Accenture – Croixstone

Croixstone Consulting Celebrates 7th Business Anniversary

“On our lucky number 7 business anniversary, I offer the deepest thanks to our consultants, search professionals, clients, leadership team, business partners, friends and family to whom we owe the ongoing success of our unique firm.”

– Patti Weber, CEO

Where it began: 7 years ago this month, our founders Patti Weber (a former leader with Accenture and public school educator) and Mark Weber (a serial entrepreneur, consulting industry veteran, and former staffing industry executive) launched Croixstone Consulting in a former photography studio loft in Charlotte’s vibrant South End neighborhood.

The inspiration: The conventional consulting industry is notorious for recycling PowerPoint decks and burning out its consultants. These practices, along with other systemic issues in the consulting industry, contribute to the delivery of subpar services to clients. The Webers believed there was an opportunity to build a high-performing, boutique firm around consulting industry mavericks (known as constructive noncomformists) who could deliver their expertise and passions in a better way, while concurrently fueling innovation and solving problems for clients.

The name: Rivers are an indispensable part of our lives, and they are wonderful gifts from nature that have the power to teach us. The inspiration for Croixstone’s name is the St. Croix River (French: Holy Cross), a tributary of the Mississippi River that forms a border between the states of Wisconsin (the home state of the Webers) and Minnesota (where the firm’s founders each began their careers).

The right way to say our name: “kroy-stone.”

Our achievements: We’ve packed a lot into our 7 years in business. As a small but mighty firm, we not only survived, but thrived, amidst the global pandemic. We owe a huge thank you to all those who believed in our ability to deliver a differentiated business model for our consultants, clients and internal leadership team. Here are some of our key achievements over the past 7 years:

• 2016 – Croixstone was launched in Loft 309 of the former Lance Crackers building on South Boulevard in Charlotte’s trendy South End neighborhood.

• 2017 – Inspired by a future of work conference that Mark Weber attended in NYC, Croixstone relocated to the One South tower in Uptown Charlotte and is a founding member of the Industrious coworking community.

• 2019 – Croixstone launched the firm’s human capital and executive search practices.

• 2020 – Croixstone received national certification as a Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE) by the Greater Women’s Business Council, a regional certifying partner of the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC). Additionally, Patti Weber was accepted a part of a competitive application process into FORTUNE magazine’s “Rebuild Program.”

• 2021 – Patti Weber was selected as one of only 25 women in the USA to participate in the “Accelerated Growth Program” sponsored by Wells Fargo and hosted by the National Association of Women Business Owners. Additionally, Patti was also named to The Charlotte Ledger’s 2021 “Forty Over 40” list in recognition for her contributions in making Charlotte a better place to live, work and play.

• 2022 – Croixstone landed on the Charlotte Business Journal’s “Fast 50” list as the Charlotte region’s second fastest-growing private company.

• 2023 – Croixstone was ranked #11 on Inc. magazine’s fourth annual “Inc. 5000 Regionals: Mid-Atlantic” list, the most prestigious ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the District of Columbia, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Learn more: Checkout Croixstone’s Linktree to learn more about unique firm.

ChatGPT and Job Seekers

“If used as a guide, distiller of content and framework, ChatGPT could have many benefits for its job-seeking users.”

– Robin Reshawn (Executive Career Strategist and Contributor to USNews.com)

What is ChatGPT?: ChatGPT is short for “Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer” and is an artificial chatbot developed by OpenAI. The technology was released in November 2022. ChatGPT has the fastest-growing customer base of any technology in history.

Why you need to become familiar with ChatGPT: As shared by Alan Murray (President and CEO of Fortune magazine), “generative A.I. is likely to have the most profound impact on the business world of any technology since the PC.” Paul Dougherty, CTO of Accenture, said that what is coming is a reinvention “of the way work is done, dramatically amplifying what people can achieve.”

Job Seekers are using ChatGPT: A Forbes magazine article published last month shared that 46% of 1,000 current and recent job seekers surveyed by ResumeBuilder.com used ChatGPT to craft their resumes or cover letters. The job search can be a tedious and time-consuming journey, and ChatGPT can deliver incredible time savings and helpful resume writing capabilities.

Yes, but: If not used the right way, the content delivered by ChatGPT risks being generic and buzzword heavy. Resume writers also risk losing their voice in building what should be a tailored marketing document. We recommend that job seekers regard ChatGPT as a great tool that delivers many benefits, however, it needs to be used with an eye toward understanding its limitations and how to best compensate for its shortfalls.

The bottom line: Job seekers should become familiar with ChatGPT and how to best incorporate the emerging technology into their searches. The experience gained will not only deliver benefits to the job search, but it will also help the job seeker to better understand how the technology might be applied in the workplace.

Learn more: We like the insights shared in a February 2023 article published by USNews.com entitled “Using ChatGPT for Your Resume and Job Search.” Read the article here.

Make the Downturn Work For You

“The best companies do more than survive a downturn. They position themselves to thrive during the subsequent upturn, guided again by a number of broad objectives.”
– Harvard Business Review (Febuary 2009)

Do you know where the opportunity lies for your company (and/or your career) during this time of great uncertainty? In this blog post, we focus on the opportunities that await those determined to make the downturn work for them.

13 Massive Companies That Started During a Recession

“…if history proves to be any sort of reliable predictor, recessions have actually served as the launchpad for some of the world’s most incredible businesses.” – The Startup (Medium)
Learn more here.

Turn Massive Challenges into Meaningful Change + Opportunities.

Accenture has done a remarkable job of effectively packaging insights from the firm’s experts in a simple and straightforward way to help organizations turn massive complexity into meaningful change.
Learn more here.

Robotic Software + Accounting Firms

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the use of a software robot or “bot” that replicates the actions of a human to execute tasks across multiple computer systems. According to a 2015 Accenture report, robotics is predicted to automate or eliminate up to 40% of transactional accounting work by 2020. Read this 2017 newspaper article from the StarTribune in Minneapolis to learn more about how robotic software is sweeping large accounting firms and their clients.

AI Factoids

According to Accenture, the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies on business is projected to increase labor productivity by up to 40%, and enable people to make more efficient use of their time.

Learn 14 other fascinating factoids on AI here.

Croixstone Consulting CXO Patti Weber Completes Harvard Program

Congratulations to Croixstone Consulting’s Chief Experience Officer, Patti Weber, who this week successfully completed the Harvard Business School Club of Charlotte’s “Management Development Program“.

The Management Development Program, a “mini MBA” style course taught at Queens University, is a favorite with Charlotte-based corporations and is taught entirely by Harvard Business School alumni to program participants. The course offers rising executives the chance to study business one night a week for 13 weeks with a roster of some of the most prominent CEO’s, Presidents and Managing Partners in the Charlotte region.

In addition to participation by Croixstone Consulting, this year’s Harvard program included leaders from companies including: Bank of North Carolina, SYNOPTICS Northrup Grumman, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Carolinas Medical Center, Schaeffler Group, ScentAir Technologies, Continental Tire, Snyder’s-Lance, Duke Energy, Carolina Cat, EnPro Industries, Skookum, National Gypsum Company, Ridgemont Equity Partners, Coats North America and more.

Patti completed the Harvard program to supplement her more than 20 years experience in helping global Fortune 500 companies and top-ranked public education schools implement forward-thinking and “game-changing” initiatives. Her background includes diverse business experience in the technology consulting (Accenture) and workforce solutions (Kelly Services) industries.

As an active community leader, Patti is a Partner with Social Venture Partners Charlotte and serves on the group’s Education Committee. Additionally, she serves as a volunteer Math Tutor at Charlotte’s Sedgefield Elementary School with Heart Math Tutoring and as PurpleStride Charlotte Teams Ambassador with the Charlotte Affiliate of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.

Croixstone Consulting is Official Supporter of International Fraud Awareness Week

Did you know that the typical organization loses 5% of its annual revenues to fraud?

Croixstone Consulting has joined leading companies (including Accenture, Bank of America, Barclays Bank, Deloitte, EY, General Mills, Grant Thornton, IBM, Oracle, PricewaterhouseCoopers, TD and TIAA) in a global effort to minimize the impact of fraud by promoting anti-fraud awareness and education during International Fraud Awareness Week (November 13-19, 2016).

Sponsored annually by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), International Fraud Awareness Week addresses the staggering cost of fraud. According to the ACFE:

The organization analyzed 2,410 occupational fraud cases that caused a total loss of more than $6.3 billion
The median loss from a single case of occupational fraud was $150,000
More than 23% of occupational fraud cases resulted in a loss of at least $1 million
Median losses varied by region (USA = $120,000)
Of the three major categories of occupational fraud, financial statement fraud caused by far the greatest media loss per scheme
When owners or executives committed fraud, the median damage was more than 10X worse than when employees were the perpetrators
The more people conspiring in an occupational fraud, the higher the losses tend to be

Learn more about the ACFE and International Fraud Awareness Week here.