The 2022 Women Leaders In Technology: Melanie Prestridge

Melanie thrives in situations that call for executing enterprise-wide and department-level strategic change—including implementation and improvements of systems, processes, and products. Her trusted guidance has helped many large organizations drive operational and bottom-line impact through strategic IT and business transformation. For example, she managed a program to disposition more than $100 million in IT contracts and assets for a large M&A divestiture in the industrial products sector, combining expertise in IT platforms, contracts, financials, and governance. She understands how to turn proven approaches into customized solutions that work for each client's unique circumstances. For both global and national companies, she has leveraged best practices and approaches for applications development and maintenance to assess client IT operations and determine opportunities for improvement, including identification of outsourcing opportunities. This has enabled her to define and deliver complex outsourcing contracts valued at upwards of $50 million and remediate broken client-supplier relationships to reduce costs and improve operations.

In addition, her decades of experience include financial management, process improvement, project and program management, governance, software development, and new technology implementation. She joined West Monroe from Pace Harmon, where she was a director. Previously, she held several governance and program leadership roles with telecommunications companies and consultancies. She earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Wesleyan University and an MBA from Emory University. She is a formerly certified Project Management Professional®.

What do you consider your greatest personal or professional achievement?

Two achievements stand out for me. The first is every time my team and I can help a client to meet and exceed their objectives. In the past few years this has manifested in helping a Fortune 500 manufacturer to disposition thousands of IT contracts (SW, HW, Telecom, and Services) worth $100M+ when divesting 2 lines of business. My team was able to develop a repeatable methodology to support the client and complete the dispositioning on time in 8 months, which the client had never succeeded in doing in previous M&A transactions. Our success helping them with their first divestiture has led to a long-term relationship with the client and being their trusted advisor.

The second achievement is watching as people I have led, managed, and coached over my career find their own paths and success. Sharing my knowledge and experience, and passing along what has been shared with me, is a long-term investment in the people I work with. I am at the point in my career where the folks I invested in are having their own successes in consulting and in other business endeavors. I love cheering them on as they soar.

What advice would you give a professional just beginning a career in consulting?

I would advise people just starting their careers to explore different types of work until you find what interests you. When you're just starting out its easy to fall into doing whatever you start with but it's not always the best fit. Since consulting is project-based, it offers opportunities to try out different roles, functions, and industries to see what fits. I found my path in technology many years after starting my career in completely different areas.

What have you loved most about your consulting career?

In consulting, I am never bored. I enjoy consulting because it is constantly changing and challenging me. I enjoy learning about new companies, industries, and technologies, and collaborating with colleagues, clients and other companies to drive solutions.

Consulting is inherently focused on solving problems, helping clients with change, and sometimes getting to do something that hasn't been done before. Early in my career, I was part of a team that stood up one of the first greenfield e-commerce sites that helped companies create a web presence and sell products online. I still remember the thrill of when the first test webpage popped up online after entering the test order from client's webpage and processing with no touch through the middleware to multiple back-office systems. Driving a project from initial idea and requirements through to realization is rewarding and never boring.

What's the best advice—personal or professional—you've ever received?

"Make the client look good to their leadership. Consult WITH a client not TO a client."

Clients hire us to bring the knowledge that doesn't make sense for them to hire permanent resources for. Consultants aren't necessarily smarter than their clients, they have different knowledge and experience that they bring to bear to a problem. Too many consultants fall into the trap of thinking they are smarter or better than their clients. This can lead to proposing or implementing canned or stale solutions that don't meet the client's needs.

By always remembering that I serve my clients, I am focused on listening to their challenges, understanding their technical and organizational environment, and learning their working culture. Coupling this information with my knowledge and experience, and my firm's methodologies and resources, I am able to create customized solutions and outcomes for my clients that meet their needs.

For example, a Fortune 500 Consumer Products client was going through a transformation program to outsource IT application maintenance services so they could spend more time on strategic programs and moving to DevSecOps operating model. My team was engaged to develop a contract for the outsourced services and prepare the team to operate in the new operating model. Rather than providing them with canned contract terms and role descriptions, we sought to understand their current environment and objectives, and customized our tools and best practices to fit their environment.

What does being honored as a Woman Leader in Technology mean to you?

Being honored means we are continuing to break the barriers to success for women in technology. I am hopeful that this will inspire others to see how they can be successful in this field so there will be more women at the table now and in the future.