Problem
The Client Happiness organization ran on fragmented contact-center tooling, inbound/outbound dialing, contact routing, and agent workflows spread across disconnected systems. Earnest needed to modernize into an integrated, AI-enabled platform and turn Operations from a cost center into a revenue driver.
Approach
I owned the program end to end, from discovery through implementation readiness.
- Discovery & scoping: facilitated cross-functional and vendor discovery workshops (not status meetings) to capture requirements, process gaps, and technical constraints.
- Vendor evaluation: ran RFI/RFP across CRM and CCaaS vendors (HubSpot, Talkdesk, and others) plus implementation partners. I built a custom evaluation model that scored required functionality against budget allocation, ROI mapped to capability gaps, so selection was driven by what Customer Happiness actually needed, not vendor pitch decks.
- Commercial execution: drove contracts, SOWs, and budget analysis to signature on multi-year enterprise agreements, partnering with procurement, contracts, and legal.
- Cross-functional leadership: aligned 15–20 stakeholders across 10+ functions, Customer Happiness, Operations, systems engineering, infrastructure, security, data, analytics, procurement, contracts, and legal.
- Program operating model: built the scaffolding: operating model, scope one-pager, quarterly execution charter, workstream/DRI risk tracker, and a go-live and enablement framework. I ran a pre-mortem before execution to surface failure modes while they were still cheap to fix.
- Execution cadence: weekly "Win the Week" executive updates, plus an onsite in Salt Lake City to bring the full team together for implementation readiness.
Impact
- RFI to executed contracts across Q4 2025 and Q1 2026, then a go-live framework and implementation coordination through Aug 2026, with a selection decision defensible on functionality-to-cost rather than preference.
- Established a repeatable operating model (charter, risk tracker, pre-mortem, go-live framework) the org could reuse on future platform programs.
The framework, in hindsight
The Harvard Data Science Initiative's AI Strategist and Builder intensive, which I completed in October 2026, gave me names for the discipline this program ran on. The discovery workshops were an Audit: map the as-is, name the outcome that matters. The functionality-to-cost model was the Gauge: score the options against the outcome instead of the pitch deck. The operating model, charter, and go-live framework were the Engineer work. Aligning 15 to 20 stakeholders across 10+ functions, with a pre-mortem to surface failure modes while they were cheap, is what the framework calls Navigate. The weekly executive cadence and the workstream risk tracker were Track: measure whether the program is converging, not whether tasks closed.