The 2024 Best Small Firms to Work For: ImagineX

CLIENT INDUSTRIES SERVED: Financial services, communications, retail, hospitality

CONSULTING SERVICE LINES: IT

ImagineX is a leading digital services firm whose mission is to help our clients and technologists to #BeBetter. We specialize in Software Engineering & Cybersecurity underpinned by deep delivery expertise. Delivering technical solutions with pragmatic and iterative methods, our seasoned technologists deliver tangible value on our clients' mission critical risk reduction initiatives.

ImagineX is headquartered in Atlanta with offices in Washington DC, and New York. Build, ImagineX's Digital Studio, is located in San Jose, Costa Rica. We are a 7 consecutive year winner of Consulting Magazine's Best Firms to Work For.

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

We send out quarterly pulse-checks and an annual employee survey and the word that consistently comes up is "flexibility". Allowing our employees to balance work and life has become central to getting the best out of our folks. When they are trusted to deliver exceptional client work on their own terms, they feel empowered and appreciated.

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

This year we implemented Guilds: communities of practice aligned around technical capabilities such as Cloud, Application Security, or QA Automation as well as delivery processes like Delivery Success and Client Services. This allows practitioners from across our different business units to interact with colleagues they typically don't work with on daily client projects.

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

We always say we are "small enough to care, and large enough to scale". Over the past year, we have really demonstrated that, despite a significant growth in our business and employee base this year, we continue to champion a culture of continuous improvement, entrepreneurship, and having accessible leadership. In the market, we have exceptionally high client satisfaction scores and our clients highlight that being "easy to work with" and providing "high value" and "engaged leadership" are some of the reasons we stand apart from other firms.

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

For IX, 2024 was a year of significant growth in an industry that was relatively slow. 2025 will be focused on supporting our large and mid-enterprise customers by allowing them to deliver their most strategic programs at high value with a competitive cost structure – we are able to do this through our hybrid onshore/nearshore teams that work hand in hand with our clients.

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

Obviously, every company is focusing on how best to leverage AI in their organization to deliver efficiency internally and drive revenue and customer service externally. We also see increased demand in system integrations and custom application development in the cloud. And embedding security principles into engineering is becoming table stakes, whether it be cloud security, application security, or data security. From an infrastructure perspective, clients are wrestling with understanding where their enterprise risk lies, inventorying their systems and devices, and building processes to protect those assets from external (and also internal) attack. We will continue to help those customers prioritize and action their most pressing risks.

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

Client spend this year has been down due to known economic forces which have resulted in pricing pressure and the push to "insource" work that was traditionally done by consultants and third parties. We have had a strong year because our clients have started to move spend from other vendors to ImagineX because of our higher value proposition and our hybrid nearshore approach which resonates with our clients who have teams across the US. We are hoping that the current backlog of client projects will unlock in early 2025 as clients struggle to deliver all their critical projects with their internal resources.

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

Winning this award for 7 consecutive years is a testament to our people – they are recognizing each other as innovative, collaborative, resilient, passionate, and caring. This award honors our internal operations team, our world-class leadership team, and our folks who are on the front lines with our clients, solving their most pressing technology and cybersecurity problems.