Learn more about our business services.
Kathy teams with a variety of collaborative partners to ignite positive change in companies by holistically fusing people, process, and technology.
To ensure success for client projects, she creates teams populated by the right mix of experienced professionals who have diverse business experience across a broad range of company sizes.
Go to:
- Strategy design and tactical implementation, including Social Maturity Assessment.
- Process definition or re-engineering.
- Business requirements documentation.
- Business case development, including ROI analysis.
Strategy design and tactical implementation
We help companies focus their energy to ensure that employees are working toward the same goals. And as necessary, we help companies to assess and adjust their organization's direction in response to a changing environment, whether due to internal or external reasons.
Part of our strategic planning services also ensure the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are identified so you can measure the success of your plan. And we identify the right technologies needed to support your strategy to gain scalability while remaining efficient.
Of course, defining strategy may not be enough for you. We also help companies design specific tactical activities or processes to support your strategy. We have specialties in customer-facing activities such as marketing, sales, and customer service.
Social Maturity Assessment
With the prevalence of social media, many businesses have started to incorporate some of the basics by adding a Facebook page or a twitter handle, but are at a loss to prove how its affecting the bottom-line. Part of that is because they don't realize where they are with respect to a continuum of what they could be doing.
We work with clients to benchmark their “As Is” state of social media initiatives and compare them to “Could Be” via best practices. With this insight, businesses can create world-class social media and digital presences and are more likely to monetize their investments when they accomplish higher levels of capabilities with their social media initiatives.
Specialties
We specialize in change management initiatives that require a blending of people, processes, and technology. And we specialize in helping companies adopt the social business model to foster customer-centricity and collaboration across their organization.
Past projects include:
- Planning for high-volume, seasonal shipping demands for mid-sized software developer – Defined strategic plans and tactical activities to support seasonal upswings in shipping volumes. Company needed to ship seasonally high volumes of 4,000-5,000 shipments over a 3-day timeframe several times per year, up from the normal 20 shipments per day. Processes allowed company to manage upswings using existing personnel. Innovated on shipping management system to support process improvements.
- Operational planning for mid-sized software company – To support ongoing integrated activities related to order management, fulfillment and technical support.
- Change management during merger for mid-sized company – Acted as executive advisor during mergers with 17 smaller resellers during growth spurt. Designed new, consolidated systems to support sales teams and faciliate reporting.
Process definition or re-engineering
We design workflow processes for companies so they can become more effective and efficient – all while remembering these processes need to support how real people work. Our processes also facilitate collaboration across departmental siloes.
Of course, established businesses already have processes in place. But as your organizational needs change, we’ll help you re-engineer your processes to respond to these changes.
Specialties
We have particular specialties in defining workflows around customer-facing activities like marketing, sales, order fulfillment, and customer service that are either standalone or integrated back into other related workflows like accounting.
We also specialize in social business processes that support customer-centric practices and internal collaboration.
Past projects include:
- Warehouse workflow design for small Internet retailer – Designed processes to allow for the rapid unloading of incoming containers to avoid paying late fees for container rental.
- CRM workflows (especially for Salesforce.com) for small to mid-sized companies for marketing, sales, order fulfillment, and customer service to provide a consistent customer experience while gaining organizational efficiencies. Includes process definition, requirements definition, and designing customized user screen layouts.
Business requirements documentation
We act as the bridge between the business and IT stakeholders in defining requirements for new solutions that will support what real people need to accomplish using processes that will allow the business to be effective and efficient.
The Requirements we define for you will be documented, actionable and measurable. And these requirements will then act as the roadmap for your IT team to define the technical requirements for your solutions. If needed, we can also provide expertise to define your technical requirements and roadmap through our collaborative partners.
Specialties
We specialize in defining business requirements for CRM solutions, and especially for Salesforce.com integrations, as well as other customer-facing solutions that support marketing, sales, order fulfillment and customer service. These may be standalone, or integrated into other solutions such as accounting and shipping management.
We also specialize in social business solutions that support social media programs and internal collaboration. These include:
- Applications that enable social connectivity between solutions such as your CRM and Facebook or Twitter.
- Branded community solutions such as Jive Software, Lithium or Get Satisfaction add-ons to Facebook.
- Social monitoring solutions such as Radian6, Attensity, or Visible Technology.
- Collaboration solutions such as Salesforce Chatter or Yammer.
- Integration across the social technology platform.
Past projects include:
- Design of collaboration systems for small company to enhance cusotmer service as well as to stimulate product ideation.
- Defined product inventory processes for mid-sized refinery, to act as basis for technical requirements for a new product inventory management solution & to provide training documentation for new employees.
- Automated customer reservation system for small RV rental company – Improved customer reservation processes and well as defined revised business requirements for a new online reservation system.
- Salesforce CRM implementations for small to mid-sized companies to provide a consistent customer experience while gaining organizational efficiencies. Includes process definition, requirements definition, and designing customized user screen layouts.
- Campaign analysis for PR agency – Detailed analysis of past campaigns to allow knowledge transfer of success and failure factors across organization. Designed case study management application to expose library and data to agency employees to gain efficiencies and facilitate knowledge transfer.
Business case development
A business case captures the reasoning for initiating a project or task and provides business justification.
Our business case development services provide business leaders with an in-depth understanding of the project background, the expected business benefits, project assumptions and expected risks. We can also give you insight into the costs and risks of doing nothing.
Also, if relevant to the project, we provide a gap analysis, showing actual performance of early initiatives versus expected performance.
A final and important aspect of the business case is projected financial results, including Return on Investment.
Return on Investment (ROI) analysis
We provide in-depth cost-benefit and other financial analysis for corporate initiatives and programs. These include cash flow analysis, net present value determination (for programs extending longer periods into the future) and Return on Investment.
Our analysis combines defendable assumptions with appropriate risk, allowing business leaders to make informed decisions about the economic viability of new initiatives relative to other corporate opportunities.
Kathy and her collaborative partner Dr. Natalie Petouhoff are the ground-breaking and leading experts in determining social media ROI across the organization. We incorporate potential gains from marketing, sales, customer service, product development, and internal collaboration.
Past projects include:
- Design of multi-tiered software maintenance program for mid-sized software vendor – To support revenue initiatives. Included defining business case and determining pricing model.
- Social media ROI analysis and calculator for large telecom service provider – To determine the business value of an existing social customer service program in order to justify continued and expanded investment. Provided client with smROI calculator to allow customer service management to do their own ad hoc ROI analysis.
- Cost-benefit analysis of capital purchases (various companies) – Performed in anticipation of major purchases to ensure wise use of resources.