Our customers rely on us for the most comprehensive and accurate information possible, on all of the companies they care about. Our legacy systems prevented us from achieving the demanding timeliness and coverage goals we set for ourselves. Athens Group helped us optimize our new technology base and added functionality to better coordinate and accelerate the many processes required to gather, analyze and update our records. It now takes 42% less time, per company, to update information, and we've been able to update twice as many company records this year compared to the same timeframe in 2006. This improved timeliness and accuracy enables us to deliver more value to our customers. And we will have a flexible, process-oriented solution with reusable components that can be cost-effectively and easily extended to meet our future business needs.”
—Russell Secker, EVP, Customer Experience & International, Hoover's Inc.
Our highly experienced consultants provide the most value for customers who have complex projects and problems that require innovative and practical customized solutions, and a high degree of integration. We excel in these two categories:
- Business Process Innovation and Improvement
- Legacy Systems Enhancement and Evolution
We concentrate on the following industries:
- Financial Services
- Public Retirement Systems
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Non Profit Associations
- Public Sector
- Oil and Gas
- Retail
Financial Services
Today's financial services organizations face a number of complex challenges, including mounting regulatory pressures, market consolidation and mergers, the need for a seamless cross-channel customer experience, and ever-increasing customer demands. To meet shareholder expectations, financial services companies are projecting double-digit growth. This fuels the need to drive down the cost of adding new services, converting customer data into revenue and improving the ability to monitor and manage risk.
In this environment, the winners will be companies that can turn these challenges into opportunities to sharpen operational and process efficiency, meet regulatory demands and supply superior customer service.
Athens Group has a proven track record helping banking, insurance and investment management/securities companies lower operating costs, reduce risks and improve customer service though process improvement and software integration.
Public Retirement Systems
State and local Public Health Directors face increasing demands and challenges in fulfilling their broad scope of duties. The success and reputation of firms that support and administer public retirement systems are strongly influenced by the way they treat their customers at every point of contact. Building customers' trust and goodwill is paramount to maintaining loyalty and expanding the adoption of additional products and services. They are routinely tasked with reducing the cost for administering healthcare services, improving the quality of healthcare services, and reducing healthcare mistakes as well as complying with HIPAA privacy, security and electronic transactions requirements.
Athens Group helps public retirement systems lower operating costs, reduce risks and improve member service through process improvement and software integration. We help our clients make the right technology decisions to ensure their organizations thrive as they face critical issues such as:
- Increased board scrutiny of operational efficiency and returns on internal technology investments
- Increased legal exposure, retention requirements, privacy and portability requirements, and the contradictory pressures to make information more accessible to system members and staff
- Challenges surrounding legacy pension administration software, and the development and integration of new systems that provide flexible architectures and historical tracking necessary to meet ever-changing state and federal regulations
Discrete Manufacturing
The discrete manufacturing industry today faces a multitude of challenges; supply chains are becoming increasingly complex as manufacturers roll out global expansions; diverse and increasingly stringent environmental and safety regulations require sophisticated management of internal processes; and ever-present cost pressures require faster time to market with higher floor productivity.
To stay competitive, manufacturing enterprises are focused on improving profitability, reducing complexity in their business and manufacturing processes, and achieving better business insight. Enterprises now recognize the need to respond to changes in their environments in real-time, create products in tune with customer demand, outsource a wide range of operations and efficiently manage outsourced partners.
Athens Group has analyzed, selected, designed and implemented manufacturing information and control systems in a variety of discrete manufacturing industries. Our experience ranges from embedded control and real-time communications analysis, manufacturing execution systems and supply chain management.
As one example of our work in semiconductor manufacturing, VGEM is a single point SECS/GEM compliant interface that manages and controls tester/prober communication with the factory host. It is the first completely industry standard communications and control interface for semiconductor test. Designed and developed by Athens Group and used in fabs throughout the world, VGEM can be integrated into any tester platform and licensed for use in production deployment.
Associations and Non Profit
Non-profit organizations today are taking on increasingly more responsibility – in many cases with the same or declining leadership and executive-skill resources. Due to an increasing demand for their services it is critical for non-profit organizations to take advantage of every opportunity to increase efficiencies and connect with supporters. Whether the goal is to drive membership, increase donations, foster advocacy, raise awareness or improve volunteer participation, companies can boost results by creating stronger constituent relationships.
Athens Group understands the unique challenges faced by non-profit organizations and associations, including limited resources, efficient use of technology, strategic IT planning and the flexibility needed to respond to constituent's ever-changing needs. Athens Group has completed strategic technology plans, software package selection, Internet strategy plans, Internet design and implementation, technology assessments, and portal/content management implementations four our associations and non-profit customer.
Public Sector
Public sector entities face an environment full of change. Meeting the myriad of industry challenges requires a more efficient, productive workforce. Public Sector business functions are subjected to stricter regulations while often serving as the regulating body on other matters of compliance specific to their domain operations. Cost structures and organizational motivations differ as well. A reliance on politically controlled annual tax revenues that must trickle down into fully transparent, use-it-or-lose-it funding mechanisms has increasingly forced Public sector IT management to do more with less. Yet, in spite of these challenges, Public Sector governments, healthcare providers and education organizations are striving to be more responsive to constituents. They are increasingly leveraging globally available information resources to build new constituent services with enhanced security while improving operational efficiency.
Athens Group provides strategic IT planning, architecture modeling, technical assessments, IT organizational assessments, and process training to the public sector. Our projects have ranged from a complex strategic IT planning efforts to custom software development for timekeeping systems. Athens Group is the preferred systems partner with the Center of Lifelong Engineering (Software Quality Institute) that allows government entities to contract with the Center of Technology Training Assessments.