Case Study
Building a UX Consulting Capability
In 2013, I was two years into my role as the lead of Product UX, but the group was still only 6-10 people. There was also no path to Partner at the time – the CTO was the only partner in the group. I felt I needed to do more to show my value and impact, and to continue to develop professionally.
Company & Position
ZS Associates, Associate Partner (2011-2017)
Details
The User Experience Expertise Center (UXEC) was formed in early 2013. The group started with two designers in India, who were both immediately and fully utilized. Constraints with the talent market in India limited the breadth of our offerings, leading to the creation of a U.S. based team in 2015. The onshore team enabled us to engage directly with clients and offer more strategic services such as designing enterprise applications with Custom Development, and journey mapping through our Experience Transformation offering.
Actions
- Documented but declined 65 requests (from the consulting business) for pre-sales support from the UX product team.
- Created a business case for a UX consulting capability in our Business Technology practice area, secured sponsorship from the appropriate Shareholder Council (SC) member.
- Met with SC member, the MD (CEO) and the CTO to arrive at an agreement that enabled me to support both product and consulting.
Outcome & Impact
- Delivered services to ~15% of ZS’ $700M technology consulting business, generating ~$6M a year in net fees, and enabling another ~$24M with the Custom Development and Power Platform teams under my direction.
- Hired and grew the team.
- Established offerings, methodology, and engagement model.
- Responded to changing market and customer needs by introducing enterprise applications and complex customer journey / Experience Transformation engagements.
Work Samples
Some of our early work on Business Intelligence solutions:
Over time, the practice area messaging evolved to incorporate UX benefits:
Progression through the Maturity Model led to larger strategic engagements:
Our close collaboration with Custom Development enabled us to engage with our clients across the product lifecycle:
And deliver a broader range of digital solutions to our clients:
We were also able to augment commercial analytics projects with Design Thinking; a more engaging, memorable project at a reasonable price point:
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