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Exceeding customer expectations for prompt deliveries is what this Fortune 500 logistics company is all about. It works tirelessly to understand how it can add value to its deliveries by exploring technology, e-commerce trends, and logistics improvements to deliver on its brand promise.
The pandemic saw its fair share of mergers and acquisitions. Most of it was driven by companies looking to better serve their customers by acquiring adjacent businesses. Such was the case for this Fortune 500 logistics company.
After seeing e-commerce sales soar in 2021, the company decided to acquire an e-commerce company to make the sales and delivery of online products more seamless. Doing so would enable the company to expand its services into a new company and provide customers with a more elevated experience.
Once the acquisition was completed, the company realized there was a disconnect from the acquiree's technical environment. While the logistics company used Microsoft Azure to run its operations, the acquiree company used Amazon Web Services (AWS). This mismatch created incompatibility issues between the two systems — making it hard to run reports and get a better picture of the organization as a whole.
Looking for a way to reconcile the two environments into one, the Fortune 500 company realized it would need the help of an expert to lay out the roadmap for integrating AWS and Azure while also project managing the initiative.
Because the company wanted to complete the integration as part of a fall launch, with just eight weeks allocated to the integration, time was of the essence. So, rather than looking for a full-time employee or leveraging a staffing firm or recruiting agency, it decided to look for an on-demand solution.
Upon learning about Graphite's ability to provide an independent expert within 24-48 hours, the logistics company reached out to a Graphite Account Executive (AE). Once connected, the AE explained how to post a project, pay experts, and track project hours using Graphite’s platform. The AE then presented the experts on the platform to give the company a look at the expert network's quality and level of expertise.
Satisfied with what it saw, the company scheduled an additional meeting with the AE to discuss the scope of work. The company provided details of the desired expert, such as:
The AE then used that information and the project scope to source candidates from Graphite’s AI that best matched the company's criteria. Over 12 candidates were identified. Of the 12, four were hand selected and presented to the company. The company used Graphite's in-app video conferencing tool to schedule interviews with the candidates and its project team.
After speaking with each candidate, the company moved forward with a McKinsey-trained digital consultant. The expert's track record of transforming operations via cloud modernization and post-merger systems integration stood out to the company.
A kick-off meeting was scheduled between the AE, the logistics company, and the expert to align on the scope of work, answer any clarifying questions, and set the metrics for success. Once completed, the expert completed the onboarding process for the company.
The expert then reviewed the current state of both technical environments, scheduled meetings with key stakeholders, and then delegated work to the team they were leading. Once the current state analytics was completed, it was juxtaposed with the future state the company wants to accomplish to identify gaps, areas of improvement, and new processes/workflows that need to be created.
Throughout the eighth week of engagement, the expert provided status updates to the leadership team at key milestones of the project. The expert also created a go-to-market plan to facilitate the fall launch plan of the new technical environment.
At the end of the eight weeks, the company launched its new technical environment and was highly pleased with the expert’s help.
After undergoing a recent acquisition, this Fortune 500 logistics company realized it had a problem. The recently acquired company was using a different technical environment than its own. Because it wanted to launch the new consolidated environment in eight weeks, onboarding a full-time employee was out of the question. So the company turned to Graphite, onboarding an ex-Mckinsey consultant to project manage and execute the integration.
Eager to onboard a team that could achieve results within six months, the client and their dedicated Graphite account manager partnered to determinze the specifications for each of the four roles. They were:
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