No matter your industry — or company size — at some point in time your IT team or C-suite faces two pressing questions: Which front office systems are you going to use to drive customer intimacy, and how are you going to sustain those technologies?
Generally speaking, there are three ways to traditionally address these questions:
- Recruit and hire internally;
- Use a traditional contracting style for augmentation;
- Consider offshoring.
Each solution comes with its challenges, however, including the shortage of IT skills, high rates, contractor turnover, and a lack of sustainability. Offshoring, in particular, presents obstacles such as contextual limitations and time-zone setbacks. Eagle Creek Software Services represents the fourth solution, U.S. onshoring.
“We provide balance to that model,” Simon Boardman, vice president of marketing for Eagle Creek told WebRTCworld at the WebRTC Conference & Expo, taking place from June 17 - 19 in Atlanta. “We are not saying don’t recruit internally or don’t use offshore. We are saying there needs to be a balance and certain technologies are better suited to resources that have proximity and those tend to be front office technologies.”
Founded in 1999, Eagle Creek operates technology centers from North and South Dakota, focused on providing technical expertise to the enterprise. The technology and consulting company is focused on front office systems, or what people think of as CRM in its broadest sense. About 70 percent of its consultants are based in technology centers that are built in nonurban areas. From CRM to Java to .NET, the company specializes in bringing onshoring capabilities to the enterprise.
While in past years, companies were more focused on cost control and back-end systems, today’s companies are interested in growing profit and increasing revenue — and the only way to do that is by building customer intimacy.
Twenty-first century enterprises have to understand the importance of customer journey and engagement, and a big part of that comes in investing in the right technology. Today, however, there are a number of front office technologies from which to choose. As Boardman explains, three years ago there were 100 front office applications in marketing automation, but today there are over 900.
“If I am in the IT organization or own a business, I have to decide which of these technologies I can use to help me get that customer intimacy; the second aspect is how am I going to sustain those technologies,” Boardman said. “That’s where you need subject matter expertise.”
“There’s technology, macro and economic drivers and if you put all of those drivers together, we see this wave building for the delivery of onshore business,” he added.
When it comes to customers, Eagle Creek attracts companies across all verticals, especially large financial intuitions, life sciences companies and healthcare organizations. And as its customer base has increased so, too, has its expertise. Over the past few years, Eagle Creek has broadened the technologies with which it deals, currently dealing with 40 different technologies primarily focused in the front office space.
To remain competitive, Eagle Creek has relied on its ever-growing expertise and experience. The company understands that it’s all about bringing a level of comfort to its customers, from the C-suite to the VP to the Director.
“While all three personalities are looking at similar things, they have different emphasis,” Boardman said. “At the Director level, it’s all about risk. At the C-level, it’s about repeatability and scalability. At the VP level, it’s all about budget.”
As Eagle Creek eyes its upcoming roadmap, it looks forward to continuing to address the IT skills shortage plaguing the industry. As Boardman explains, the U.S. is well below where it was in the 2000s with regards to producing IT grads that could matriculate seamlessly into the workforce. To get away from “fishing in the same pond,” Boardman said, companies have to step into the higher education environment and be willing to participate with university systems.
As such, Eagle Creek is currently teaming with the university system of South Dakota, putting together an IT academy for grads and undergrads.
“You have to have a willingness to make that talent pool greater,” Boardman said. “We are proactively getting involved in the education systems.”
Edited by
Rory J. Thompson
