Excelerate

Thanksgiving reminds us to pause and appreciate the connections that make growth possible. We’re grateful for our clients whose trust challenges us to excel, the partners whose collaboration helps us rise to the occasion, and Excelerators who engineer and power success stories with their vision and dedication. Every milestone this year reflects a shared commitment to moving forward: Faster. Smarter. Together. We wish you a safe, meaningful, and joyful holiday. 

Change Management isn’t a nice-to-have bow that you tie onto your transformational initiatives; it’s one of the greatest determining factors of your initiative’s success.   Research published in Pepperdine University's Graziadio Business Review reveals that projects with excellent change management meet or exceed their objectives 93% of the time, compared to just 15% for projects with poor change management. Yes, that is a 6X difference in success rates.   Whether you're implementing digital acceleration, process optimization, or customer-driven change, the biggest risk isn't the technology or the strategy, it’s whether your people adopt and sustain the transformation.   Unfortunately, most organizations are betting millions on transformation while treating change management as an afterthought. That's not a technology problem or a strategy problem, it’s a leadership decision. In fact, 31% of CEOs, according to Leadership IQ, are fired for poor change management. So let’s stop thinking of change management as a discrete product and start thinking of it is a strategic necessity for every important initiative. #GoFasterSmarter

We are pleased to welcome our newest #Excelerator, Alastair Patterson to the team! He brings a wealth of Finance and Tech consulting experience and a proven track record of delivering strategic solutions to optimize business performance. Skilled in problem solving, project management, and client relations, he is dedicated to driving organizational successes. He’s already jumping into the fray, and we couldn’t be happier to have him onboard. Welcome, Alastair! 

AI agents are no longer merely recommending products, they’re buying them, and early signs suggest they will favor wholesalers and marketplaces over brands’ DTC channels. Here’s what we know: ChatGPT rolled out plugins to directly integrate platforms including: Shopify, Zillow, Booking(dot)com and Expedia. Future integrations with DoorDash, Uber, Instacart, Target, OpenTable, and TripAdvisor (among others) are already in the works. ChatGPT’s 800M weekly users can now browse products and listings directly within the ChatGPT app, and 53% of users already have or plan to soon.   This signals a significant shift toward agentic commerce wherein AI agents act on behalf of their users, which we all knew was coming. In-App AI purchases have already been forecasted to reach $922.89B by 2033, with a 22.1% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). But there’s something more going on here. Browsing the list of integrated and forthcoming partners, it’s clear that wholesalers and marketplaces are off to an early lead, with no brand’s DTC channel even in the pipeline yet. Moreover, we already know that agentic commerce favors structured data, APIs, and fulfillment ease over brand experiences, storytelling, and UX heavy environments. Taken together, this goes a long way in explaining the current state and forecasting the future state of agentic commerce, where wholesalers and marketplaces already have and will likely maintain a clear advantage. Businesses not already projecting a DTC decline must take note of these channel headwinds and what they mean for loyalty, customer data, and repeat purchase margins. Sure, there are ways to protect against this forthcoming syphoning, or even to directly embrace and lean into it, but they are long-term strategic imperatives, not short-term fixes. Whether its today’s shoring up or tomorrow’s recalibration, Excelerate is here to help. #GoFasterSmarter

Excelerate doesn’t do dependency. We do delivery. What does that mean? It means we’re not here to camp out in your conference rooms and graft ourselves into your org tree. We’re here to push your most critical initiatives across the finish line: fast, clean, and transformational. We don’t linger in your halls, but the momentum and value we bring continue long after we’ve left. Unfortunately, the traditional consulting model is broken—it was designed to perpetuate itself, not to solve problems. That’s why a staggering 70% of digital transformation initiatives fail to meet their goals, often due to overly broad scopes, lack of internal ownership, and dependency on external consultants (all statistics from Harvard Business Review). Notably: 💰Companies like GE, Ford, and P&G collectively spent $1.3T on transformation initiatives, and $900B of that investment was ultimately wasted on programs that failed to deliver. ⌚Many of these failures didn’t happen overnight—a large share of digital transformations stall or collapse after 12–24 months, often following prolonged consulting engagements. 📉Even when transformations do reach implementation, the long-term payoff is elusive: Only 30% of large-scale efforts lead to sustained performance improvement, despite extensive planning and strategy phases with deeply embedded consultants. We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: Too many firms are incentivized to embed teams and create reliance. But that’s not who we are or how we do business. Instead, we drive transformation all the way to the finish line and trust that when you’ve got another big problem to solve, you’ll call us back. Not because we’re still hanging around, but because our work speaks for itself. We bring value that lasts, and when we return, it’s to deliver more. That’s delivery, not dependency. #GoFasterSmarter https://lnkd.in/gJyW_9jG

We are pleased to announce our newest #Excelerator, Bianca Mitchell, who is joining us as an Administrative Coordinator. Bianca has a background in healthcare coordination and hospitality, where she honed her skills in organization, communication, and operational support.   Bianca works to create organized and people-friendly work environments where teams can thrive, and she will help us foster positive employee experiences, streamline processes, and support growth. We can’t wait to see all the positive impacts she brings to Excelerate. Welcome, Bianca!

Alcohol is becoming a decision, not a default, and its decline has persisted past the point of a temporary shift or momentary blip. For the first time in US History, the majority of Americans (53% according to Gallup) now believe that even moderate drinking deteriorates one’s health, a shocking increase from 39% in 2023 and only 28% in 2018. That’s 25% in just seven years, and importantly, it’s younger consumers driving this change. Consider that only half (50%) of Gen Z drinks alcohol…at all…in any capacity. When Millennials were in their 20s, as Gen Z is now, 72% of them drank. That’s a massive 31% decline in just one generation. Millennials have similarly been cutting back, now representing 61% of no-alcohol beer consumers and 66% of no-alcohol spirits. In fact, only one age group has increased its drinking over the last two decades: people 55 years and above, who went from a 49% drinking rate at the turn of the millennium to today’s 59%. Now we can discuss where all this change is coming from—evolving medical consensus, the proliferation of health consciousness, and economic pressure all come to mind. But whatever the cause, alcohol’s dominance is wavering, and alcohol brands have already recognized this and are (pardon the pun) soberly facing the future. This explains the beverage industry’s $5 billion worth of investments in cannabis, its aggressive acquisition spree of non-alcoholic brands, and the collective push into India, Africa, and Latin America. It also explains why many brands are moving towards luxury products, figuring if there is to be less market share, it’s better to capture the wealthiest portion of it. These are all good lessons to learn: diversification, expansion, and premiumization. But how will other industries respond? Because in the right hands, these aren’t just challenges, they’re opportunities. What does a mainstream, dry nightlife look like, for example, and who can commodify it first and most effectively? How will retailers adjust their aisles and experiences in a world where alcohol sales are no longer king? As alcohol loses its cultural centrality, something will almost certainly replace it—we are a social people built around ritual. But what? And how much will people pay for it? #GoFasterSmarter

We are so pleased to announce our newest Excelerator, Nicole Nowlin, MBA, PMP, CC. A seasoned Project and Program Manager, Nicole brings over 15 years of experience leading complex initiatives across industries and geographies. She’s partnered with Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies as well as high-growth startups to build PMOs, streamline operations, and deliver large-scale technical launches and product prototypes. Nicole’s adaptable management style (spanning agile, lean, and waterfall methodologies) makes her a natural fit for cross-functional, distributed, and international teams. She’s known for her ability to foster engagement, navigate ambiguity, and drive results through process improvement and organizational communication.  Welcome, Nicole, it’s great to have you on the team! #Excelerators

Being friendly and being competitive are not mutually exclusive, and you can team build around some friendly competition (particularly if it is silly). If you need proof of this, look no further than Excelerate’s recent Egg Drop Competition! Leaders broke us into teams and had us race for building materials (pictures 1 and 2) before giving us ten minutes to build our best containers (pictures 3 and 4). Our designs were architected for success, not beauty (picture 5), and each survived the initial drop from a conference room chair (picture 6). Everybody wins! Right? Wrong! Because #Excelerators don’t do ties. :) Instead, we increase the challenge, we raise the bar. Within seconds, everybody in the room agreed that we needed to drop these eggs from higher heights. How high? As high as we could go—four stories up (pictures 7 and 8). Nobody genuinely cared who won or lost—we aren’t maniacs and this was, after all, an activity lifted from a grade school science experiment—but it was fun to get into the spirit of it all. More importantly, it helped us recognize common traits in one another. Our colleagues are adaptable, quick to learn, quick to excel, and incredibly competitive. We love working together, learning as we go, and bringing out the best in one another. But one thing we don’t love: a tie. 

With process improvements and digital accelerations, it’s normal to feel a need for speed—to get the new system up and running, to get the new technology deployed—because these implementations, by their very nature, are time sensitive.   But rushing into implementation without proper analysis and planning doesn’t give you a leg up, it hobbles your initiative. Nearly 85% of digital transformation projects fail to deliver business value without intensive planning (Forbes) and poorly managed process improvement and digital transformation initiatives waste 28x more money than structured approaches (PMI). When a whopping 75% of ERP implementations fail to meet their original business case goals (Gartner)—with 25% of them failing catastrophically—and only 35% of businesses achieve their digital transformation goals (MDPI), proper planning and project management often carries the day. A structured, considered, and planned approach wins the race every time against a rushed one, which oftentimes fails to even cross the finish line. But…the need for speed…right? How can you achieve a lasting transformation on a tight schedule? Is there a way to have your business cake and eat it too? Well, that is exactly the kind of business problem Excelerators love to tackle. #GoFasterSmarter