Can “the customer is always right” motto go hand in hand with a positive employee experience? How do you use your own work culture as a key to customer success, long-lasting relationships, repeat customers and happy employees? Find out how Jodi Hayes, Rizing’s Chief Executive Officer (HCM), led her team to success and becoming the recipient of the 2022 SAP North America Partner Excellence Award for Cloud Delivery Excellence.

Placing customer needs first does not have to come at the expense of employee happiness, company revenue or growth opportunities. Rizing, an SAP-only consulting partner, uses their practitioner knowledge and technical expertise to support customers with pre-project planning, execution, implementations, and full HR cloud management. With a 4.7 / 5.0 star rating on Raven Intelligence, Rizing has proven successful at guiding their customers to adopt innovation, gain rapid results, grow sustainability, and run more efficiently through SAP solutions. The key has been recognizing the clear link between happy team members and a positive customer experience.

So, how are they doing it?

Constructing the Culture 

In digital transformation projects, the consulting partner and their individual team members have a direct impact on the success of your implementation. At Raven Intelligence, some of the most critical questions we recommend that customers ask potential consulting partners are related to the team:

• What are your team consistency metrics?
• Is the team you present during the evaluation process going to be who I get during my actual project?
• How many other projects will they be working on at the same time?

Rizing strives to create a work-life balance that sets their consultants up for success, not burnout. This focus helps to set the stage for future success, creating better experiences for first-time customers and repeat engagements.

“Professional services is a demanding career,” said Jodi. “We take out the administrative and manual operations so the client team can focus on their trade and what they enjoy doing.”

As we’ve seen in the Great Resignation, if employees don’t feel valued, challenged, and supported, they’ll go find those qualities in another employer. Rizing’s emphasis on culture and career development is building an environment where team members get exactly that. Rizing’s effort to take care of their employees is showing in the team’s motivation to deliver five-star implementations.

Throughout the duration of her career, Jodi also noted that, “so many people move from a single contributor role into managers and don’t know what to do.” To propel their team members’ careers forward, Rizing offers learning opportunities and coaching to help them grow to the next level in their career—including their award-winning leadership development and coaching to help them grow to the next level in their career. 

What Rizing Looks for When Hiring New Associates

When recruiting for open roles, HR practitioner experience mixed with technical expertise makes candidates stand out to Rizing. This makes it possible for the consultants to empathize with the situations their customers are tasked with, building trust and confidence in addition to much more customized consulting solutions—because after all, the consultants have been in their shoes.

Beyond culture, real-world experience is also a critical component that makes Rizing stand out from their peers. Prior to joining Rizing in 2021, Jodi Hayes led the Global Cloud Support function at SAP, bringing a unique mix of SAP software and services expertise which is foundational  to Jodi’s ability to drive Rizing towards their goals.

“Being in the throes of support for the SuccessFactors suite of products enabled me to see how the customers use the technology, where they run into issues, and what they’re doing to use the products as solutions for their company,” said Jodi. “This gave me a unique opportunity to bring that experience back into the implementation at Rizing to make sure our solution is designed and configured to how the product will work in the long run.”

Rizing’s Approach to Client Success

In addition to culture, Rizing focuses on building trust with their customers to set them up for long-term success. Each implementation team takes the time to understand what their customer needs—and with Rizing’s 4.7 / 5 rating on Raven Intelligence, this strategy appears to be driving results.

“Rizing always provides the correct expertise and works with you to deliver the required solution.” – Decision maker in the finance, banking & insurance industry implementing SAP products with Rizing

Jodi stated that she’s proud of the Rizing team for having built such a reputation with their customers before she joined as Chief Executive Officer (HCM). Building trust and delivering on their promises to customers have enabled them to build long-term relationships and repeat customers, driving growth for both the customer and Rizing.

“Rizing has been a great partner who constantly provides support and guidance around best practices and guided us throughout the implementation to make design decisions that helped us succeed.” – Project leader in the manufacturing industry implementing SAP products with Rizing

What to Look for in a Consulting Partner

As customers navigate the partner selection process, there are tell-tale signs that a partner is right—or wrong—for your organization. Most consulting partners are either recommended because of the relationship with a salesperson or due to previous experience with the consulting partner, but this strategy doesn’t allow you to consider all of your options.

Start with questions such as, have you done this type of project before? This will help you understand if the consulting partner has relatable experience in the type of support your organization needs. Going further, Jodi recommends looking at not just certifications, not just the proven experience, but also the results the consulting partner has been able to drive for their customers. 

“Having the right partners in place is always key. They need to meld well with your culture, but also be a subject matter expert not afraid to share best practices from their prior experience.” – Decision maker in the retail industry implementing SAP products with Rizing

Building for the Future

With Jodi’s unique practitioner experience and HR background, she’s put together some ambitious goals for the Rizing team in the coming months. Expect to see them expanding their European presence as they focus on growing their business globally along with building a more robust business transformation service offering.

Beyond that, Jodi anticipates that predictive people analytics will soon become a highly demanded service, and they’re already working on a solution to this need, particularly due to the impacts of the Great Resignation. With so much talent leaving organizations, having a frequent pulse on the employees accompanied by data will enable companies to understand what actions they need to take to have a motivated and engaged workforce. 

“We’re working on a solution that is simple for customers to implement and enables them to actually get robust data and analytics in order to make business decisions,” said Jodi. “There are a lot of solutions out there, but they’re difficult to set up and difficult to maintain. It’s a big investment that most companies can’t make, so we’re looking for what we can do in that space to make it more attainable, and add AI in there to make it more predictive.”

Learn more about Rizing HCM on their Raven Intelligence profile.