Award-Winning Catalyst Consulting Group Drives Success with a Unique Blend of Expertise
In November, we honored several Salesforce partners through our annual Partner Innovation Awards. It’s always exciting when we can showcase consulting and ISV partners who go above and beyond in delivering world-class innovative solutions to thousands of customers worldwide using the Salesforce platform.
Among the winners in the Industry Solutions category was Catalyst Consulting Group for its work in the travel, transportation, and hospitality space while working with customer Port of Seattle. Catalyst is a Chicago-based IT consulting firm with 30 years of experience delivering tech solutions for the public sector.
The company is also immigrant-founded, started in 1992 by CEO Arvin Talwar, who is of South Asian descent. With a diverse team of solution engineers and customer success specialists, Catalyst is dedicated to transforming the way public agencies use technology.
In honor of Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, we are proud to showcase this Asian-led business. We sat down with Catalyst’s Director of Solution Engineering, Alissa Ahn, to learn more about how the company embraces diversity and inclusion internally and externally to provide better experiences for its customers’ constituents. Watch the video feature and read about Catalyst’s story below.
How does diversity and inclusion play a role in your business?
We are a small, minority-owned business, and we feel that the differences we possess are what make us stronger as a business. We work in a space that’s constantly changing, and when you have a diverse team, you’re able to utilize their various backgrounds and experiences to arrive at better, more innovative solutions — faster.
Plus, working in the public sector means serving two customers: the government staff and the constituents they serve. We’re a diverse team that mirrors the diversity of the constituencies we build for. That’s why we often facilitate community engagement sessions and focus groups to help governments work for everyone.
One way we foster diversity and inclusion is by making sure our leadership team and hiring process reflects that commitment. When I look around, I’m proud to say there are such rich, diverse backgrounds in gender, race, and experiences that help us develop and drive a culture of inclusion within the rest of the firm.
How does Catalyst use Salesforce products to provide tech solutions in the public sector?
The private sector has really changed the customer service game. Think of Doordash or Lyft — these are organizations that make it easy to request services. In turn, constituents’ expectations have never been higher. We are all about helping government employees do their job better, which enables them to deliver remarkable service and build more meaningful relationships with constituents.
Our team is made up of a unique blend of core CRM/case management and marketing automation expertise. The delivery team brings backgrounds in engineering and computer science, but also public relations, communications, digital marketing, and journalism. We not only implement Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Einstein, but also tools that facilitate public-facing communications like Experience Cloud, Social Studio, and the rest of the Marketing Cloud suite.
What was the Port of Seattle’s challenge, and how has your solution helped them solve it?
The Port oversees Seattle’s seaports and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, so it really is a worldwide hub of travel and commerce. In non-COVID times, it services 50 million flyers annually, one million cruise passengers, and $7 billion in cargo. With so much activity, it naturally receives tens of thousands of correspondences annually from constituents and travelers with inquiries, concerns, and suggestions that inform different Port policies, projects, community engagement endeavors, and recreational offerings.
Catalyst’s development is driven by the belief that it should be easy to request help. When requesting service is as easy as sending a text or a tweet, it opens a lot of doors. That’s precisely why we introduced many new public-facing channels that people can use to get in touch with the Port. Service Cloud is the backbone of the operation, housing cases that come in from the web, social, and text, using Einstein to categorize them with AI as they come in. Plus, Marketing Cloud enables the Port to manage 31 different newsletters, attract and host attendees for virtual events via Journey Builder, and communicate airport updates to travelers through SMS.
“Catalyst’s development is driven by the belief that it should be easy to request help. When requesting service is as easy as sending a text or a tweet, it opens a lot of doors,”- Alissa Ahn, Director of Solution Engineering, Catalyst Consulting Group.
What results has the Port of Seattle seen?
Since launch, cases created over social media now close two hours faster than in the legacy system, and overall, 25% of the airport’s cases are resolved in under an hour. We attribute this to having all the necessary details housed in a single, unified Salesforce ecosystem.
Additionally, the Port’s knowledge base is now a hub for self-service, enabling case deflection and freeing up customer service to troubleshoot more complex cases. Emails and texts are also fired off within minutes instead of hours, all while looking snazzy and personalized. We’re thrilled to say we’ve also kicked off a second phase of additional Salesforce work with the customer.
What makes Catalyst’s work unique?
From a business perspective, it’s our depth and passion in understanding a customer’s process and how it will ultimately fit into the Salesforce solution. And I really mean that — we all know how flexible the platform is, but we also understand how daunting it may be for a customer to move a process they may have used for years and years.
As a team, it’s our blend of employees who come from all walks of life that make us unique. Our staff includes trained mechanical engineers, data scientists, and computer scientists, but also former journalists, musicians, teachers, and marketers. When we funnel these unique skills through the lens of a Salesforce implementation, something really powerful happens.
Head to AppExchange to learn more about the Catalyst Consulting Group and find other experts and apps to help you extend what’s possible with Salesforce.
