Lessons Learned from 10 Years in Business

Cleartelligence was founded in 2011 with a mission of helping customers envision, design, and implement solutions to solve complex, data-centric business problems. This year, we are proud to celebrate 10 years of successfully empowering customers to identify actionable insights and enable better decision-making through data visualization, data management, and advanced analytical capabilities. Over the years our team has grown to over 60 members strong and we have had opportunities to work on hundreds of projects across a multitude of industries.

As a leading data analytics consulting firm, we typically post technical articles focused on spreading industry knowledge and modern IT technology best practices (see Building Better Dashboards Through Interactivity and the Alteryx Tips & Tricks Series), but today we’d like to take the opportunity to reflect on some of the lessons we’ve learned over the last 10 years that have helped to shape the great company that Cleartelligence is today.

1. 60+ Strong! Our success is our people.

Our mission is to empower organizations to become data-driven enterprises by implementing solutions that solve complex, data-centric business problems, and it wouldn’t be possible to build great solutions without great people. Our success is our people, and our ability to deliver effective solutions in a timely manner is 100% tied to our people’s collective hard work. While we have seen many people unfairly treated as “resources” in the consulting world, we make it a point to promote a trusting relationship with our employees. We empower our team with the tools and knowledge required to be successful in customer engagements and foster an environment of autonomy rather than micro-management. We have a simple core philosophy of instilling trust and confidence in the amazing people who work at Cleartelligence; and the success of our people and their ability to thrive in the workplace has only translated into the Cleartelligence’s overall success.

2. Without data, all we have are opinions.

A statement our founders learned in the early days of their careers as traditional data architects and business intelligence specialists is, “without data, all we have are opinions”. Today’s fast evolving data analytics landscape only further embraces this concept. Our customers' successes require advanced data architecture and data readiness best practices along with modern, thoughtful, visual, and interactive solutions. This may sound like common sense for a data analytics consulting firm, but many consulting companies focus primarily on one or the other. Deliberately balancing our highly experienced application development, data, and architecture expertise with our talented solutions-oriented visualization specialists has proven to be the key to our success.

3. Evolve with Modern Analytics.

Ten years ago, "Business Intelligence" was the main phrase used in the data warehousing and reporting industry. The dominating terminology we see today includes “Data Analytics”, “Advanced Analytics”, “Augmented Analytics”, “AI”, and “ML”. The simple difference between then and now saw the transformation from the traditional BI team taking report orders to a modern analytics strategy of enablement through self-service data solutions. We, of course, evolved our data architecture, engineering, and visualization competency with modern technologies – that was the easy part. But our key to success was cultivating a proven blueprint for enterprising self-service analytics by focusing on the balance between data democratization, community enablement, and leading-edge technologies.

4. It’s all about trust.

It takes enormous courage and trust for a customer or partner to share their heart, mind, and database, and we do not take this trust for granted. We know that the success of our solutions affects the success of our customers, so when we commit to a plan of building a solution, we continuously follow up by doing it, again and again and again, always on time and on budget, relentlessly, until we have fulfilled our promise to build and deliver. We nurture and grow trust through constant action and effort, which ultimately allows us to form strong bonds that enrich partnerships and allow for both our customers’ successes as well as our own.

5. Forge long-lasting customer partnerships.

Throughout our years of experience providing technical consulting, we have observed consulting companies who insist that customer satisfaction and customer success is the priority, but in practice are not willing to put real skin in the game. We have always understood the significance of investing in our customers and have consistently prioritized helping customers through their analytic journey. We do this by holding to equitable rates and not nickel and diming billable hours, assisting with prototypes and proof of concepts, sharing our data analytics IP and our internally built data tools, and ensuring every project’s success. Our approach of always putting the customer first has forged long-term trusted partnerships – evidenced by our standard customer engagement length averaging at 13 months over the last 5 years – and is what continues to drive our ongoing success.

6. Attitude Matters!

We have found that when businesses are met with the challenge of having to choose between multiple skilled partners, they tend to opt for the partner whose attitude fits better. Our attitude is consistently what helps us stand out as industry leaders in the consulting world. We strive to remain positive and open-minded to creative solutions when approaching even the most challenging technical problems and consistently maintain a supportive role, through both the ups and the downs of a project. We don’t sweat the small stuff and understand that no two customer situations are the same, and consequently no two solutions are the same; therefore, we tailor our solutions specifically for each customer’s unique needs. Our team consists of highly skilled technical consultants who understand that the attitude we embody when approaching any project is paramount to forming a trusting customer relationship and ensuring any project’s success.

Looking ahead to the next 10 years, and many more to come!

As we look ahead to the future, we understand that our success will come from embracing new challenges, remaining open to new opportunities, celebrating the diverse background and knowledge each team member brings to the table, and taking advantage of opportunities of growth through continuous improvement. Thank you to our dedicated team and loyal customers for a successful decade! We look forward to empowering many more organizations to become data-driven enterprises.

Interested in working with us? Head to our website to learn how we can help you take your analytics beyond.