Innovate + Enable + Transform
Cimphoni has a proven track record of success. Learn more about what we do for clients in the case studies below, which provide just a sampling of our work helping companies transform their businesses.
Infrastructure to the Cloud (Microsoft Azure)
A large, multi-sector organization with over 60 million members engaged Cimphoni to lead the transition from their two internal data centers to the cloud. Their data centers consisted of over 750 servers supporting hundreds of unique applications and a complex network topology connecting corporate and retail locations. Microsoft Azure was chosen as the platform vendor and Equinix was selected as the networking colocation provider. Managing a large team of internal engineers and select services vendors, nearly 25% of the infrastructure was rationalized pre-migration, saving well over $100k annually. Completing the migrations in just 13 months, the project is now on track to further reduce operating costs by another 20% in 24 months post completion of the project and deliver an eight-year ROI of over $7M.
Logging and Monitoring
A global customer engaged Cimphoni to establish a new observability capability for them. The primary objective was to modernize an outdated and unsupported monitoring system, ensuring scalability, reliability, and actionable insights for the customer’s technical infrastructure and operations. Some elements of their compute and storage were already outsourced to Google’s Cloud Platform (GCP). Therefore, we utilized the capabilities of GCP to provide for efficient data processing and the streamlining of operations. Specifically, we designed and deployed a logging data pipeline utilizing Google’s Cloud Operations tools. Monitoring was deployed to track various infrastructure components used in both the customer’s on-premises datacenters and the technical infrastructure operating within the GCP environment. To address the monitoring challenges, Cimphoni consolidated data from multiple monitoring solutions. Our efforts resulted in the successful implementation of a modern, scalable, and reliable observability system capable of supporting high traffic volumes and providing real-time insights to end users.
Successful Migration Project From New Relic APM to Grafana
Cimphoni led a project to transition from New Relic alerts and dashboards to Grafana for a global technology automation leader. This project began with a comprehensive inventory and assessment of the customer’s monitoring environment, categorizing alerts and dashboards based on their significance and complexity. Several challenges were identified and mitigated during the project. As an example, Grafana lacked the ability to create multiple thresholds and alert conditions within a single query expression. We addressed this by developing custom scripts and employing manual effort to convert New Relic Query Language (NRQL) to Prometheus Query Language (PromQL). The monitoring assessment also considered the number of panels, data sources, queries, custom scripts and variables. Cimphoni automated the migration to the extent possible, successfully overcoming the lack of automated transition tools and delivering the new monitoring solution within the timeframe required by the customer.
Cimphoni Introduces Hybrid Model to Elevate Banking CX
A large regional credit union needed a refreshed strategy and roadmap to improve its customer and employee experiences and engagement levels. Cimphoni provided an analysis of the broader CX marketplace and helped the client narrow their near-term focus on omni-channel and WEM (workforce engagement management) solutions. We introduced a hybrid communications model allowing them to move nearly 70% of their users from their legacy CCaaS (Contact Center) to a more cost-effective UCaaS (Unified Communications) platform and their more advanced users to a modern CCaaS platform. Cimphoni achieved significant cost savings by negotiating all vendor contracts (over 25% reduction from opening quotes) and by providing the services vendor with ~80% of requirements pre-documented, thus reducing implementation costs. The implementation of UCaaS, CCaaS, WEM and e911 solutions established a solid foundation for the client to continue to evolve their experience and engagement capabilities based on their refreshed, holistic CX roadmap.
Interim CIO Transforms IT Performance at Theme Park
A well-known $1.4 billion theme park engaged Cimphoni to lead its IT function over a 15-month period with a focus on deploying new IT-enabled business solutions that improved the guest experience via integrated customer engagement channels outside of the park and in-park features like Quick Queue and a Pass Member loyalty program Our solutions increased both strategic and organic revenue growth with initiatives including a variable ticket pricing/yield management program, and improved back office business costs with a redesigned procure-to-pay process. Cimphoni also led several initiatives that reduced IT spending by 20% through renegotiation of vendor contracts, IT staff/contractor realignment and rationalization of infrastructure and applications. We implemented several IT service management processes that engaged business leaders in prioritization of IT investments and provisioning of IT resources, addressed PCI DSS compliance challenges and developed an enterprise architecture that provided a technical foundation for future IT investments.
Life Sciences Information Technology Assessment
An $800 million life sciences company requested an assessment of its IT function with the objective to improve IT agility and speed, the effectiveness of Run-Grow-Transform spend and ensure future IT investments delivered the expected business value. Certain elements of the company’s IT function were already decentralized and located in several business units. Initially, this improved the pace at which new IT investments were deployed. Over time, however, this decentralization came at a cost – increasing systems complexity, resulting in reduced business agility and longer time-to-value for IT investments. To address the complexity, Cimphoni recommended two initiatives: implementation of Guided Autonomy and deployment of an IT asset discovery platform. Guided Autonomy specified a framework to optimize speed, cost and complexity of the computing environment while also delivering expected business value of IT investments. The IT asset discovery platform provided an inventory of existing computing assets, which identified opportunities to rationalize these assets and reduce Run-Grow cost and complexity.
Omni-Channel Migration – Avaya to Genesys Cloud
Cimphoni led a major Customer Experience (CX) transformation starting with the retirement of legacy channel solutions including Avaya, and the transition to Genesys Cloud. Our work began by interviewing stakeholders to assess their operational and technical environments, writing the RFP and leading the evaluation and final vendor selection. Cimphoni negotiated contracts for implementation services and 5-year software and support agreements. We managed the overall implementation comprising a cross-functional client team and five external vendors. The platform was implemented for over 4,500 corporate, contact center and retail employees spanning 19 lines of business. The solution enabled four customer interaction channels built across over 400 Genesys Queues and included integrations with third-party Workforce Management (WFM) and multiple internal CRM/systems of record. The project culminated in the formation of new internal teams, new governance and workflow processes and a strong foundation to build upon.
Defining Technology Architecture for Conversational AI Company
Cimphoni consultants were contracted by a leading conversational AI company to lead contract compliance (e.g., SLAs) between the client and the service provider, as well as participate on the company’s architecture board to oversee areas of technology design for the cloud transformation, with emphasis on non-functional requirements, such as enhanced reliability, faster detection and mitigation of technical incidents and overall improvement of end customer experience.
Our team was deeply involved in the identification and design of operational improvements, emphasizing Site Reliability Engineering practices to continue improving the level of service provided by our client to its customers. Our DevOps and Cloud Engineering practice worked alongside our client’s application teams to devise comprehensive migration practices. This led to seamless transition plans as well as hybrid cloud strategies that will enable innovative operational (better observability, simplicity and ease of support) and functional (personalized and localized, richer messaging) use cases.
Managing IT Performance Improvement Via Outsourcing to Cloud Provider
The Cimphoni team assisted a leading conversational AI company as they pursued the outsourcing of both core product software and internal technology operations to a major global outsourcer and leading cloud provider. This included supporting our customer during the contract drafting and negotiation phases as well as providing high-level technical expertise to support the design of the final solution. Finally, we recommended transformation and transition activities to support the seamless migration to the public cloud provider.
During the contract drafting and negotiation phase, our team provided expertise and technology acumen to recommend areas where contract documents could be modified, or additional documents incorporated in a way that provided the client with favorable commercial and technical terms. We identified areas where the client was assuming undue commercial or technical risk and provided ideas to mitigate those risks. And, we Identified opportunities to expedite the completion and execution of the contract as well as post-contract transition activities.
Leading the Digital Transformation of a Latin American National Bank
One of the largest national banks in Latin America turned to Cimphoni consultants for their digital transformation initiative. We assigned an interdisciplinary team of organizational, bank domain and technology architects to perform a comprehensive assessment of IT and operations, following foundational and bank domain architecture methodologies (TOGAF, COBIT, ADKAR, among others). After extensive leadership and employee engagement, we delivered an initial business architecture blueprint and a five-year roadmap for the business transformation, including year one priority programs that are in development today. Cimphoni consultants are delivering not only the strategy and technical implementation, but also guiding the organizational culture transformation that is key to the success of the long-term strategy.
Migrating E-commerce Architecture from Monolithic COTS to Microservices Platform
A $350 million U.S. distributor of food and beverage equipment, supplies and branded merchandise wanted to streamline its e-commerce platforms to enable higher volume and velocity for planned business growth. They turned to Cimphoni consultants to develop a new e-commerce platform that reduced the time-to-market for customer customizations, while also reducing maintenance and support costs. This involved the redesign, re-architecture and deployment of the new microservices-based platform, while continuing to support and sunset the legacy system. The new platform includes CI/CD automation to support the continuous delivery of new functionality. By running both systems in parallel, the client was able to contrast opportunities for improvement, validate business hypotheses and test different design options, making the transition seamless for the organization’s customers.
Developing a Continuous Integration and Deployment Pipeline
A $150 million national distributor of car parts inherited a collection of e-commerce properties via acquisitions, which lacked a controlled and traceable development process, clear demarcation of responsibilities and release management governance. Cimphoni consultants consolidated these e-commerce properties to a single system establishing a foundation for later migration to a microservices-based platform. This entailed the implementation of infrastructure as code, continuous integration and deployment pipelines and organized release management. This enabled a bi-weekly release cadence with no production downtimes. The result of this engagement increased features per release capacity by 100% and reduced escape defects by 90 percent, while significantly reducing the time to market for new e-commerce capabilities.
Technology Modernization for Ecommerce
A large U.S. retail firm had a collection of ecommerce properties that it inherited through acquisitions, which were all running on separate Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) platforms, causing challenges with application development and governance. A consultant on our team optimized the e-commerce ecosystem by moving a single system for subsequent migration to a microservices-based platform. We also developed continuous integration and deployment pipelines, and organized release management, making it possible for a bi-weekly release cadence with no production downtimes. We also achieved a 100% increase in features per release capacity and 90% reduction in escape defects while accelerating the development of a new platform by two months.
Transforming to an Omni-Channel Customer Experience
An association with 6 million members turned to Cimphoni for a multi-year initiative to streamline and evolve its customer experience across multiple lines of business and more than 170 locations. We spearheaded business strategy development, omni-channel customer experience (CX) design, the vendor selection process and the establishment of an ongoing program management structure. We were responsible for rationalizing disparate technology vendor platforms from 13 down to one and changing the technology organization’s mindset from favoring onsite solutions to embracing agile and cloud-based platforms. We also established a new organizational design, including the creation of a CX function that optimized the workforce around the new CX strategy.
Sub-Zero Wolf’s Business Intelligence Transformation
Realizing the full potential of Business Intelligence (BI) across the enterprise is a clear priority for many businesses, including Sub-Zero Wolf, a large luxury home appliance manufacturer. Cimphoni led the development of a business intelligence strategic roadmap and provided an Interim BI Manager to create and implement a unifying BI framework for the company. Over six months, we successfully aligned business intelligence initiatives with overall business objectives, built an Operational Data Store, decreased BI initiative cycle time by 50% and mentored and transitioned an internal architect to the new BI Manager role.
M&A Crisis Management and Employee Experience Redesign
When a large insurance and travel organization acquired 40+ independent agencies and transitioned them to corporate process and systems, the project stalled out for a number of reasons. The result – a steep revenue decline and terrible employee morale. Cimphoni was engaged to bring the project back on track. An assessment revealed a host of business processes and technology issues in need of an overhaul. We stabilized and restored revenue generation across the agencies by creating standardized operational processes and technology footprints for all newly acquired agencies. We implemented systems integrations to improve workflows for employees and established clear corporate communication protocols and support systems. We also redesigned the supporting infrastructure to allow for future scalability. Finally, we assessed systems and processes across 160+ independent insurance agencies, isolating inefficiencies and identifying opportunities for standardization. The results included reducing employee effort and overall process flow by 30%.
Achieving PCI Compliance Under Pressure
Cimphoni was called upon when a large emergency road service, travel and insurance products company on the East coast was found to be non-compliant with PCI requirements. It was facing penalties and sanctions, including the loss of the ability to accept credit card payments. We led the PCI remediation program and achieved both compliance and certification in a very short 8 months. The cybersecurity program we designed exceeded PCI requirements and significantly improved the organization’s cybersecurity posture. In addition to the technical compliance, our work included training employees regarding their roles in minimizing cybersecurity incidents and making cybersecurity a priority throughout the enterprise.
Service Desk Redesign Reduces Open Tickets by 40%
When an insurance firm was frustrated with its internal IT service desk (or help desk) due to poor service levels and long resolution times, Cimphoni was brought in to completely redesign the service desk organization. We re-engineered key processes, systems and tools resulting in a reduction in abandonment rates from 23% to 9% in three months, while call volumes increased more than 15%. Open tickets were reduced by 40% and the average ticket age was reduced from more than 60 days down to 22 days. We also reduced repeat tickets through the implementation of Root Cause Analysis and Preventive Actions, using ServiceNow as the new IT service management platform.
Rationalizing Go-to-market, Delivery and Back Office Capabilities
NTT Data acquired multiple firms and needed to rationalize the company’s go-to-market, delivery and back office capabilities to enhance efficiency and standardize processes and functions. A Cimphoni consultant worked with NTT Data to define a new operating model that maximized the capabilities of each entity while broadening their go-to-market capabilities. He developed a global application delivery and support team with 12 unique service offerings and developed common HR, finance, legal and procurement processes and policies. The Global Shared Service center enabled the reduction of 250 FTEs while improving process efficiencies and quality.
Centralized Telephony Improves Post-Merger Customer Experience
When a large consumer travel association merged, the organization discovered it had five disparate telephony platforms spanning multiple vendors four overlapping dial plans requiring new extensions for every employee and four distinct workforce optimization (WFO) vendors with a variety of operational processes. Cimphoni standardized and centralized telephony, workforce optimization and business processes for the organization’s contact centers and 140+ retail locations in 10 months, well ahead of the 18-24 month target. The new unified capabilities drove nearly $1 million in staffing efficiencies, and the unified platform improved the overall customer experience.
Business Intelligence Conversion
A large Midwest tool manufacturer undergoing a full ERP replacement realized the business intelligence portion of the project was significantly behind schedule. Under aggressive time pressures Cimphoni quickly brought in a team to build out a new data warehouse and recreate all critical reporting in support of the new ERP system. Post go-live, the Cimphoni team leader served as the interim BI manager for six months before transitioning to a permanent manager.
Post-merger Integration for Global Agriculture Equipment Manufacturers
CNH Global relied upon one of our consultants when they needed to find synergies and rationalize their infrastructure after mergers with New Holland (a division of Fiat). We led the IT portion of the post-merger integration effort, which included implementing new order management systems to reduce order-to-delivery cycle times, new engineering systems to enable collaboration on product design between operations in the USA and European Union, a new procurement system to improve procure-to-pay efficiency and lean manufacturing technologies to improve labor productivity. Data center operations and network management were also moved to Fiat in Italy while back office functions were consolidated at th U.S. headquarters in Wisconsin. Through these efforts, the IT budget was reduced by $75 million (15%) and direct material costs were reduced by 3 percent.
Relocating Data Centers for Sensient
This major manufacturer of food colors, flavors and fragrances hired Cimphoni to relocate its global data centers in London and Milwaukee to new hosted and managed service data centers in Milwaukee and Minneapolis. We provided the Interim infrastructure Director, created the project plan, assembled the team, negotiated the contracts and managed the process to move two AS400s and 250 Wintel servers while minimizing the business impact of the move. Ultimately, Cimphoni saved Sensient more than $3 million over three years in IT contracts while we also developed and implemented a disaster recovery plan, a strategic infrastructure project investment plan and formalized an infrastructure SLA reporting system for the organization.
Creating a Lean, Agile IT Organization in 18 Months
When an emergency road service, travel and insurance products company in Northern California was carved out from a larger entity, they called on Cimphoni to serve as their Interim CIO. In this role, we effectively set up their new IT organization, outsourced infastructure (app hosting, network management, service desk) to an Indian offshore managed service provider and implemented several SaaS solutions for member management, sales, marketing and customer service. We provided hands-on project leadership and successfully completed the carve-out in 18 months, while also delivering a 40% reduction in IT operating expenses. Finally, we recruited an experienced CIO to lead the organization at the completion of the engagement.
Interim CIO Creates Distributed IT Organization
A consumer services company that provides emergency road services, travel and insurance products on the East coast was struggling to align the performance of its IT organization with the evolving needs of the business. The IT team was viewed as slow to react to business needs, weak on service, lacking in strategy and planning skills and too expensive. In a 2-year Interim CIO engagement, Cimphoni implemented a distributed IT organizational model to improve IT agility and speed, moving 20% of the IT staff to business functions in the first year. We also partnered with the business to create a 3-year IT strategic plan and guide investments, improved quality, reliability and consistency of IT performance and reduced IT operating expenses 10% in one year.
Redefining the Customer Experience at Sub-Zero Wolf
Cimphoni enabled this privately-held luxury home appliance company to create seamless integration between its sales, marketing and showroom operations in order to improve the customer experience throughout its distributor and dealer networks. We also improved the company’s sales conversion through the design and implementation of improved sales processes, marketing automation and quoting capabilities, as well as implemented other best practice technologies that now enable the company to consistently measure campaign, showroom and dealer effectiveness.
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