Situation:
The Cradle-to-Career System seeks to foster evidence-based decision-making to help Californians build more equitable futures and empower students and individuals to reach their full potential. The Cradle-to-Career System will provide data-informed tools to help students reach their college and career goals and deliver information on education and workforce outcomes. This user-friendly system will include resources focused on early learning through K-12 and higher education, as well as on the financial aid and social services that help students reach their goals. After through vetting out process our team was awarded the contract to deliver Cradle to Career Data System beating tough competition from top tier firms. Link to press release
System Integration Vendor Selection:
Our team put together a proposal keeping state’s best interest in mind and laid together a realistic and holistic plan to build the greenfield robust and secure solution utilizing tier 1 software vendors including AWS, Snowflake Data Cloud, Tamr (a new and upcoming SaaS AI/ML based MDM solution), and Microsoft PowerBI. After a thorough vetting out process, the state awarded the System Integration contract to our firm.
Benefits:
Our team successfully built an end and end solution using a creative Hybrid project management approach utilizing Agile methodology and delivered the development phase MVP milestone in less than 7 months. Project entails secure data ingestion from data providers via SFTP into AWS S3, securely moving the data from AWS S3 into unique Snowflake data models (Raw, Silver, Gold schemas) using OOTB integration techniques and finally enabled two ways data integration flow between Snowflake and Tamr MDM for data mastering and creation of golden records. The program proposed Zero Trust Security Architecture and followed strict NIST Cybersecurity guidelines while developing NIST 800 18 System Security Plan and NIST 800 53 Security Control Base line formulation for FISMA Moderate level while protecting highly sensitive student related PII and other relevant information.
ASC 606 Revenue Recognition Compliance Initiative
Problem: Our strategic high-tech manufacturing client has manufacturing sites and sales operations across the globe and their technology landscape includes multiple and fragmented ERPs, CRM, iPaaS etc. The client’s finance & Operations leadership was facing significant challenges effectively and efficiently manage global business operations and to close the financial books on time and to accurately account for revenue recognition as mandated by Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) ASC 606 Revenue Recognition
Solution: We were engaged by the CFO and the CIO to lead modernization of client’s technology and application stack and to lay a 3 year business transformation roadmap. Our team spearheaded the selection of ASC 606 software vendor selection process and to proposed an implementation plan for the eventual systems implementation. As part of the engagement, our team lead the business analysis across 20 plus manufacturing sites across the globe, created and prioritized functional and non-functional business requirements, reviewed existing systems, built must have business use cases, developed future state reference architecture, and led the process of RFP development, final vendor selection, and subsequent systems implementation
Benefits: The new ASC 606 software was implemented on time and under budget and was live in production in 9 months. The new capabilities provided by the tool, streamlined the entire business process, significantly reduced manual steps for financial reconciliation, and closing of books. Best practices implemented as part of the program enabled our client to close the books in 5 days and resulted in savings of $20 million on a yearly basis.
Technology Modernization & SAP S/4 HANA Roadmap
Problem: Our strategic high-tech manufacturing client has manufacturing sites and sales operations across the globe and their technology landscape includes multiple and fragmented ERPs, CRM, iPaaS etc. One of the key first steps in client’s business transformation and modernization journey was to eliminate redundant and fragments ERP systems and to define a long term ERP strategy and roadmap
Solution: Reporting directly into the office of the CIO, our senior leadership team along with our subject matter experts spearheaded the process of building a long team SAP S/4 HANA driven technology roadmap. Our proposal included multi step implementation plan in order to cause minimal disruption to the business. In order to minimize the implementation and adoption risk, our team collaborated with senior client leadership to select a manufacturing site which was an ideal candidate for S/4 HANA implementation. Our proposal also included implementation of best practices and a phased approach to:-
Benefits: The robust ERP strategy and well articulated phased SAP S/4 HANA roadmap enabled our client to effectively manage the program risks, bring value to the organization on an accelerated basis, and put them on a path for long term successes. To manage the risk and to effectively gear towards long term success path, a specific business unit with smaller footprint was selected as the pilot site for SAP S/4 HANA implementation.
End to End 'Lead to Cash' Business Process Assessment & Recommendations
Problem: Our strategic software client is a global leader in testing automation software development. They were facing large number of data and reporting reconciliation related challenges (Such as ARR and MRR reporting) across its ‘Lead to Cash’ mega business process cutting across various applications. This results in extremely low confidence in data integrity and digital view of orders/subscriptions. Due to lack of confidence is system generated data, various manual steps (validations, approvals etc.) were also put in place to enforce checks and balances which further slowed down the overall process and resulted in inefficiencies.
Solution: The client engaged with Silicon Valley Consulting Group to conduct an independent & end to end assessment of its ‘Lead to Cash’ mega business process & associated applications to determine primary root cause for system inefficiencies, data leaks, and related challenges. As part of the assessment, our team provided set up People, Process, and Technology related recommendations that aligned the client with software Industry best practices relating to Software Lead to Cash mega process. Scope of applications to be reviewed and assessed include Salesforce, Zuora CPQ, Zuora Subscription Platform, & NetSuite ERP.
Benefits: Our team played a key role in breaking the silos, guided the team to understand the bigger picture and proposed both short and long term recommendations. As part of the process improvement initiative, many manual and redundant processes were eliminated and software industry best practices were implemented with anticipated saving of more than $25 million year over year
Building a holistic Enterprise Architecture (EA) Capability
Problem: Our client is a publicly traded and global software firm and a leading provider of information about business people and companies to sales, marketing and recruiting professionals. The client continues to grow and scale rapidly and had ambitions to be a $5 billion corporation over next 5 years. In order to streamline business processes and enable growth, the client executive leadership put a strong emphasis on building culture and consensus driven technology decisions. There was a significant gap in how various new technology applications were selected which also resulted in many redundant applications in client’s technology landscape. In order to address this significant challenge, the client onboarded an award-winning CIO to lead the streamlining of the business applications and associated processes to initiate the business transformation streamlining journey.
Solution: The CIO engaged with Silicon Valley Consulting Group to lead the efforts to stand up client’s internal Enterprise Architecture capabilities and to lead additional strategic business process streamlining efforts. Our senior leadership collaborated with cross functional teams comprising of senior IT leadership CISO, VP IT and Applications), Procurement, Business Operations, Legal, & HR to lay the foundation for Enterprise Architecture practice. As part of engagement our team spearheaded the development of Vendor Evaluation approach which included highlighting the need to have reference architecture, review of vendor capabilities, build and adoption of vendor evaluation template, setting up of Architecture Review Board (ARB) to enable informed and collective decision making for technology decisions. Some of the key technology decisions that were collectively made using our newly defined EA practice were:-
Benefits: In a short span of 12 weeks, in collaboration with client leadership, our senior team conducted 5 key vendor evaluations using newly defined templates and processes and enabled the client team to be fully and independently run the ARB sessions for future vendor evaluations. We also enabled client technology team streamline their existing CPQ processes.
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