put time toward them.

If you find yourself endlessly fighting fires in Q1, realize that you need to make some changes and get to a better place. Urgency should be the exception rather than the rule. You can use the 6 Areas that Stall Organizational Change to help identify what changes are needed to release the pressure and allow you to focus on quality Q2 time.

We haven’t talked much about Q4, which is neither important nor urgent. Some models suggest that you dispose of the time that falls here, getting as close to zero as possible. Some view it as leisure time or where procrastination lives. I think there is value in Q4 time to destress or to bond with others. In my view, it has its benefits, but you still want to intentionally control your time spent here.

Conclusion

You need to clearly see the differences between urgency and importance. For a business, is it better to fix every request as quickly as you can? Or is it better to explore strategy, experiment, and innovate?

These concepts can apply to your personal life too. You can easily get lost in the day-to-day thinking that you just need to get this done and tomorrow you’ll think long-term. But oftentimes you lose track of tomorrow. You get things done, but not the right things.

If you find yourself stuck with endless urgency, it may be the perfect time to reach out to your Perficient account manager for some extra help or use our contact form to begin a conversation to help get you to the important goals.

More and more with tech Project Managers, we’re seeing a multi-discipline approach to the role, ditching the “old ways” of project management in favor of agility and adding extra value to the team.

One of these approaches is to be an analytical Project Manager, incorporating tactics from the typical Business Analyst role into day-to-day facilitation of the project.

I originally started at Perficient as a Business Analyst, transitioning into Project Management as I continued in my career. I carried over this BA mindset into my management style, which I found gave me an edge for impressing clients and getting more value out of my workday.

Below are some of the lessons I’ve learned during my career on approaching project management from an analyst perspective – try them out on your project and see the difference!

Identify Patterns Within Project Metrics

Your project will be defined in some metric(s) of success – it could be % complete for a website build, or amount migrated for a content migration. Regularly analyzing these metrics is extremely beneficial for noting the team’s strengths / weaknesses and creating a plan for improving productivity.

Don’t just look at high-level monthly figures – you can use your team’s backlog management software (like Azure DevOps or Jira) to configure a dashboard for yourself to see weekly progress, when milestones are hit, and individual team contributions.

You should be tracking these metrics as your team moves through the project and analyzing progress for any patterns or surprises. If there is a lull in progress on a given week, think about the factors that could contribute to this – folks on PTO, work difficulty, tool familiarity, etc. If there are improvements to be made, raise them to the team & implement as soon as possible.

This doesn’t necessarily need to be shielded from the client – if your team is actively looking for and remediating any weaknesses to provide more value, your client will likely be pleased with your transparency and willingness to further improve on their behalf.

Document New & Repeatable Processes

Requirements documentation isn’t solely for technical processes – it can be used in project management too. One of the best things you can do as a PM is document, document, document. If you find that you keep answering the same questions about the same processes (onboarding, timecard submittal, etc.), document that process in a wiki or shared repository where you can direct your team when they ask.

This is an extremely beneficial practice for client-side processes as well – if you’re able to document and educate client team members on an updated business process, you become the SME for that topic. Anywhere you can help your client do less work, you’re providing value.

Example: On a recent healthcare engagement, I (as the PM) created documentation & how-to videos on using a newly rolled-out client timecard submittal process and shared it with our client team. They continue to use that documentation and reference it to their coworkers outside of our team.

Sync With a Team Member for a Quick Walkthrough of the Solution Early On

In my time as a Project Manager, I’ve found greater success on my projects when I’m more familiar technically with our solution & development tools. As a PM, you don’t necessarily need extensive technical knowledge – this is where Business Analyst thinking comes in. Sync with one of your BA or technical team members for an overview of the solution you are working on: see an example of the requirements documentation your team is producing, understand the types of tasks the dev team has, and get familiar with the jargon. When you have a good grasp of the technical work your team is doing, you can more confidently discuss the project with your client team, and you increase your value as the go-to for project questions & needs.

Wrapping Up…

There are many project management strategies out there – finding what fits your PM style & team is key. Try out the above tips, see what works for you, and always be looking for ways to improve.

For more tips on project management, make sure to check out this post: 5 Time Management Strategies to Implement as a Project Manager

Content and commerce – it’s no longer just a trend that you hear in the industry where only a few far between may understand what it is. Now, it’s so much more than a buzzword, especially in today’s evolving digital landscape. It’s an approach, a mindset, and most importantly, an organizational strategy that takes your manufacturing business to the next level of maturity.

In this blog, we’ll discuss how content & commerce can be leveraged across your organization to not only build better relationships with your customers, but improve processes, people, and technology from within your organization for now and the future.

What is a Content & Commerce Approach?

From our perspective, and in the simplest of terms, content & commerce occurs when companies align the information that people need and want to make informed decisions to know if they’re purchasing the right product. Meaning, that as a manufacturer, you understand what your buyers want and need throughout their buying journey and can align on certain objectives to deliver on these two expectations.

But to do that effectively, your organization must pause and look inward. It is one thing to know what your customers need and want, but you must start building the solution from within, and I don’t just mean so you can reach the goal of helping your customers. In fact, this approach has much more impact on the entire structure of your company, including how you formulate your goals, strategy, and competencies.

To begin, you might consider doing the following for your organization:

• Grasping and honing in on a level of business support and buy-in
• Evaluating which technology, you should leverage as your first step in this initiative
• Deciding how you’re going to implement the first two decisions in your go-to-market strategy

These are the first steps that you and everyone across your business must understand and prepare for, as they will shift your organization to act in a way that’s much more agile, seamless, and most importantly – successful.

Why Digital Commerce is the First Step to Your Content & Commerce Approach

To help elevate and mature your business, you must ask yourself, “What are we doing that makes it hard for our customers to do business with us?” To answer this, you’ve got to ensure that everyone at your company is looking at content & commerce, thinking of the buying journey, and making sure that marketing, sales, and technology are working together on your strategy. Often, that strategy has everything to do with how your company looks at and leverages digital commerce, especially as a manufacturer.

This sounds like it might be a heavy task to complete – and it could be – but before you worry, let’s look at how content & commerce has evolved over time, and why it’s not as intimidating as it might be.

The Evolution of the Content & Commerce Approach

This approach once was regarded as simply bringing your Content Management System (CMS) and commerce platforms together to create a singular experience for customers. In other words, leverage headless commerce and the concept of microservices to connect two separate technologies.

The purpose of this approach is to present the ability to buy a product at the moment of interest regardless of where that is in the buyer’s journey. This concept still holds true, but what is also required is a broader consideration of how sales and marketing interact and how the product teams fit into the decision process. It is important for organizations to know that a certain level of maturity is required to really be successful with content and commerce. With today’s digital environment, the approach has become more intricate to meet both business and customer expectations.

The focus is now on creating a personalized experience that provides content in the right setting and moment to impact conversion. This establishes the need for businesses to create individual roles and processes to accomplish this demand. It very much sounds like a tall order, and you’ll have to address data and operational challenges, such as:

• Breaking down departmental silos
• Addressing disconnected processes
• Effectively maintaining systems, shared resources, and processes implemented
• Aligning efforts among several teams within your organization
• Implementing new tools, resources, and strategy

And most importantly – you must know and maintain the goal you’d like to achieve for your organization and as a manufacturer, analyze and determine if your current internal resources can help you in your content and commerce approach, and ensure your IT, marketing, and C-Level leadership bought into the approach.

Solutions that Enable Content and Commerce

By now, you already know that to have an effective content and commerce approach to your organization, your company must break down silos from within to not just deliver a great customer experience but also align your teams, processes, and technologies to overcome obstacles as you respond to real-time business demands.

Thankfully, our team of experts at Perficient put together a 10-part video series that highlights six different solutions to focus on with your content and commerce approach, and they’re the following:

• Product information and enrichment, and customer data
• Search
• Strategy
• Digital Marketing
• Customer journeys
• Organizational change management (OCM)

Let’s go over each of these.

Product Enrichment and Information, and Customer Data

Companies must think and act upon data with a mature effort – which is not something that any organization, not just manufacturers, can become overnight. There are many steps to becoming digitally mature, especially when it comes to product enrichment and managing customer and product data.

Product data is insufficient or structured correctly if it is only managed through an enterprise resource system (ERP). You cannot effectively sell your products this way, especially from an ecommerce perspective. Mature organizations that utilize a content & commerce approach identify multiple distinctive characteristics when it comes to their products, such as product name that a customer will understand, description, key attributes of the product, and product image. Not only that but they are also dedicated to growing and thinking of methods that will enhance their product data further as they continue to grow.

It is important to note that it’s not something you plan to do one time only from a customer and product perspective, it’s going to extend through multiple phases and growing data sets. Committed, mature manufacturers draw strong conclusions to build their next steps to provide the right information to their customers at the right time.

Site Search

Take a step back and think about this question, what is the most personalized website you go to when you want to search for something? Yes, it’s Google. Everything is directly attributed or targeted towards you as an individual when you conduct that search online. But search is used in several different ways – and site search specifically determines what is most relevant to the user and how we present it to them.

Site search is not just an add-on item, it is a high-level initiative that can drive conversions and revenue. Site search can get so nitty gritty that systems can determine if certain products and users are alike. When we talk about commerce, we are doing the exact same thing. If we make it about you as an individual, then you are more likely to buy more because the messaging and content seems to speak to you directly. Not only does this give your user the best result, but it also optimizes your business in a way that ensures you display the right choice – every time.

Strategy

The reality is that strategy must be established from the jump, though often time, it’s not. The strategy has often received a bad reputation when it is really the strongest asset to your content and commerce approach. It is true, and we often say that strategy without execution is a daydream, but execution without strategy is a nightmare.

Strategy defines how your company is going to meet the expectations of your customer and determine what resources are available to your organization to operate successfully. And it plays an even more significant role when your organization decides to pursue digital commerce, as it is much different from the traditional, physical sales channel that most companies are used to. Selling in the physical channel has become siloed and outdated, with little diversity in sharing products. With a digital channel, you have a greater chance of meeting your customer goal due to the variety of ways you can show and promote your products online.

Digital Marketing

Personalized content is a key driver behind the commerce experience and is a strong combination of search (which we spoke briefly about earlier) and digital marketing. It’s important for both marketing and business leaders to have these aligned with one another to deliver the perfect online experience that customers are looking for. And with this comes understanding your audience and where they are on their buying journeys. When your business can review your current customer’s buying experience, take it. You might find hidden gaps or opportunities that could drastically improve the customer experience.

Customer Journeys

With your content & commerce approach, it’s important you remain customer obsessed. To become customer-obsessed, you must put the customer at the center and understand their needs, wants, and expectations. You must also understand the actions they take to engage with your business. What matters most to your customer is what you need to deliver – being customer obsessed is a business principle.

Your content and commerce approach will allow you to break down the barriers that make it difficult for customers to work with your business. Not only will that make your customers happy, but your organization will grow from it in a positive way by becoming more agile to adapt to quick-shifting events, greater at creating and maintaining customer relationships, and improving your go-to-market strategy.

OCM

Think about what you need to have in place to make everything work at all. It’s a lot to consider, and it can become overwhelming if you do not know where to start. Your organizational change management strategy (OCM) will assist you with putting a plan in place for various parts of your business, such as customer research and evaluation, requirements gathering, or technology implementation, and will later help these subjects feed into each other more naturally.

You have got to have your internal experiences aligned with each other around a strategy for any client engagement to be effectively executed. You want to create a work culture where your people feel readily prepared to accept change in a company to meet the expectations of the digital-first customer.

How Perficient Can Help You With Content & Commerce

Our content & commerce experts at Perficient have the knowledge and experience regarding implementation specifics of this very approach. Though it might vary by manufacturer, we know how to efficiently help you through this evolution incrementally through our 10-part video series.

Our content & commerce video series discusses the business and technology impacts of the approach, what steps you’ll need to take to be successful, how you can make informed decisions in your digital journey, and overall, strengthen internal processes and relationships with your customers.

Visit our content & commerce content hub for more information on the series and the concept of the approach. If you’re feeling ready to take the next steps in your content & commerce approach, then contact our experts today to set up a meeting.

The term “strategy” can often come off daunting for many people, but in reality, it’s the opposite of daunting. In fact, it’s really quite opportunistic, especially for your company. Your strategy is the foundational piece you need to develop to ensure that your technology, processes, and objectives are aligned to meet customer needs and mature as a company.

Episode #7: The Importance of Strategy in Content and Commerce

In this episode, Karie Daudt, Director of Commerce Strategy, and Kim Williams-Czopeck, Director of Digital Strategy, discuss why manufacturers must focus their efforts on building out a strategy that meets every business objective and customer need, and how it applies to your content and commerce approach.

You’ll learn more about:

• The difference between strategy and execution
• How strategy applies to content and commerce
• Good customer experience starts with a good employee experience

What you can expect to see next

If you thought this blog post was exciting, then stay tuned for the rest of our content and commerce blog series. We’ll share our exciting content and commerce video series so you can learn more about what our experts at Perficient offer to help you with your content and commerce approach. Until the next installation, check out our content and commerce content hub.

For further questions, contact our experts today.

Peter Drucker said, “The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.” This is often the case when a new leader is hired, whether it’s a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief Customer Experience Officer (CCX0), or any other CxO. When making such a leadership change, the board or CEO is often looking for a change in strategy, direction, execution, or operations.

Reason #4: You’re Looking to or Hired a New CMO, CIO, or CXO

There are a couple of scenarios in which a change in leadership will trigger the evaluation or selection of a new digital experience platform. This first scenario is far more common and follows this pattern: A new CMO or CCXO will likely have responsibility for the company’s digital experiences, and their first initiative will be to develop an overall digital or customer experience strategy for the organization.

When we help an organization develop a strategy, we determine customer and business expectations and the current state of the technology, resources, and operations. Next, as we develop the vision and strategy, we identify gaps between future technology needs and the current state. When these gaps are significant, it’s time to evaluate new platforms.

Consider Another Scenario

When the new CxO is hired, they often want to bring in resources and systems with which they are most familiar and experienced and previously provided success. In this scenario, the leader arrives knowing that the existing system is not going to meet their needs, and replacing it with something better will be imperative. However, it is often not acceptable just to proclaim one platform as the new replacement without going through some formal evaluation or RFP process.

So, what should you do?

In either scenario, it is important to follow a sound process for selecting a new platform, as you should expect to use the system for at least five years. Our selection process starts with understanding and prioritizing requirements, then using those requirements to evaluate the major vendors in the market. After you narrow it down to a few vendors that will meet most of those requirements, experiencing hands-on demos to see the systems live and better understand how they work will be key in your decision-making.

You should also take into account the costs of the systems at this time. You may ask, “Why not evaluate costs for all vendors at the beginning?” While it’s not a bad thing to consider, the truth is that many vendors are reluctant to share costs without jumping into complicated sales processes. It’s not worth putting your business through that process if a vendor has no chance of meeting your requirements. You’ll be in good shape to make your final decision when you have all of your information on your leading contenders.

How We Can Help

To help you find the right platform, learn more about our Platform Selection Jumpstart, which helps your business by evaluating your technology needs and essential requirements to help you find and choose the right platform to alleviate your current issues and provide successful business outcomes in six weeks. In the meantime, stay tuned for the final installation of our #reasonstoreplatform series. For any questions, contact our customer experience experts today.

As the numbers of mergers and acquisitions continue to rise, the majority still fail to realize their intended value. Following best-practices and using third party support can help increase your chances of success. Perficient’s wide variety of tools and assets in the following eight capability categories help complement and drive the overall success of a M&A transaction throughout the entire M&A timeline. Here are some action items you should consider under each capability for each phase of the M&A timeline:

Strategy

• Pre-close/Due diligence: Consider strategic financial modeling, consolidated financial reporting roadmaps, persona & journey maps, and baseline KPIs.
• Close: Forecast impacts, evaluate journey maps, and assess KPI dashboards.
• Post-close: Continuously measure KPI success.
• So what? Work to assess financial impacts, minimize friction points, optimize member and employee experience, and iterate based on KPI re-assessment.

Business Architecture

• Pre-close/Due diligence: Consider ERP (SAP, Oracle, etc.), CPM (Oracle, OneStream, etc.), CRM (Salesforce, Adobe, etc.), mail, corporate portals, data engineering (warehouse), and interim/permanent platform.
• Close: Establish best practice recommendations, consolidated financials & management view, ROI valuation, north star, and shared cloud implementation.
• Post-close: Implement best practices, and operate/go-forward/sunset.
• So what? Get it right the first time, accelerate realization of platform harmonization, accelerate speed/security/agility, and reduce operational costs.

Member/Consumer Experience

• Pre-close/Due diligence: Review office, active directory/authentication, digital front door, corporate portals, brand/re-brand, etc.
• Close: Determine present go-forward architecture and re-branding.
• Post-close: Execute on the plan.
• So what? Operationalize best practices and accelerate your time to market.

Analytics & AI

• Pre-close/Due diligence: Consider insight gathering, organizational models (spans & layers) to optimize roles, skills, etc.
• Close: Perform insights review from analysis (e.g., assess operational KPI’s, trends, warning signs).
• Post-close: Provide consolidated financial results, ongoing reports, continuation of encapsulating data and making recommendations, and develop/implement action plans based on insights.
• So what? Save time identifying short lists of targets using AI methods, driving data driven decisions, and increasing your probability of success.

Managed Services

• Pre-close/Due diligence: Build Dev/SecOps, infrastructure/hosting, help desk, and disaster recovery.
• Close: Enable your service operations.
• Post-close: Consider run of show measurement, and adjustment.
• So what? Streamline your operations, lower your total cost of ownership, boost speed/agility/time to market, maximize uptime, and improve SLAs.

HCM/Change Management

• Pre-close/Due diligence: Perform current/future state organizational assessment and optimization guidance.
• Close: Provide communications rollout and change plan implementation while closing the deal.
• Post-close: Consider run of show and engagement surveys (OHI).
• So what? Retain your talent and optimize your organizational structure.

Agile Leadership

• Pre-close/Due diligence: Build M&A mobilization and Agile workstream alignment.
• Close: Enable your value stream execution.
• Post-close: Monitor and continue to use best practices.
• So what? Effectively enhance speed/predictability and promote best practices.

LEARN MORE: Why Healthcare Organizations are Missing the Mark in M&A

Healthcare M&A Successes

A large US healthcare organization turned to our business architecture capabilities when an acquisition left them struggling with a complex set of redundant, un-consolidated systems. By implementing a Pivotal application solution with Boomi, the reengineered data integration strategy consolidated its application portfolio and solved thousands of daily EDI/HL7 transactions. This consolidated solution saved time and resources. The automated PCF user onboarding process went from hours to less than a minute, and Purge application automation as part of CI/CD saved memory and disk resources.

A US health system turned to Perficeint’s analytics & AI services when acquisitions left them with multiple EHRs and non-integrated systems. We implemented data warehouse, data modeling, and analytics solutions. Dashboards delivered valuable insights on CMI, volume/discharge, readmissions, length-of-stay, revenue cycle and costing, and patient satisfaction. The solution provided harmonization of clinical and financial data across disparate systems, presenting a single, trusted enterprise view of data that powers informed business decisions.

A large medical device company used our member/consumer experience capabilities to consolidate disparate websites into a cohesive brand experience and optimize processes after an acquisition. Using Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) and Adobe Target, we created a new platform that integrated content from many websites and provides an exceptional UX for both internal and external sources. We consolidated content from 600+ websites, migrated more than 2 million records into the system, and migrated 16,000 E-manuals into AEM library for a seamless patient/phycisian/healthcare professional experience.

SEE ALSO: Healthcare M&A: Pillars of Success

Why Perficient?

Partner with Perficient to leverage our existing skills and assets within the context of an M&A transaction to help your organization succeed where so many others fail. Our business architecture capabilities pinpoint how technology best services the needs of your business, operations, customers, and brand. With our data & analytics expertise, we deliver early insights into the M&A transaction while minimizing risk. 

Our healthcare experts power process rationalization (e.g., corporate real estate, supply chain, purchasing, etc.). Program leadership brings enterprise-level know-how, built through our experience supporting the largest brands in the U.S. Our end-to-end capabilities combine a deep understanding of technology, architecture, and platforms, and we can bring your people and processes along as well.

I joined Perficient, an end-to-end global consultancy, last December. Let me explain why. The Strategy & Consulting team I joined is full of incredibly talented professionals. Some have been with the company for over a decade, while others have recently joined. Many of these folks came from the industry/client side of the business, which brings unique perspectives that are difficult to come across. I was also impressed by all the work we’ve done in automotive and our company’s desire to make an even more significant impact in the industry.

And, so, here I stand, alongside my passionate colleagues. At the end of the day, our goal is to bring our deep industry experience and broad portfolio of technology and digital solutions to more of you, the automakers.

An Evolving Industry

Change and innovation in automotive are happening rapidly, creating many opportunities.

We believe that the key to a thriving automotive strategy is the ability to assess, optimize, innovate, execute, and scale efforts. That means reengineering automotive platforms to embrace new technologies, launching large-scale digital transformation projects, and expanding into self-driving cars, mobility services, or driving other new businesses.

The entire industry is challenged with a chip shortage and supply chain issues, which have significantly reduced the number of vehicles in production. That’s one of the reasons the shift to special ordering has become more prevalent. The leap toward ecommerce also creates new demand for improved customer experiences, such as simplifying the website shopping or purchasing process.

Mobility and electrification are also deep focus areas for automakers. Many position themselves as mobility companies and strive to understand what that means to consumers. Understanding the consumer journey and how to serve them in our mobile and technologically driven world is critical. In-vehicle data (i.e., telematics) gives OEMs the ability to understand more about the consumer and shopping journey than ever before, which will drive new customer experiences.

There are massive infrastructure changes underway for charging and the need for increased consumer education around electrification. There has been a major increase in electrified-only vehicle companies that have launched all around the globe, not to mention all the other charging, battery, and other EV-related companies.

Driving innovation and growth encapsulates the trends and priorities in automotive. Our experience makes us an excellent choice for a strategic digital transformation partner. We welcome your interest in learning how we can help support your never-ending journey to putting the customer first.

Coming Up

If you like solving complex industry challenges and coming up with best-in-class solutions, keep reading our blog. Also, we welcome topic suggestions, debate, and dialogue. So, think of this as an ongoing conversation in perhaps one of the most exciting and significant times in the automotive industry. A time of immense change and opportunity.

My next blog will highlight our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Center of Excellence offering, which helps automakers establish, guide, and support SEO best practices. As they face supply-side and chip challenges, the need for organic website traffic and leads is more important than ever.

I look forward to our journey together.

In this episode, Kim talks with Chris Echelmeier, Senior Director in the the Microsoft Employee Experience practice where he focuses on driving culture change at the employee and the organization level and who has a unique perspective on what Employee Experience is, is not, and why it is becoming the top priority for business leaders today.

We’d love to get your feedback on a “white noise” word or topic you’d like for us to cover. Send your suggestions to podcast@perficient.com. 

Subscribe Where You Listen

Apple | Spotify | Amazon | Google | Stitcher

Meet our Guest

Chris has been at Microsoft since 2012 with the acquisition of Yammer, where he ran Americas sales. Prior to Microsoft, Chris spent time at several startups over 15 years, always focusing on disruptive technologies. Chris is passionate about driving culture change at the employee and the organization level and is now an Employee Experience leader at Microsoft helping to scale the Viva employee experience platform. Chris lives in Breckenridge, Colorado, and enjoys spending time with his wife, three boys, poodle, and chug preferably outside on bikes, skis, in a tent, or traveling. 

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn

Meet the Hosts

Jim Hertzfeld is Principal and Chief Digital Strategist for Perficient. He works with clients to convert market insights into real-world digital products and customer experiences that actually grow their business.

LinkedIn | Perficient

Kim Williams-Czopek is a Director of Digital Strategy at Perficient. She works with clients to devise digital experience strategies and how to translate strategies to tactics. She specializes in digital commerce, digital product development, user research and testing strategies, and digital responsibility.

LinkedIn | Perficient

In this episode, Kim talks with Alan Hart, creator, and host of “Marketing Today with Alan Hart,” about why he thinks marketing teams need to be blown up, re-organized, and get back to basics to succeed in today’s environment.

We’d love to get your feedback on a “white noise” word or topic you’d like for us to cover. Send your suggestions to podcast@perficient.com. 

Subscribe Where You Listen

Apple | Spotify | Amazon | Google | Stitcher

Meet our Guest

Alan Hart is the creator and host of “Marketing Today with Alan Hart,” a weekly podcast where he interviews leading global marketing professionals and business leaders. Alan advises leading executives and marketing teams on brand, customer experience, innovation, and growth opportunities.

Connect with Alan on LinkedIn

Meet the Hosts

Jim Hertzfeld is Principal and Chief Digital Strategist for Perficient. He works with clients to convert market insights into real-world digital products and customer experiences that actually grow their business.

LinkedIn | Perficient

Kim Williams-Czopek is a Director of Digital Strategy at Perficient. She works with clients to devise digital experience strategies and how to translate strategies to tactics. She specializes in digital commerce, digital product development, user research and testing strategies, and digital responsibility.

LinkedIn | Perficient