How AEC Firms Know It’s Time to Invest in Knowledge Management

I can imagine there are a lot of firm principals who they don't even know that they need this thing because they probably don't know that it exists. But what, what might be the pain points that they are feeling that would be a good fit for helping solve this with synthesis?

Sure.

I mean when I started the company, you read the bio before.

So at both architecture firms I worked at, I sat between the principles in the marketing department and I watched all day long the thing like you know, what projects have we worked on with Skansko? What you know, how many higher ed projects have we done with X thing?

And everyone listening to this podcast is in kind of marketing gets that right.

And so part of what we did.

In the very, very beginning of synthesis and I did this inside the firms and then I when we launched the company in 2009, this is part of the product is make it really easy to get to the source of truth of that information. And, and just people get self service to those questions too so they don't have to search their CRM or kind of like go on to some network file to find it. Like it's in a really easy to capture interface.

But also like what, what happened is.

I mean we can talk about like.

Basic stuff like what's our jury duty policy?

Right.

Or how do I get new business cards like all the way at the base level of stuff like that towards.

Learning and development, there's just so much knowledge that needs to be managed.

But from a pain point perspective, I.

Think AEC firms generally go through these kind of spurts of growth and then.

There'S like a tricky spot that you get to size wise. So like there's a tricky spot somewhere around 30 people.

There's another tricky spot somewhere around 60 people or like 120 where you need.

To grow past it to have the.

Infrastructure you need to support that company.

But if you don't grow past it.

You'Re caught in a profitability trick where.

Like you've either got too much overhead.

And you're not making money or you've underinvested and your resources are really strained. And so usually we get hired when companies are going through one of those inflection points and the way it manifests is almost always some kind of employee feedback, employee survey, employee engagement around I can't find the information I need to do my job. I don't know what's happening at the company. I need some learning opportunities. Like it's in that kind of nexus of knowledge and internal communications and learning development that we play. And it's usually, it's very clear that, like, as they've grown through, they're not doing as good of a job making things available as they used to, making things clear as they used to, giving learning opportunities. Like, you have to change your approach to doing all of those things as you grow. And so a lot of times that's.

When they're like, ka.

It seems like you guys could help us with this and can you?

So that's when we usually get brought in.