The future of consulting is a more balanced, sustainable business approach coupled with healthier, happier cultures. However, consulting firms need some consulting help themselves when it comes to culture. Simplus is an organization who helps in creating some of the world’s best cultures in the consultant space. They embody all that with their stewardship, critical thinking, and underdog mentality.
Simplus can be termed as a global leader in quote-to-cash services, including advisory, implementation, and managed services. Simplus supports multiple Salesforce platforms—including Salesforce CPQ, Salesforce Billing, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Community Cloud, and Oracle CPQ cloud.
Since its inception in 2014, Simplus has been achieving newer heights of growth and excellence. Thanks to the uncontainable optimism, passion and drive of the CEO of Simplus.
The Leading Light of Simplus
Ryan Westwood, the CEO and Founder of Simplus, has above 14 years of experience as an Information Technology Executive. Ryan is also a best-selling Author, Angel Investor, Speaker and National Columnist/Journalist respectively.
Ryan’s vision allows the company to tackle current market problems in three ways: the abundance of quote-to-cash consultants, its international presence, and the expanding talent in the company.
In personal front, he believes in the motto, “Live Simply, Be Grateful, Give Generously”. He leads a life of excellence with a hayloft of success stories. Apart from being a successful and mostly acclaimed CEO, he earned himself the title of the Best Selling Author with the publication of “The Five Characteristics of a Successful Entrepreneur”.
Opening up a New Era with ‘CPQ’
Being a fairly new technology, CPQ resources are still too limited. Despite this, Simplus has created an environment of top quote-to-cash superstars, including Erich Rusch, one of the first to implement Steelbrick before it was Salesforce CPQ, and Gilles Muys, the only Salesforce CPQ black belt in the world. This foundation of CPQ legends allows the company to mentor and train the next generations of top-notch consultants.
Additionally, Simplus was the first consultancy to expand the QTC services internationally. The Philippines office opened in the summer of 2017 is much more than the satellite locations of some other companies. The Manila office has full decision-making capabilities and local management, spreading the benefits of innovation of quote-to-cash to more of the world. In addition, Simplus has remote workers all across North America sharing the same message.
Finally, Simplus owns the largest group of quote-to-cash experts in the world—all under one roof. The team follows a specific strategy to roll up and combine the efforts of all of its leaders in order to better handle large projects and do QTC implementations for enterprise.
“At Simplus, we are building the largest bench to handle some of the most complex enterprise projects for the biggest brands. Our commitment to buy, hire, and train talent makes this possible”, Ryan states.
Strategy for Success—‘sticking to the niche’
Simplus contributes to the consultant business by staying in its own lane. The company differentiates heavily within its niche and goes deep into it. The more firms can maximize value to the customer by going deep, the better. It’s when consulting firms are willing to take work they’re not truly experts in that they diminish the amount of value they can drive to the customer. It diminishes value for consultant businesses to take on projects that are not in their core competency. So at Simplus, the brilliant team found a sub-niche and they stuck with it. This strategy has brought industry-high customer satisfaction results.
Contributing to ‘Culture’ of Consulting
Simplus can expand to offer more than quote-to-cash. Over time, the company will expand its tech offering into lead-to-cash, and then into ERP systems to help a company go from marketing to finance.
Consulting firms need some consulting help themselves when it comes to culture. At Simplus, you can create some of the world’s best cultures in the consultant space.
First off, transparency— Simplus believes that transparency is critical, and you have to make sure all departments know all other departments. Then, secondly, they encourage collaboration and they rotate their executives to different offices.
In Simplus, Slack channels are used for sporting teams and sharing day-to-day chatting, personal stories, fun banter. This helps encourage not only workplace collaboration but also a work-life balance, which is something the old school model does not encourage.
Finally, there’s clarity—the leaders always makes it sure that every employee knows “this is our playbook, this is what we’re about, this is what we’re after.” If the employees don’t feel as a part of creating something special together, the company surely is missing the things that create a better culture.
Amazing Culture—the Pride of Simplus
Simplus is Salesforce’s largest investment in a services company—they’ve done three funding rounds together. Salesforce has rated Simplus highly based on its ability to grow certified individuals, create more experts, and expand the ecosystem instead of taking from it, in addition to the ability to consistently receive high CSAT customers and really differentiate itself.
Simplus has worked really hard to create a vibrant culture despite all the challenges. “We’ve been recognized time and time again for an astounding culture based on rankings and reviews from our own employees,” concludes Ryan in a positive note.
Source :-The 10 Most Trusted Consultant Companies 2018
