PBN Business Excellence Awards 2020
Excellence at a Small Company: Envision Technology Advisors LLC
TODD S. KNAPP, founder and CEO of Envision Technology Advisors LLC, feels that some engineers wake up in the morning excited about a piece of technology. But he said the 22-year-old Pawtucket-based technology consulting services company that serves a wide range of clients in and around New England is focused on helping people with that certain piece of technology.
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To that end, Knapp and his team of nearly 50 employees work to make their clients stronger and more efficient so that they can grow and hire more people to effectuate positive change.
“If I find ways to make it faster for a hospital to deliver good results for a patient or make it easier for a client in the foster care system to understand why kids end up in foster care, I don’t know anything more valuable,” Knapp said.
Because Knapp believes that all decisions are driven by emotion, Envision recently launched a new initiative called Peer Inside: Managed Data Analytics. The initiative poses two questions to prospective users: Which behaviors are you seeking to drive? And, how can we use data to drive those behaviors?
Harvesting data and then presenting it in a visually powerful fashion that supports the desired behaviors requires a diverse skill set not typically found in an information technology-centric environment. In contrast, Peer Inside, a subscription service, taps the expertise of business intelligence analysts, behavioral experts, artists, visual designers, authors, storytellers and trainers to “continually look at data and find powerful ways to visualize and present that information,” said Jeremy Girard, Envision’s director of marketing.
“This comprehensive approach is a really powerful service … and sets you apart from those only using basic reports or dashboards,” Girard said.
With newly hired staff for Peer Inside arriving shortly before Envision went into COVID-19 lockdown, the company took that time to refine the initiative and demonstrate its viability through some pro bono projects.
“We’re taking on customers fast and furious now,” Knapp said. “[Using Peer Inside], we resolved one company’s 20-plus years of data headaches in about three-and-a-half weeks. The company survived the pandemic in part because of Peer Inside.”
As a way to introduce new hires to the company, Envision welcomes new employees and their families with “Welcome Boxes” filled with chocolates and other goodies even before the employees begin work. The bright-orange Envision-branded boxes were designed by Girard, who said, “We’re bringing new people on because we’re adding new service lines and growing existing services, not [due to] turnover.”
Envision had planned in March to introduce BLUEPRINT, its well-researched, strategic new approach to offering human-resources benefits, but Girard said the pandemic redirected the company’s priorities to focus on ensuring employees had the tools to get through the health crisis.
“Most businesses typically try to tell employees what they need to be well and satisfied,” Knapp said. “BLUEPRINT tells employees that we care about them being well and enjoying their jobs, but we don’t know what they need to be well and happy, so we need their input.”
BLUEPRINT enables employees to spend a fixed number of reimbursement points on services suiting their lifestyles, such as gym and AAA memberships, meal delivery subscriptions, tuition and student loan repayment assistance, child care costs, etc. Anticipating a BLUEPRINT launch in 2021, Knapp, who calls himself a “serial collaborator,” is eager to share the information with others.
“There are lots of opportunities to do good things for employees, employees’ families, colleagues and clients,” Knapp said.
With the pandemic and ever-evolving technology, Knapp foresees exciting opportunities to employ a geographically dispersed workforce, re-envision workspaces and use cutting-edge technology.
What does he envision for the company in the next three to five years?
“I have to manage the metrics of the bottom line, customer count and turnover rate, but they aren’t the reasons I get out of bed,” Knapp said. “A measure of success for me is that the business is changing to meet the needs of our people and the people we serve. We want to continue to do things that are meaningful and continue job creation.”
