What 2020 Taught This Local Tech Leader

by Adrienne Teeley
December 8, 2020
chicago
shutterstock

Raise your hand if you’re ready for 2020 to be over. Now raise your hand if this year taught you something valuable, too. 

While this year has brought more than its fair share of hardships, it’s worth looking at the silver linings as well. Companies have had to rely on ingenuity and creativity to reshape  their products, how their teams collaborate, and what support for employees and users looks like. 

That means there was no shortage of lessons learned. But with any luck, the teachings of a turbulent year can lay the groundwork for the future, yielding better offerings and a more dynamic way of working.

That’s been the case for Wyatt Kapastin, CEO of Productive Edge, which designs digital strategies to boost enterprise companies’ customer experience and internal processes.

“With the COVID-19 crisis, many of our clients were instantly forced to rethink the way they do business,” Kapastin said. “Based on our learnings this year, we’ve created a powerful set of strategy accelerators to enable our clients to even more rapidly jumpstart their future digital business and technology strategies.”

In a conversation with Built In Chicago, Kapastin reflected on the year’s many obstacles and how his team overcame them. He spoke to how the company utilized employees’ resourcefulness to execute quick pivots and why those moves will continue benefiting Productive Edge in the new year. 

 

Wyatt Kapastin

What does your company do? 

At Productive Edge, our mission is to improve people’s lives by transforming business and operating models through the application of technology.

 

What's your proudest achievement of 2020? 

In 2020, the emergence of COVID-19 presented our clients with numerous unexpected challenges, like how to serve their customers in different ways, and how to manage a fully remote workforce. 

We’re proud that Productive Edge rose to the occasion in 2020 to help our clients transform their COVID-19 obstacles into opportunities. For example, when a large convenience store chain was suddenly challenged with enabling touchless commerce at scale, we created the data infrastructure to enable online ordering and store pick-up. When a major health insurer needed to support thousands of remote workers, we implemented AI-driven sentiment analysis to provide a constant pulse on their distributed associates. When a government healthcare provider was struggling to maintain their great customer service, we developed an AI chatbot solution to help them deal with reduced call center staff.

As a company, we’re always grateful to help our clients make critical business pivots to handle unforeseeable circumstances like the ones they’ve faced in 2020.
 

We’re always grateful to help our clients make critical business pivots to handle unforeseeable circumstances like the ones they’ve faced in 2020.”


What was the biggest challenge of 2020 for your company, and what did your team do to overcome this challenge?

The unfortunate reality is that the economic challenges posed by COVID-19 have forced some of our clients to put certain strategic initiatives on hold. For Productive Edge, that’s meant finding creative ways to adjust our planning and redirect our team members onto other efforts. 

Fortunately, we have a lot of versatile players within our company who can wear different hats, like digital strategists who also have UX skills, or polyglot engineers who are equally comfortable developing for multiple platforms. For these people, we’ve often been able to find alternative initiatives to leverage their diverse talents. 

In other cases, we’ve encouraged team members to use this time to pursue additional training and certifications so they can improve their craft and expand their versatility for the future. We’ve also taken this opportunity to proactively invest in conceiving and packaging innovative digital business ideas for our clients.

In these challenging economic times, we’re thankful to have a talented, resourceful, and committed team that’s always willing to find creative ways to make the most of their skills.

 

What's the most important lesson you learned in 2020, and how will you carry that lesson with you into 2021?

2020 taught us that a key differentiator for Productive Edge is the exceptional speed at which we’re able to make a transformative impact for our clients. With the COVID-19 crisis, many of our clients were instantly forced to rethink the way they do business. They didn’t have the luxury to pursue a long-running digital strategy engagement to determine what pivots they should make. They needed to rapidly understand the strategic landscape and possibilities, formulate a plan and act.
 

2020 taught us that a key differentiator for Productive Edge is the exceptional speed at which we’re able to make a transformative impact for our clients.”


At PE, our approach to digital and technology strategy is outcome-focused and experience-first. It’s also efficient, action-oriented and fast. In 2020, we’ve been able to apply our industry vertical knowledge and strategic vision to quickly help our clients make the critical transformative shifts demanded by COVID-19. 

Based on our learnings this year, we’ve created a powerful set of strategy accelerators to enable our clients to even more rapidly jumpstart their future digital business and technology strategies. 

We believe that 2020 has set a new bar for speed-to-market in achieving business impact and we’re excited to apply our proven approach in 2021 and beyond.

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