Slalom Consulting launches new software and tech 'building' offering
Management and technology consultancy Slalom has launched a new software and tech product ‘Build-as-a-service’ offering. The Slalom Build centers will initially span 7 cities in North America, with three more opening early next year.
Founded in 2001, Seattle-based Slalom provides clients with consulting services in the areas of business advisory, customer experience, technology, and analytics. The firm has over 6,000 employees across 23 cities in the US, as well as further locations in Toronto, Canada and London, UK. Slalom is a consistently top-rated workplace: it was among Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2018, as a well as a part of Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work list.
The business and technology firm announced that it is rolling out Slalom Build: a ‘Build as a Service’ (BaaS) offering that enables companies to build cloud-native software and tech products. As organizations are increasingly forced to use technology as a strategic part of their business, Slalom delivers an innovative new way to create those imperative tech products.
"What started as an experiment to build engineering centers on-shore has become one of the most successful, bold moves in our history," said Slalom CEO Brad Jackson. "Every company is looking to reimagine themselves, and they're counting on technology to fuel their next generation of growth. Slalom Build helps our clients take a differentiated approach to disrupting the status quo."
Slalom already has seven Build Centers across North America, with three new centers opening in early 2019 in New York and two other locations. The centers' 1,000 ‘builders’ fuse design, product engineering, analytics, and platform and process automation to custom develop software and tech products.
"Slalom Build puts interdisciplinary teams to work, with proven methods, in close proximity with clients, to create technology and software products – faster, cleaner and more nimbly than ever before," added the new offering’s leader, Mike Cowden.
Slalom Build counts on a number components to create a better development experience and final product – including their elasticity, methodology, and co-creation. In terms of project elasticity, the centers allow clients to seamless shift or scale work, so that projects get the exact amount of resources needed, and then ramp down when complete. Next, Slalom Build’s methodology incorporates a pragmatic approach that according to the firm “drives fluidity with rigor, acceleration with quality, and ties it all with business relevance.” Finally, the co-creation aspect of the of centers allows clients to purposefully interact with Slalom’s teams, processes, and culture.
For clients that need custom software solutions – which is a lot of them – the centers offer a compelling proposition. "There are no enterprise-class off-the-shelf solutions in our industry today," said Bron McCall, Senior VP of IT for self-storage firm Extra Space Storage – a Slalom client. "Slalom Build helped us build for the future with modern software development tools and processes, transforming our IT organization along the way."
Current Slalom Build centers can be found in Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Seattle, and Toronto.
