7 Things Product Owners & CEOs Should Know About Praxent

Service providers face more competition than ever before. To win, they must provide fast, relevant and utterly frictionless experiences.

Businesses struggling to deliver at this level need a breakthrough. Our job is to help them achieve that breakthrough. Together, we discover, envision and build digital innovations that provide breakthrough in four common areas:

• Outdated experiences
• Manual processes
• Disconnected people
• Outdated expenses

We don’t just enable you to surpass the competition — we make the competition irrelevant. Keep reading to learn how our services have the power to transform, plus the 7 things product owners and CEOs should know about working with Praxent.

>> Access a free download of our budget planning guide for apps and software.

(This article is based on an interview with Goodfirms and Praxent CEO, Tim Hamilton. Read the full interview and view our Goodfirms profile.)

1. We are a digital innovation agency.

Digital innovation is the work of refining processes and experiences through technology to achieve formerly inaccessible outcomes. Digital innovations can serve as strategic steps toward large scale digital transformation of a business or industry.

At Praxent, we facilitate the discovery, validation and refinement of innovative ideas, building products that open doors for digital transformation down the line.

Case Study: What Is Digital Innovation?

Globeo struggled to stay on top of outdated business processes while juggling three segregated platforms for customer service and partner management. We worked with them to refine their business processes and customer experience through a custom-designed portal that automates manual labor and integrates operations.

The results of this digital innovation are the formerly impossible ability to scale up to 5x as well as a proprietary digital product they can sell to competitors.

>> Learn more about the custom software solution for Globeo.

Free Budget Planning Guide for Apps & Software

Dependable timeline and budget estimates are critical to making sure a product delivers a return on investment. When it comes to budget and timeline, projects built around faulty guess-work are usually doomed to fail.

Download our free whitepaper on how to accurately estimate cost-to-build, and learn how product planning can be predictable as well as flexible.

2. We empower clients to achieve compounding results long after our work is done.

Our innovative solutions set businesses up to pursue future growth. But that’s not the only value we deliver.

Our goal is to help clients develop their own digital innovation core competency. We bring clients into the work at every stage, coaching them through the disciplines that make innovation part of a company culture.

We work ourselves out of a job, empowering teams to own and maintain our work once it’s done.

3. Praxent takes clients from idea to implementation with integrated Discover, Envision and Build services.

Discover

Invest in making sure your product idea is the right one. Will people use it? Does it solve your most critical business problem? Intentional, smart discovery is the first step toward ROI on a digital product.

Our discover phase revolves around these core activities and deliverables:

Digital Strategy

Identify innovative ideas that will unlock new avenues of growth. Together, we evaluate existing strengths, weaknesses and pain points to develop a well-rounded digital innovation strategy.

User Research

Never assume you know what people want. We uncover insight about the people who will use a product and the context in which they would use it, testing to ensure we have accurate information about what will make your product sell.

Innovation Roadmap

Once we’ve validated ideas, we create an innovation roadmap to guide forward progress with rational, achievable steps. This agile, data-driven approach gets the work going, allowing transformations to occur as momentum gains.

Envision

We envision concretely through rapid prototyping, aware that digital innovation comes from research rather than guesswork.

Users are not just abstract ideas. They are real people we involve in the innovation process. We help clients focus on delighting users by delivering what they want most, not investing in things they don’t want.

By implementing human-centered design backed by data-driven insights and creativity, we help remove friction, address anxieties and build confidence among users. When the user journey is a positive one, clients are better able to achieve their business goals.

Build

Collaboration is fundamental to our development process. By collaborating with clients during the build phase, we set them up for future success.

• We empower clients to own the innovation.
• We work knowledge transfer into our process.

We build products to meet the needs of a business and it’s users, not the other way around. Those products take the form of database solutions, legacy software modernization, inventive mobile apps, progressive web apps, and anything in between.

4. Risk reduction is built into our delivery process.

We have developed and refined repeatable delivery processes to reduce risk for our clients. At each stage of the engagement, these flexible yet predictable processes serve as gears to move work forward. With these frameworks in place, we ensure well-rounded progress and forward momentum that stays on target:

AdvantagePath

Our approach to strategy reveals digital innovation opportunities and allows us to create roadmaps designed to transform.

ClickModel

Our rapid prototyping approach to software development ensures stakeholder alignment and user involvement.

AgileDev

Our sprint-based development process is highly-flexible to enable pivots, course corrections and iterations along the way.

CommandView

Our project management methodology keeps things transparent and flexible, allowing us to make informed decisions based upon clear information.

With over 64% of software designed today going to waste and an even higher percentage of projects ending up over-budget or unfinished, it’s essential to mitigate risks up front through better business analysis, concept validation and cross-team planning.

5. We’ve served hundreds of repeat clients across industries.

In the 18 years we’ve been in business, Praxent has worked with 300+ clients in a wide range of industries. We have versatile expertise that’s relevant to a large variety of businesses.

While we don’t focus specifically on any one industry, we have covered a wide spectrum including:

• Real estate
• Healthcare
• Energy
• Financial services
• Government
• Education
• Hospitality
• Entertainment
• Automotive
• Business services

We are proud to have many repeat clients who return to us for new projects or ongoing work on completed projects, like maintenance and new features.

6. We provide an accurate and reliable cost estimate and timeline.

It’s important to find out the major unknowns of a project before you commit to a timeline and investment. Together with our clients, we resolve unknowns through discovery and testing on a working prototype.

Without a working prototype, cost estimates and timelines are off by as much as 400%. That’s because new, course changing discoveries are inevitable. We plan for those discoveries up front to save money and time in the long run.

After providing an initial Rough Order of Magnitude, we delve into the first phase of work — collecting the information needed to flesh out an accurate cost estimate and timeline. Key components of this phase include:

• User research
• Value propositions and market strategy
• Product roadmapping

Once we have a working prototype, we prioritize features, define the MVP, and create a working prototype. At this point, we have all the information we need to give an accurate cost and timeline estimate.

7. Praxent was started by a problem-solving entrepreneur.

Meet Tim Hamilton, CEO and founder of Praxent. Tim has a BBA in business management, a background in IT, a passion for problem-solving, and a strong entrepreneurial spirit. He has been leading Praxent since 2000, when he founded the company as a student.

When asked what defines a successful leader, Tim replies, “How followers behave in their leader’s absence.”

Tim is a podcaster, former EO Austin Chapter President and UT Austin graduate. Learn more about Tim on his Bloomberg Breakaway Member profile.