Macedon Technologies
Augmenting Business Operations with Intelligent Automation Solutions

The Covid-19 pandemic undeniably changed the fabric of the current business environment. Not only did it highlight the significance of adaptability, but it changed enterprise behavior by manifesting the setbacks associated with decades-old business models. From a technology perspective, the pandemic pushed organizations across the globe to embrace robust digital and automation solutions, as it was the only way to sustain business operations.

Pivoting in this new reality is no easy task given that there is little to no room for errors, and the expertise required to do it right is an aspect that many organizations lack.

This is precisely where Macedon Technologies can help.

Founded in 2009, the company is on a mission to empower businesses to augment the way they operate and materialize their digital transformation initiatives. They specialize in providing tailor-made intelligent automation solutions to their clients. Being able to look beyond their requirements, ask probing questions, and challenge assumptions, Macedon Technologies builds the right tools for helping clients chase their visions and conquer their niche.

While conversing with the CIO Applications' editorial team, Mark Garvey, the COO of Macedon Technologies, shared his insights on how the organization leverages its technical expertise to provide robust intelligent automation solutions for clients quickly.

Could you give us a brief overview of Macedon Technologies?

For over a decade, Macedon Technologies has been developing technology solutions that are accessible anywhere, designed for change, and take advantage of automation wherever possible. These solutions allow our clients to operate more efficiently and have more agility in supporting their customers and employees now and as they evolve over time. We pride ourselves on being an elite solutions provider who handpicks a limited number of leading technologies to develop robust tools for our clients. By adopting a powerful and customized agile framework, we lead clients through the entire product development lifecycle while ensuring quality, efficiency, and delivering the right solution the first time. This way, we serve as a partner of choice for organizations’ strategic digital transformation initiatives with our expertise in bridging the gaps among technology, strategy, and leadership. All our solutions leverage the power of intelligent automation — Business Process Management (BPM), Intelligent Case Management (iCM), and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) — to help clients increase their process efficiency.

What does the client engagement approach look like for Macedon Technologies?

Established as a client-first company, Macedon Technologies embraces a four-phase approach — preparation, project, program, and enterprise — to help companies with their digital transformation journey. Identifying that agile methodology is the surest path to success, we follow its adaptive planning principles, continual improvement, and rapid delivery to assist teams in responding to business needs and maximizing time to value.

Early on, we work with our clients to identify their big-picture goals and decide where to begin. In fact, this first step is critical for us where we identify the use case that optimizes cost, time, and value. In agile terms, this is the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and is a great exercise in creativity and negotiation. It allows us to educate and inform the client on key agile concepts, roles, and how the delivery phase works.

We then deploy our team of experts to rapidly prototype, validate, and build out the solution. Throughout this process, our people are working hand in hand with business stakeholders to make sure what we develop aligns with their processes and goals. This approach includes asking many questions and doing frequent demonstrations to ensure that we understand the requirements and are on track.

Could you elaborate on Macedon Technologies’ agile training program?

Some of the things that make us different are that we bring a practical perspective to agile training and empower teams to build successful solutions in the most cost-effective and efficient manner. Each workshop is customized based on clients’ needs and their teams’ roles and responsibilities while demonstrating the value of the methodology’s standards and best practices. For instance, we offer agile training for product owners that includes several workshops. It allows them to understand their role on the team, project goals, practice building a backlog, prioritizing, and more. In addition, our hands-on approach enables a more in-depth discussion and realization of how critical the product owner can be for project success.

Furthermore, Macedon Technologies’ agile workshops can also be tailored according to clients’ corporate environments. For example, identifying the need for performing validation in the product development lifecycle for the pharmaceutical industry, we include some additional steps in training for them.

What are some of the factors that differentiate Macedon Technologies from the rest?

Our focus has always been to deliver high-quality and high-value solutions to our clients the first time. As technologies and methodologies have evolved, we have delivered these solutions at a more rapid pace. We invest a lot in increasing our ability to move quickly while still keeping the bar high in terms of quality and benefit.

We are able to do this by finding the best people:
folks with not only technical backgrounds but also strong problem solving, analytical, and communications skills. To move quickly, you need a small team of experts that can wear multiple hats and are just as comfortable talking with an IT architect as they are with a business stakeholder. This flexibility reduces communication breakdowns and the number of hand-offs required. We provide in-house training early and often in their careers to best equip them for success. We also train our clients extensively on agile approaches, covering the critical roles, expectations throughout the project lifecycle, how to make effective tradeoffs, and what sorts of questions to ask to measure results.

The intellectual property that we bring to each engagement is another differentiator. We invest a significant amount in our software library. We use these pre-built components when developing our solutions, increasing both speed and quality. Build vs. buy has always been the traditional debate when deciding on an IT solution; using these pre-built components allows us to offer a third option in many cases: assemble. Assembly of these pre-built components into a solution instead of starting from scratch each time. These tools and components help us reach our goals of maximum quality and velocity, allowing the client to start seeing a return on investment as quickly as possible. We obsess over this concept at all levels of management and in all departments within Macedon.

What does the future hold for Macedon Technologies?
We have always been very selective about the technologies that we work with. We’ll always choose depth over breadth. For many years, we worked with only one technology: Appian’s low code automation platform. As we have grown, we have identified opportunities to expand into complementary technologies, such as UiPath’s RPA platform and Snowflake’s cloud data warehouse, which are also leaders in their markets. This breadth provides us with an expanded toolbox to deliver more comprehensive digital transformation solutions for our clients while still maintaining the premium experience and successful outcomes they expect. We will continue to invest in these areas and refine our delivery methodologies to best serve our clients.