IT modernization isn’t a international idea at RGP. The worldwide skilled companies agency advises 70% of Fortune 500 firms on find out how to plan and execute advanced digital transformation initiatives. Nevertheless, a number of years in the past, the Dallas, Texas firm acknowledged an uncomfortable reality: Except it upgraded its personal infrastructure, it risked shedding credibility and falling behind rivals.
That realization set off a four-year mission to overtake the corporate’s IT framework. The objective? Migrate off legacy techniques comparable to Microsoft Dynamics and embrace a cloud-based structure constructed for velocity, agility, and suppleness. “We would have liked groups to work quicker and higher,” declares Keith Golden, chief info officer. “Nobody needs to rent a consulting agency that may’t modernize itself.”
The initiative, dubbed Mission Phoenix, has rewired workflows — and reshaped outcomes. By swapping out legacy techniques, code bases, and information framework for a lightning-fast digital infrastructure, RGP is fueling innovation and dialing up its capacity to reply to continually altering enterprise calls for. “This was our probability to steer by instance,” Golden says. “We needed to stick the touchdown.”
Pace Bumps
For many years, medium and enormous firms have turned to RGP to handle advanced staffing wants. But after the agency expanded into enterprise consulting in the course of the early 2000s, it discovered itself more and more constrained by an outdated IT infrastructure. By 2020, issues had reached a breaking level. “We had code bases that distributors now not supported. We had software program techniques that couldn’t work together and trade information,” Golden says.
The issues didn’t cease there. RGP’s applicant monitoring platform wouldn’t combine with different important software program. This meant that groups generally had to make use of a number of techniques to perform primary duties. On prime of that, brittle code triggered disruptions and occasional breakdowns. “We had been siloed,” Golden admits. “In some instances, folks had little or no visibility into occasions.”
Keith Golden, RGP
Inefficient handbook processes had been piling up, Golden explains. This made work far tougher for the greater than 2,600 RGP consultants and specialists scattered throughout 37 nations. “We weren’t working on the velocity required for immediately’s enterprise setting. It was clear that we needed to undertake quicker and extra environment friendly workflows and processes,” he says.
In late 2021, the corporate launched Mission Phoenix, a multi-year modernization initiative. Golden stepped in as CIO for RGP a 12 months later. The agency chosen Microsoft Azure and an software stack constructed round Workday Finance and HCM modules to deal with cash and folks; Salesforce to handle buyer relationships; Aperture for applicant monitoring; and ContractPod AI, a agency specializing in AI-powered contract lifecycle administration.
Into the Clouds
In early 2024, with Deloitte serving because the techniques integrator, RGP started to modify on the brand new techniques. “It was removed from a lift-and-shift undertaking,” Golden says. Initially, groups needed to assess what information the corporate had, how totally different teams saved and arranged it, and the way folks used the information to do their work. Analysts additionally needed to decide find out how to optimize the information for the brand new techniques. “We needed to work by advanced points associated to cleansing and making ready information,” Golden notes.
Though RGP largely makes use of plugged-in vendor APIs to attach functions, it additionally needed to develop its personal APIs and code to optimize the workflows. “We had specialised conditions the place we would have liked customized code and particular performance to get information the place it was wanted at any given second,” Golden explains.
Govt alignment and a concentrate on change administration had been key components, Golden says. “Happily, we had buy-in from our management from begin to end. This supplied the assist we would have liked to see the undertaking by to the top.” On the identical time, the change administration crew recognized expertise gaps, fine-tuned processes, and labored with workers to tweak and adapt the brand new workflows.
The ensuing platform addresses immediately’s enterprise necessities — but it’s additionally engineered for the longer term. This consists of assist for specialised synthetic intelligence and agentic AI instruments embedded in Salesforce and different enterprise functions. Fueled by agile groups and steady enhancements, RGP has developed a world playbook that retains the enterprise at the forefront of innovation.
Agility on Demand
The undertaking wasn’t with out challenges. For instance, one small vendor was supposed to construct out further performance inside RGP’s time monitoring software, which consultants within the area use for billing. Inner groups had already begun writing code and creating APIs — based mostly on a deliberate acquisition by Workday. Nevertheless, six months earlier than the system was imagined to go stay, a special firm acquired the software program agency. “We had to return and revamp all of the code,” Golden says.
But, general, the modernization initiative progressed easily, Golden says. In the present day, groups are working quicker and extra effectively throughout quite a few areas. For instance, when RGP receives a request from a consumer to seek out certified candidates, job openings movement from Salesforce into Aperture. It may possibly then match certified candidates and rank them based mostly on particular standards, together with abilities and position necessities. “This eliminates the necessity for recruiters to dig by piles of résumés,” he says.
Lately, when an oil and fuel consumer wanted to fill 90 finance roles as a part of its personal transformation undertaking, RGP’s crew delivered ranked matches inside hours — a course of that previously required days and even weeks. “Whereas we didn’t succeed with each placement, we captured greater than our share of enterprise by figuring out high-quality candidates rapidly,” Golden says.
Contract administration can be easier. Up to now, if a consumer needed to make use of its personal templates for the overview course of, a doc would usually sit in electronic mail inboxes for hours or days till an legal professional may overview it. If somebody occurred to be on trip, the whole course of stalled out. Making issues worse, “Monitoring adjustments was messy and inefficient,” Golden says. Now, the role-based contract administration system routes the contract to the primary certified and out there legal professional.
RGP is now eyeing different enhancements, comparable to increasing its monetary and applicant monitoring techniques globally. The agency hopes to develop a “borderless expertise” framework that helps a digital and extremely versatile work mannequin, Golden says. “Happily, we have now a gifted crew that holds one another accountable. It’s been incredible to see the IT store rise to the problem and construct out a complicated digital framework.”
