Best of Breed and Highly Customized Technology Solutions Provider: Blackstone + Cullen Inc

BIG DATA is a parasol term. It comprises of common sense approach to large sets of data throughout the spectrum of volume, velocity, variety and veracity (including your DNA and genome). Big data also houses legitimate ideas and terms that utilizes big data as a source of information, but discriminates from it based on segmentation. Blackstone & Cullen with 25 years experience has been building data warehousing and business intelligence solutions, and understands legacy systems and how to best design analytics solutions to create sustained competitive advantage.

The company was founded in 1989 by Lee Blackstone and Frank Cullen and is headquartered in Alpharetta, GA, delivers Business Intelligence/Analytics solutions, Data Warehousing, Collaboration/Portal solutions including Document Management, Business Process, Enterprise Project Management, and Custom Business Applications enabling clients to realize optimal bottom line of profit. Frank also has deep industry ties, spending 8 years on the Microsoft advisory board for Business Intelligence. He is a true data scientist, has written the original algorithms for the optimized logistics for several organizations like UPS, USPS, and a large Atlanta based beverage company. “Our innovative analytics business is exploding. The demand is huge and our ability to bridge between global business and the art and science of data, puts Blackstone & Cullen on a unique position for growth,” says Frank.

Lee Blackstone serves as the CEO at Blackstone & Cullen with the focus being to assemble a team of “A Players” who have the same passion and drive for ensuring client success by providing elegant solutions to complex problems. “At Blackstone & Cullen, we take our clients on a data journey bringing the art of global business and the science of data together to acquire data, then, analyze, report, predict and prescribe what “Success” looks like,” explains Lee.

Unparallel Service Offerings
In 2012 Harvard Business Review published an article titled, “The End of Solution Sales”, which describes “how companies can readily define solutions for themselves.” In many cases, clients today have researched, compared, rationalized and determined the solution before engaging a team for implementation. Instead of asking, “How can you help to resolve my problem?” They are asking the question, “Can you help me deliver the solution in my environment?” “This has led to organizations and consulting firms identifying their staff and project teams as team members in a “Solution Delivery” organization or department.

Solution Delivery is more than just a group of consultants and technical resources,” adds Frank. “A solution delivery minded organization should be focused on the impact of the solution they are providing to the business. For solution delivery teams to truly be successful, they must focus on more than just the solutions they provide.

They must focus on the touch points with the client and with the ultimate consumer and benefactor of the solution delivered. This focus takes solution delivery beyond typical consulting services and begins to focus on the overall solution delivery experience,” explains Lee.

A lot of thought has been focused by the company into developing the Customer Experience for purchasing tangible products in physical space. Solution Delivery teams provide a solution to an issue or problem which normally begins in the form of a project. The approach, interactions, communications, and ultimately the delivery of the solution comprise the overall solution experience. To date, Blackstone & Cullen has found no technology that will create and drive a compelling solution delivery experience. Rather it has created a strategy to determine how the processes, people, and technology are fused to deliver the solution and derive successful customer experience.

“At Blackstone & Cullen, we have developed a framework, a set of principles, and a methodology to our solution delivery approach. We refer to this as the Ultimate Solution Experience (uSX). Why? We believe in providing a better solution experience. An experience in which people sense, feel, think, act, and ultimately relate to the successful delivery of the solutions that we provide,” says Lee.

The company’s data warehouse architecture best practices allow companies to rapidly add or replace data sources without impacting existing structures. Companies that are acquiring other companies will require incorporating financials and HR data. “Following our architecture best practices, we are able to incorporate data within days, not months,” adds Lee. Since its inception the firm has been delivering ‘first-rate’ and highly customized technology based consulting solutions to the world’s leading brands. Some of the numerous prevailing terms in the world are agility, time to market, predictive and prescriptive modeling, heavy lifting and aggregating disparate data sources.

The complication increases exponentially as the number of data sources grow and the development to deployment cycle decreases. Blackstone & Cullen has perfected the ability to bridge between the global business, the data scientist and the CXO. Their 10 day Dev/Deployment cycle delivers immediate gratification to all the stakeholders.

The company’s focus on the Ultimate Solution Experience™ is the primary differentiator. There are many companies that can deliver solutions, but there are very few like Blackstone & Cullen that can do so while ensuring a positive experience.

“Our overriding focus on our “Promote the Client” strategy, dictates we do the right things in the right way,” states Lee. Some of the big clients of the firm are Microsoft, Colonial Pipeline, Merial, Siemens, Amazon, GE, CDC, & GA Dept. of Transportation, Gwinnett County Public Schools, Boys and Girls Club of America and VMware.

Guide to Future
In 25 years, over 80 percent of clients have been promoted or bounsed as a result of successfully delivering projects. “Our primary focus at Blackstone & Cullen is to continue developing and improving the Ultimate Solution Experience™,” concludes Lee.