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Composite Apps: A Different Take on Digital Consulting

According to Long Nguyen, CEO of Irvine, Calif.-based Composite Apps, what makes the digital consulting firm stand out is its design-first approach for the technology solutions it creates for clients.

Nearly two dozen Fortune 500 companies have turned to Composite Apps for its enterprise solutions, with the young company having already turned around more than 80 projects.

Nguyen spoke with the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance about the company’s edge in delivering mobile enterprise solutions, the importance of advanced analytics in what Composite Apps delivers, and how the company makes data central to its products.

MESA: What was the impetus for Composite Apps when it was founded, what gap in the digital consulting market was the company looking to fill?

Nguyen: Composite Apps is unlike the typical “start-up, digital consulting firm.” We have evolved over the past decade from a company that filled enterprises’ needs for a highly specialized integrator of complex and secure data system environments (think: government and defense) into a provider of engaging and powerful solutions that solve critical business challenges, while accelerating enterprise workflows. Our unique ability to blend together modern UX principles with the aggregation of typically monolithic business software allows our clients’ executives to enjoy advantageous insights while orchestrating effective efforts from their associates. Ultimately, we help companies understand their data, engage associates, and improve behavior.

MESA: Composite Apps’ solutions revolve around making the most of mobile and optimizing workflows, however the company also prides itself on “humanizing” technologies to better engage users. What’s entailed in this approach?

Nguyen: Composite Apps is not just staffed with technologists. We have found that good software is much more than good code — it’s an outcome of different perspectives and experiences Composite Apps has just as many liberal arts majors as we do data scientists! Ultimately, our efforts are about how Composite Apps orchestrates our team with our client needs to deliver great solutions. In the end, our clients’ success is driven by our foundational three-step approach that connects an organization’s data to its associates and executives:

1. Understand Data: Understand organizational data, answer key questions, and set priorities to facilitate necessary changes. Our solutions highlight bottlenecks, gaps, and other problems to create evidence-based recommendations that push improvements.

2. Engage People: Set priorities are then operationalized and embedded as goals in every individual’s daily work roles. Embedded goals create focus by engaging people through highlighting important metrics and actions that drive positive behavioral changes.

3. Monitor & Improve: Once priorities and goals have been operationalized, real-time analytics track activities, provide actionable insights, and measure outcomes. This allows organizations to answer key questions around work execution and efficiency.

MESA: Advanced analytics have become a crucial part of any solution for media and entertainment companies. How does the Composite Apps platform go about providing actionable analytics, and how does machine learning come into play?

Nguyen: Composite Apps has been integrating machine learning and actionable analytics into our solutions for almost half a decade. We recognize that humanizing data requires making it intuitive to the user. Incorporating artificial intelligence and advanced analytics is the key to engaging users and creating action. We also recognize the need to tweak the predictive recommendations to provide better outcomes.

This is why we integrate intuitive data scoring into our solutions that allow associates to interact with our algorithms through easy to use sliders and other input methods. Interacting with algorithms is the mechanism for actively setting criteria to provide areas of focus to specific teams within an organization. With virtual assistants, machine learning, and individually-tuned alerting, Composite Apps is creating modern business solutions that surpass the most engaging consumer applications.

While our approach to actionable analytics and advanced technology is great, we know that it can go unnoticed if the end user experience with an application solution is poor. Even with all our history in implementing complex systems, Composite Apps is a “design-first” firm. While we start with the systems and data architecture, we quickly move into engaging end-users to develop user personas that outline challenges, desires, and workflows.

We use these personas to inform workflows, map data elements to specific user needs, design interface mock-ups, and build interactive prototypes. Our iterative process allows Composite Apps to rapidly evolve the design and application workflow even as we develop the backend solution.

MESA: What are some of Composite Apps favorite use case examples, where M&E companies have made especially good use of CA’s services? Warner Bros. and the CURA workforce management enterprise application comes to mind.

Nguyen: “The WB HUB” CURA: Project Workforce Management:

• We helped WB create $20 million in ROI by engaging with their workforce and incorporating accountability into their workflow. CURA introduced powerful and detailed project management, execution, billing, and monitoring at WB.
• Engaging content and intelligent feedback paired with advanced analytics facilitated a non-allocated and non-budgeted spending drop from 96% to 4%.
• Accelerated financial reconciliation, integrated billing and journaling tools, and expedited closing process led to a monthly savings of 240 worker-hours.

MESA: What’s next for Composite Apps, what can we look forward to from the company in the future?

Nguyen: We are rooted in helping our client firms leverage their existing IT assets and investments through the incorporation of modern technologies. Tech continues to evolve, accelerate, and improve. We will be helping our clients continuously take advantage of the changing tech environment. Exciting times are ahead!