The 2024 Best Firms to Work For: Avaap

CLIENT INDUSTRIES SERVED: Higher Education, Government, Nonprofit, Special Districts, Transit, and Health Care

CONSULTING SERVICE LINES: IT Consulting and Advisory Services

Avaap is a premier technology and advisory consulting partner dedicated to accelerating organizational transformation. Our deep expertise in Workday, Tableau, and other enterprise solutions enables us to provide customized, full lifecycle services. We cover every aspect of your transformation journey from strategy and technology selection to successful project implementation, process optimization, employee training, and post-production support, including analytics and AI.

Our clients range from medium-sized businesses to large enterprises, including higher education, government, nonprofits, special districts, transit, and healthcare sectors.

CMAG: What characteristics and elements would you attribute to your firm's inclusion as a Best Firm to Work For?

Avaap's main goal is to support our people. Avaap helps team members who are looking to challenge themselves, either through professional certifications, online training classes, internal coffee talks and lunch and learns, and increased project responsibilities. Avaap employees have opportunities to attend conferences and industry events to keep up with best practices, industry trends, and evolving regulations.

Additionally, personal recognition is built into our culture. Town halls, company events, employee newsletters, and an employee recognition platform are just a few outlets employees can use to recognize the achievements of their peers in a real time capacity.

CMAG: Are there any specific programs or initiatives that contributed to you being included as a Best Firm?

Avaap's use of our continuous listening platform allows us to survey our employees on a regular basis. This allows leadership to better understand the engagement of our employees and create action plans around the feedback. The company regularly reports back on the feedback provided and action being taken to provide the best experience for our employees.

CMAG: In describing your firm, what would you say sets it apart from other consulting firms?

What sets Avaap apart as a Best Place to Work is our culture and the commitment and dedication of our team to deliver quality consulting services and solutions that help our clients reach their goals. Our "one team, one dream" mentality has helped the organization focus on operational excellence and delivering the best outcomes for our clients, while still supporting our people.

CMAG: Where your workforce is concerned, what would you say your priorities look like for the upcoming year and beyond?

Avaap continues to foster a feeling of connectedness among our remote workforce. Avaap supports employee resource groups in which employees can meet, volunteer, and network with others they may not interact with in their day-to-day work on topics and charities they are passionate about. Avaap also plans to continue hosting rotating quarterly meetings and happy hours, so coworkers have an opportunity to meet in person.

CMAG: What opportunities do you see as the most promising?

It is interesting to see the growing conversations and access to artificial intelligence (AI). Avaap is excited for the opportunity to help clients leverage AI and analytics in their day-to-day work to focus on more strategic initiatives and better decision making.

CMAG: What market forces do you see as the most challenging?

With the adoption of technologies related led by AI and digital transformation, this is creating a shift in the consulting industry. Many companies need to look at this through the lens of strategy, culture, and change management. This is changing the relationship with the customers from project-based to a more end-to-end journey that is comprehensive in nature. Customers are looking for greater ROI in the form of innovation and the traditional methodologies are evolving. Luckily, Avaap provides this end-to-end journey for customers that is all encompassing. Another challenge relates to the competition within the independent market. Several platforms exist now that allow independent consultants to be connected directly to the business at a more cost-effective solution. Thus, for large, established organizations to agile boutique firms, being able to provide that additional holistic approach and a shorter time to value will be important.

CMAG: What impact do you think Best Firm to Work For honors will have on your employees? The firm overall? Clients?

Being recognized as a Best Firm to Work For is meaningful for our employees because it reiterates that our people are our greatest asset and contributions to business success are valued, driven from the top down, which is why there is a strong commitment to helping every team member fulfill their personal and professional potential. This recognition benefits our clients by having the most experienced, passionate, success-minded people working on their business. Our client's partner with us due to knowledge, experience, capacity and cultural fit. When our people succeed, our clients succeed. We are grateful to have employees who love what they do, which is shown in their excellent client work.

Being recognized as a Best Firms to Work For winner from Consulting Magazine is a great opportunity for consultants interested in building a career at Avaap to know they are joining a firm that cares about delivering a great employee experience and meaningful to individuals who work here as testament to the strong culture they've built.

This ranking celebrates the extraordinary efforts and impact made by our people, as well as recognizes our continued commitment to clients, their customers and employees, our people, recruits, and partners.