Aricent is the world’s leading engineering, services and software company. We specialize in inventing, developing and maintaining our clients’ most ambitious initiatives in the communications domain. Combining more than 20 years of communications expertise with a force of more than 10,000 dedicated software engineers, Aricent is the only company in the world that offers the scale, experience and proven technologies necessary to deliver for a growing list of global companies, bringing the next generation of breakthrough, connected products to market.
Based in San Francisco, frog, the global leader in innovation and design, is part of Aricent. The company’s key investors are Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Sequoia Capital.
BACKGROUND: This slide is a critical “positioning” slide to define who Aricent is and differentiate Aricent’s role in the market. Embrace and internalize this language as your own.
TALKING POINTS (sample commentary, not a script):
Aricent is the world’s #1 pure-play product engineering services and software firm. Unlike others, we don’t do IT services, we don’t do BPO, etc. This gives us extreme focus and specialized expertise in a critical area of need for our clients -- product engineering – and that focus gives us depth of expertise and talent to do it better than anyone else.
We have 23 years of experience and 10,000+ engineers focused on driving software-powered innovation and engineering for top clients across multiple market segments.
Unlike other service firms, we invest ahead of the curve in our own R&D, with 1,200+ engineers dedicated to advanced software development – building frameworks, protocol stacks and other enabling software that accelerates client innovation.
BACKGROUND: This is a “relevance” slide that links Aricent to major business and technology industry trends, reflecting Aricent’s important role as the industry evolves.
TALKING POINTS (sample commentary, not a script):
Aricent sits at the intersection of several trends that are transforming the industry.
First and foremost, companies are expanding and accelerating their R&D investments as the fuel for growth – including research labs, product development, agile delivery, etc. Based on the most recent data, companies invest more than $1.6 trillion in R&D globally (Battelle, R&D Magazine) including nearly $570 billion by Global 500 companies (Zinnov). Increasingly, companies are sourcing R&D in new ways to meet demand, including value-added partnerships and co-creation with product engineering and software development firms like Aricent.
Within R&D, software is increasingly the driving force -- serving as the “heart and soul” of innovation for software, hardware and services firms as well as non-technology businesses. As of last year, software had grown to a $407 billion industry and fuels more than 42% of all venture capital funding.
Connectivity is also exploding, with mobile, social, cloud and big data innovations driving transformation across various industries. Plus the “Internet of things” is about to kick in with billions of sensors and smaller processors everywhere. Experts predict that we’ll have more than 50 billion network-connected devices by 2020, including 6B+ new devices in 2014.
BACKGROUND: This is a “strategy” slide that captures where and how Aricent is diversifying its business, while having a singular focus on software-powered innovation.
TALKING POINTS (sample commentary, not a script):
• Aricent has a singular focus on software-powered innovation for the connected world. That’s what our 10,000+ engineers live and breathe every day.
• We apply that focus and organize our delivery teams across four key “market segments” – Equipment Providers, Service Providers, Semiconductor & Embedded Systems, and Software & Internet Services. As you can see by some of our clients represented here, we work with most of the leading companies in each market segment – and many of them have been long-term clients.
• Our impact, working with clients in those four market segments, extends across multiple industries – from automotive, energy/utilities and industrial automation to consumer electronics, consumer software and home automation.
SPECIAL NOTE:
We are still determining which clients to showcase here, and will be building a more formal Client Reference Program to systematically manage references going forward. Please note that several of Aricent’s top clients can not be named publicly due to client confidentiality restrictions. This includes Intel, Microsoft, Alcatel-Lucent, IBM, Google, Wipro and GoPro.
BACKGROUND: This slide captures our core capabilities, essentially “what we do” for clients, helping manage the product engineering lifecycle across multiple domains.
TALKING POINTS (sample commentary, not a script):
Based on the market segments we just discussed, Aricent engineers are dealing with many of the most complex and interconnected technology challenges in the industry.
To meet client needs, we first look at the lifecycle of product engineering that’s required – from R&D management and product strategy, to software development and systems integration, to end-to-end testing and product support services.
We then apply those capabilities to a variety of domains that matter to the client, ranging from devices and applications, to management and security, to mobile and social and cloud, to the Internet of things. In each of these areas, we provide services and software that help our clients accelerate their R&D delivery with high-quality, high-value products
BACKGROUND: While the prior slide captured “what we do,” this slide captures “how we do it” – and how we collaborate with clients to deliver successful products.
TALKING POINTS (sample commentary, not a script):
How we work with clients is as important as what we do with them. We are very proud of our client retention and client satisfaction rates, and work very hard to maintain that trust through deep collaboration, rigorous quality controls, regular client satisfaction reviews, and continuous feedback and improvement.
Nearly 50% of clients report they are extremely likely to recommend Aricent (resulting in high NetPromoter Score of 41).
Average customer satisfaction rating is 4.42 on a 5-point scale, based on our most recent customer survey.
Part of our success is based on proven systems and processes that ensure we deliver high-quality projects on time and on budget. Flexibility is also very important, and we can work with clients in many different models – including services, licensing, outcomes-based, risk/reward, revenue share and in-sourcing models.
We also have more than five football fields of lab space that are used by our clients globally to fuel their innovations.
From a quality and continuous improvement perspective, we provide in-depth training on engineering best practices, project management skills and agile methodologies (4+ years experience with 500+ agile champions trained). We have achieved 18+ years of increasing quality certifications by ISO, CMMi and TL9000 – fueled by strong discipline of internal quality audits, multi-tier testing and process compliance
NOTE: NetPromoter Score is an industry-wide customer satisfaction benchmarking methodology based on a simple but important question: “How likely is it that you would recommend [this company] to a friend or colleague?” Customers who score 9-10 (“extremely likely”) are considered Promoters – loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fueling growth. Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings. Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth. Based on Aricent’s most recent surveys, more than 50% of Aricent clients are Promoters (“extremely likely”), more than 40% are Passives, and roughly 8% are Detractors. Subtracting the percentage of Detractors from Promoters yields Aricent’s NPS score of 41.18.
BACKGROUND: This leadership slide provides an opportunity to talk about Aricent’s growth and diversification plans, along with its experienced management team.
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Beyond an incredibly talented team of engineers, Aricent also benefits from an extremely experienced management team.
CEO Frank Kern was hired in Oct’12 after 30+ years at IBM leading various aspects of their Global Services business. He knows what it takes to lead a large services organization, and has expanded Aricent’s leadership team to grow and diversify the business. CP Murali has led Aricent’s engineering teams for roughly 20 years, with a keen eye on delivery. Ilya and Hari bring in-depth finance and sales experience to the team, while Eric adds critical HR and talent management experience. Payal is a proven Aricent business and engineering leader who recently added responsibility as Aricent’s first Chief Strategy Officer. René is a mobile industry veteran who adds proven marketing and demand generation experience from his time at Juniper, VeriSign and inCode. And Amit brings proven legal experience and Rhodes Scholar credentials to the team.
BACKGROUND: This map slide reinforces Aricent’s global reach and delivery capabilities, highlighted by 10 engineering centers of excellence.
TALKING POINTS (sample commentary, not a script):
Aricent is headquartered in Silicon Valley and has more than 20 locations and 10,000+ employees globally.
We have 10 dedicated engineering centers of excellence, including four in India, four in Europe and two in Asia.
We have additional sales/support offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific – plus hundreds of employees working on site with clients.
BACKGROUND: This slide is the “value proposition” slide to frame the value we deliver to clients in their words/context. It’s the final slide in the company intro section.
TALKING POINTS (sample commentary, not a script):
Stepping back from what we do and how we do it, our core value to clients is to help them accelerate their R&D delivery. We do that across three core dimensions:
1) Speed – we provide clients with a “burst” capability to get things done faster, and we do it with smart plans, efficient projects and increasingly agile delivery.
2) Quality – this is a significant differentiator for Aricent, due to our focus and depth in software-powered innovation for the connected world. We have built teams with the right skills and training to deliver what our demanding clients need, because their customers keep demanding more – more quality, faster delivery and better experience.
3) Cost – while this isn’t the driving force for most clients to do co-creation, this is always an important evaluation criteria. To that end, we invest significant time and energy to ensure we can deliver with highly productive, highly efficient teams – fueled by enabling software that we build ahead of the curve to accelerate delivery.
BACKGROUND: This slide is a simple close that answers “why Aricent,” reinforcing the key differentiators from the earlier “positioning” and “value proposition” slides.
TALKING POINTS (sample commentary, not a script):
Aricent has the people, processes and systems to tackle your most ambitious development challenges.
We know how to deliver at scale with efficiency and productivity – so you can accelerate your R&D with improvements in speed, quality and cost.
Last but certainly not least, we are uniquely focused as a pure-play product engineering services and software firm. Because that’s what our clients need most.