Getting to know the particular challenges faced by our clients is key to how we foster relationships and build strategic partnerships. In this blog Director of Customer Success, Andres Morinigo, recaps on a recent visit to the city of Atlanta.
Earlier this month, I hit the road with our Customer Success Manager, Alex Cesarini, as we headed South to the land of peaches and good ol’ Southern comfort food. Surprisingly, neither of us had ever been to Atlanta, so we were excited to escape the cold of NYC and experience a new city. We have a growing presence of clients in ATL, and I always love getting out to meet them in person. During my eight years with the company, I’ve found there is nothing more valuable than these in-person meetings where we can take a “human first” approach and break down the walls to understand what really matters to our individual customers. After all, that’s really the goal of our Customer Success team.
During our four days down South, we managed to meet with several clients including Niles Bolton, Greenberg Farrow, Cooper Carry, TVS Design, Lord Aeck Sargent, and CBRE-Heery. We even popped down to Jacksonville for a special appearance with top design firm RS&H. One thing was clear to me: the AEC world is thriving. From designing state-of-the-art university facilities to reviving historical buildings like the Georgia State Capitol (shout out to Lord Aeck Sargent), our clients are transforming cities and creating sustainable designs for the promise of a greener future for our planet. But to achieve this, they need to be on the cutting edge of innovation and technology.
While OpenAsset is a spoke in the wheel of a typical AEC firm’s tech stack, it plays a critical role in streamlining workflows that ultimately lead to winning new business and remaining agile as a company. Several clients we met with were undergoing a wave of change, ranging from mergers and acquisitions to making way for the new wave of talent as their more senior leaders look toward retirement. I often heard how they were using OpenAsset to capture the story of their firm’s legacy.
Like our clients, we aim to innovate and remain agile in the fast-paced world of technology, which is why we’ve introduced features like Image Similarity Search, advanced templating capabilities to streamline resume and proposal workflows, and a UI that truly connects people to projects. We know our AEC clients are visual and creative people, so we’ve made significant changes to OpenAsset’s portfolio pages to include maps, Employee Bios, and more in an effort to promote data visualization. In our meeting with Niles Bolton, they mentioned how OpenAsset has transformed their ability to promote their firm’s work, and their own leadership uses the new project maps feature to quickly filter their project experience by location before important meetings.
It’s easy to see OpenAsset simply as a Digital Library for your firm’s photography, but many firms share goals that go beyond that. TVS Design hopes to enable a more collaborative environment where all employees feel empowered to create their own branded collateral through the use of custom InDesign and PowerPoint templates in OpenAsset. That frees up their marketing team to focus on other pursuits and big picture strategy. Cooper Carry’s Marketing team spoke of the digital transformation that they’ve seen take place within marketing and the overall AEC industry. Being able to quickly create sharable branded collateral that highlights their firms’ work, and doing this under tight deadlines with strict brand guidelines, is a common challenge for many marketing and graphics teams. We love being part of Cooper Carry’s digital transformation efforts.
While we had a super busy week, we also made time to enjoy some great dinners and all the southern hospitality that Atlanta is known for. I ate the best cajun catfish sandwich of my life at Bon Ton Restaurant (big thanks to Jesse Altman from TVS Design for that killer recommendation), and drove down every Peachtree Street in existence. Fun fact: a friendly Uber driver let us know the best peaches are actually in South Carolina, ya’ll! Overall, I’d say our first time in Atlanta was a success and a big thanks to our awesome clients for having us.
