VShift is a digital strategy, design, and technology agency for enterprise-scale brands in regulated industries. Pulse 2.0 interviewed VShift founder and CEO Al Collins to learn more about the company.
Al Collins’ Background
Collins has been an entrepreneur in the digital industry for most of his career, including founding and running companies that offered digital products as well as others that provided digital strategy and services.
Formation Of VShift
How did the idea for VShift come together? Collins said:
“While working as a strategy consultant for large, regulated organizations, we observed how difficult it is to create a great digital product and get it into the market; this made it very difficult for them to compete against smaller, more nimble competitors. We knew there was a better way and set out to design a methodology to help our clients compete. This resulted in some significant early success and led to the founding of VShift to deliver those services.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Collins explained:
“Clients come to us with a strategic goal such as growing their market share or competing more effectively with new entrants. We help them align their digital activities to their theory of growth, then execute across some core initiatives. Typically, this will include digital technology, UX & design, content development, branding and marketing, organizational governance and change management.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges has Collins faced in his sector of work? Collins acknowledged:
“VShift exists to help companies with business challenges. If our clients didn’t have challenges, they wouldn’t need us. Recently, clients have been telling us budgets are tightening and they need to do more with less. That’s been good for us since it aligns very well with our core value proposition.”
Evolution Of VShift’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Collins noted:
“Technology has been central to our service since we began. Lately, much of our work has been for marketing or product teams frustrated that they can’t be as innovative as they need to be because of internal constraints like a monolithic DXP (AEM, Acquia). A rapidly growing ecosystem of ‘headless’ or ‘composable’ products have come into the market to address this need and we are deeply integrated with those players.”
“And, of course, we have AI projects sprouting almost everywhere, which is likely to be a major part of our offerings this year.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Collins cited:
“Selling our first project was certainly one of VShift’s milestones. Others include helping a Fortune 100 financial services company grow from a significant market share deficit to a significant market share advantage and reaching the point where we can effectively compete for top-level talent against the usual suspects of massive tech and product firms.”
“And, just last week, we added another milestone: Becoming a member of the MACH Alliance, an industry organization that advocates for open, composable technology ecosystems.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Collins about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“There are many success stories featured on our website, but maybe the most impactful was the work we did with Freddie Mac, a massive player in housing finance that makes it possible for millions of families to become homeowners.”
“At the outset of the pandemic, there was a real possibility of millions of people defaulting on mortgages and sending the economy into freefall, so we helped Freddie stabilize the housing market by developing platforms and tools to help mortgage servicers cope. For that effort, Freddie (and VShift) won a prestigious award from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) for digital transformation.”
Funding/Revenue
After asking Collins about the company’s funding and revenue information, he revealed: “We are privately owned and profitable.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Collins assessed:
“We work for large organizations in regulated industries: healthcare, financial services, insurance, pharma. That’s about half of the economy, so from that perspective, our TAM is very large. Within those organizations, we primarily focus on their growth activities (marketing, sales, customer engagement), which is just a fraction of that total.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Collins affirmed:
“Our clients tell us we are different because of our approach, the way we partner with executive-level marketing and digital leaders, our ability to always succeed, our smart solutions, and our commitment to their success.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Collins concluded:
“We will continue to find new ways to leverage AI (particularly the LLM technologies) to support our clients’ growth goals. Our technology practice around headless/composable is exploding and we want to continue to grow it and speed adoption in our TAM.”
