‘From business knowledge to technological design, we have the experts and cutting-edge insights to bring brand new user experiences to life’: Bob Camp, head of product and consulting, BLDG25

“At BLDG25, we incorporate human behavioral factors into the design processes for our products, strategies, and solutions. From data analysis to visioning to testing the solution, we fold research about people into every step. The end result is an engaging experience that optimizes user outcomes.”

Organizations invest in digital transformation technologies to make them stronger, more efficient competitors in their respective industries. These changes to their core technology allow them to deliver faster, more personalized experiences to their customers regardless of where and who those customers are. It is imperative for financial companies, global manufacturing and supply chain organizations, retail centers, and all other enterprises to compete at the edge of advancement and deliver more immersive, customer-centric experiences.

Knowing this, we’re thrilled to present BLDG25 — a powerful team of multidisciplinary minds ready to help companies unlock the value of new technology and compete at the edge.

BLDG25 is a UX, behavioral experience design, and software development company with a focus on blending agile methods with new technology. The company works with organizations to build custom software solutions to their biggest business challenges. They have also developed a holistic, outcome-driven methodology that ensures clients walk away with a final product they’re excited about and ready to successfully take to market.

BLDG25 was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.

In the world of technological innovation, it is essential to have the right people leading and fostering a culture of client-first innovation. Bob Camp, who serves as Chief Operating Officer & Head of Product and Consulting at BLDG25, is one such leader. When he joined the BLDG25 team, he initially focused on redesigning their delivery strategy, enhancing customer expectations through improved onboarding, and building a company culture of excellence. During the pandemic, he built a foundation that readied the company to take on any new project that came its way as Covid-19 restrictions loosened and organizations began to re-invest in digital transformation.

Bob Camp spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review.

Below is an excerpt.

As a journalist, I find BLDG25 quite striking. From the emotional branding standpoint, it has that appeal. And please brief us about the history so far.

BLDG25’s founders are experts in the video game and virtual reality industry, so our history is rooted in exploratory and creative game design. We really know how to capture human interest and create experiences that people find deeply engaging. This, combined with our enterprise management expertise and continuous behavioral research, helps us create customized user experience and software solutions to big business problems. And it helps us create solutions that are engaging and effective! Our solutions focus on our clients’ customers and what they want to experience when using a product.

BLDG25 has become a sought-after innovation partner for companies who need help innovating for their customers and adapting to the pace and complexity of technological advancement.

Q. What makes BLDG25 unique? And how does the company solve big business challenges?

BLDG25 is unique because of its full-stack approach to creating solutions to business problems. There are a lot of phases involved in building and implementing a digital transformation solution, and we are able to take on every stage of a digital transformation project’s life cycle. From providing preliminary analysis of existing data, to working with clients to understand their most demanding business challenges, to visioning a solution alongside them, to building and delivering that solution, we have small, efficient teams of experts that can work with clients through any and all of these steps.

BLDG25 is also unique because of its integrated approach. In the solution development process, we work with both data-driven and analytical insights. Our approach considers the data that drives business impact. However, we also incorporate extensive research on the most complex element of any business problem. And that element is people! Our approach folds in more human, behaviorally driven insights. It considers individuals’ behaviors and the intrinsic and extrinsic forces that act upon them while they’re making decisions. For example, a couple years ago we worked with a large global financial organization seeking to increase an average transaction deduction rate amongst millions of their individual customers. Through our process and resulting experience, we were able to increase that average deduction rate 4x over industry averages. In the end, the right experience needed to respect the psychology behind the decision. For our clients, our solutions bridge the gap between cutting-edge technology and people – two things that are inherently different, but incredibly powerful when they work together!

Another aspect that makes our firm unique is the deep stakeholder engagement we maintain. Our process is extremely collaborative. As a team, BLDG25 is very passionate about walking through the process of visioning, designing, and implementing solutions with our clients. I personally get the most joy from seeing clients benefit from new products, processes, and solutions that we created alongside them. Doing this ensures that we’re infusing solutions with all the valuable knowledge our clients have about their customers. I find that this helps us to deliver the most effective solutions possible!

And finally, our customer-driven approach. We are inspired by our clients and their drive to help their customers. They care about their customers and want to have a positive impact on their lives. As we build products and solutions, we keep that inspiration at the forefront of the process. Our clients and their customers are at the top of our minds when we’re working to understand their problems, defining what a successful solution might look like, and continually testing and iterating the solutions we build.

Q. BLDG25 is a new kind of experience design firm for the large enterprise category. How do you interpret this further?

Not only do we consider more empathy-driven and customer-driven design themes, but we also consider what our client’s customers want and need when accomplishing tasks. As I mentioned before, when we build new solutions, we apply behavioral psychology concepts and emphasize the challenges people encounter when making decisions.

While our company’s history is rooted in game design, the solutions we’re designing aren’t games. They are both essential for large enterprises and deeply important for everyday people. People use tools we develop to manage their finances. They use them to navigate heavy machinery and control large manufacturing facilities. They use them to direct goods and services throughout a global supply chain. The types of solutions we build are significant, so understanding the user at a much deeper level beyond a traditional design approach is required for success. It is the invisible forces at play that can derail the best intended user flows.

“BLDG25 has become a sought-after innovation partner for companies who need help innovating and adapting to the pace and complexity of technological advancement in business.”

Q. What can you tell us about the innovative services or products BLDG25 offers?

We are a custom software solution provider for large enterprise clients looking to solve problems limiting their growth and potential. Everything we build is built on behalf of our clients. Everything we build is also entirely unique. We end up blending experiences from three main practice areas to deliver an exceptional final product including product management, delivery, and design. Our services are enhanced by physical and visual design, behavioral research, and engineering. So, when we work through a project, we complete a full-scale software development life cycle in addition to all of the agile delivery methods – from systems architect review to product releases. Our process is built specifically to manage our client’s investment risk while bringing new software solutions and user experiences to life.

Q. In what industries are your clients? Can you provide us with one or two success stories describing the challenges your clients faced and how your solutions helped them overcome those challenges?

Innovative product delivery and software development are applicable to a wide array of industries. Based on our background and history of delivery, we tend to focus on large enterprise clients in financial services and industrials such as supply chain, warehouse distribution, and manufacturing. These are two key focus areas for us but we have also worked with healthcare organizations, media & entertainment, and cybersecurity clients among others. It’s all about our process.

For example, we worked with a fast growing cybersecurity organization to develop the front-end portal experience for security analysts. The portal experience could be compared to a social network for cybersecurity analysts. It allows analysts from companies across the globe to come together across shared services and combat cyber-attacks collectively. Organizations that are targets of cybersecurity threats are often targeted indirectly, through an organization’s vendors or other “back doors.” Analysts all over the world are able to log onto this community portal and identify these points of vulnerability together. The endeavor involved behavioral challenges such as information overload and fatigue, and the need for an innovative, yet respectful, new user experience. Ultimately, we designed a platform through which analysts can identify the sources of threats and attack them together.

Troy Knight, the CEO of BLDG25, attested to Bob’s key role in the project. He explained, “Not only did Bob lead his team, but he also personally worked with the client to envision the future of this experience while empowering a team of designers to spearhead the delivery effort. Bob’s understanding of both the nuances of digital transformation and the importance of delivering business value inspired the BLDG25 team to deliver a next-generation analyst portal that will impact the future of cyber defense.”

BLDG25 worked with Xylem, a water technology provider; on redesigning the user interface for a technology product called Field Smart Technology, or FST. In this project, BLDG25 conducted extensive in-depth interviews and then analyzed those interviews for insights. They used those behavioral insights to redesign the FST interface and the entire experience that a user of that product has. One critical user experience improvement we helped create was a change in their alarm system. As this product monitors an area’s water supply, it’s important that its alert system allows users to clearly understand when and why there is a problem. BLDG25 helped to create a system through which everyone using the FST is able to understand and respond to warning signals.

Mitchell Hensley, who worked at Xylem while Bob led the charge on completing this project with them, describes the pivotal role played by Bob in the project. He says,

“Throughout our engagement with BLDG25, Bob Camp was the glue that helped stitch our two teams together to help us achieve our customer goals. He is a true partner who takes the time to understand your customers and your goals and adapt and adjust how BLDG25 works with you as you try and build that perfect product or experience. Bob wants you to succeed and is driven to help your teams reach their potential. During our engagement, Bob felt like a part of our team, not a partner or a consultant. He understands our mission and is as driven to help us achieve it as we are.”

Q. What plans for transformation are you pursuing to remain relevant now and in the future?

We are continuously scanning the landscape of emerging technology that can be incorporated into the solutions we build. This allows us to continue delivering transformative value to our clients. Blockchain and extended reality experiences are two areas that we’re leaning into today.

Additionally, one of BLDG25’s core pillars is talent. We are identifying and attracting the best talent in the industry. The people on our team are domain experts who can truly lead the delivery of these emerging solutions to our clients. They come from dynamic backgrounds and can make the process of building and adopting transformative technologies both collaborative and comprehensive. I learn something new from this team every day!

Q. Where do you see BLDG25 a couple of years from now?

We have several technology consultants and industry analysts telling us that BLDG25 offers the right solution at the right time as large enterprises head into phase 2 of digital transformation, so I see us continuing to grow into a larger organization with a larger list of clients we work with regularly. In the next couple of years, more and more large organizations will recognize the need to find the right technology partners to stay relevant. It is very difficult for large enterprises to remain expert at their core competency, and continually innovate at the edge of experience at the speed of light. The importance of this will only grow as both individual customers, and the landscape of large enterprises continue to evolve at greater speeds. BLDG25 is equipped with expertise and a keen eye for technological innovation that generates tangible business impact. This won’t happen overnight but our vision is to make BLDG25 the premier innovation partner for large enterprises.

Q. Is there anything else you want us to highlight that we might have missed?

One thing I am particularly proud of is our persistence. We managed to navigate the Covid-19 pandemic as a small company, which is no easy feat. Despite 10 years of fabulous traction, we, like many other companies around the globe, almost had to start over again. We spent a difficult year focusing inward, resetting and re-strategizing. Our team has experts located in different parts of the country, and with travel limitations, we had to learn and adopt new ways to work together and bond as a team in virtual environments. We also focused on ways we could deliver new value for our clients, who were also hurting as a result of the pandemic. Overall, we were able to grow in both business and organizational culture when we couldn’t be physically present. It speaks to our team’s strength. We are always ready to take on multifaceted challenges.

Bob Camp | Head of Product and Consulting

Throughout his career, Bob Camp has built unique solutions that solve problems for people. His favorite thing is watching customers experience joy in the products he's made. Camp has worked with enterprises in financial services, government, healthcare, and philanthropy. Prior to joining BLDG25, he worked with other exceptional organizations, including Booz Allen Hamilton, Xcelerate Solutions, and Fidelity Investments.

Camp has brought a wealth of consulting expertise and a knack for understanding clients' needs to BLDG25. He's passionate about taking a client's problem and working with talented teams to build a meaningful, impactful solution. When he isn't working with clients on their next big solutions, you can likely find him spending time with friends, reading, or enjoying a round of golf.

“We are a custom software solution provider for large enterprise clients looking to solve a problem limiting their growth and potential.”

“We are continuously scanning the landscape of emerging technology that can be incorporated into the solutions we build. This allows us to continue delivering transformative value to our clients. Blockchain and extended reality experiences are two areas in particular that we're leaning into today.”