What Easie did in 2023
Executive summary
In 2023, Easie's sixth year, our company continued to excel as a versatile, single-source service provider, catering to a diverse range of business needs. Easie's model, blending an expert network with centralized project management, attracted both new and recurring users, demonstrating effectiveness across various industries. Our approach to offering fully planned, staffed and scoped projects across multiple areas like technology, design and marketing has established Easie as a significant hedge against business risk.
A major trend this year was the growing preference for implementation over consulting, with clients seeking tangible outcomes and direct involvement in projects rather than just advisory services. Easie adapted to this shift, focusing on practical, hands-on project execution and expanding our services in engineering, design, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and analytics. This adaptation has been essential in meeting the needs of businesses across industries, from healthcare to food and beverage to fintech.
Easie also observed an increased importance of technology due diligence in investment decisions, highlighting the need for robust, scalable and secure technology infrastructure. In 2023, Easie continued to offer technology due diligence services, providing comprehensive assessments to support investment groups and startups in informed decision-making.
Artificial intelligence entered mass market awareness in 2023, with Easie developing multiple AI-driven applications for different clients. Our previous experience in AI prior to 2023, from natural language processing to computer vision, positioned us at the forefront of this emerging technology, addressing a variety of business applications.
Looking ahead to 2024, Easie plans to expand partnerships, deepen work on emerging technologies and continue our robust R&D activities. The leadership team is dedicated to advancing Easie's service offerings and adapting to the evolving demands of the global business environment.
Introduction
As Easie's sixth year of business closes, it is fascinating to look back at the range of use cases from businesses that resonate with a single-source service for handling diverse business needs.
Easie’s single-source model operates using our expert network combined with centralized project management and continues to see new users, recurring users and broad use cases. As a service providing support with any business project, Easie has demonstrated clear results for different types of firms that need expert judgement, multidisciplinary teams and implementation on critical projects.
Our team realized that Easie is the ultimate hedge against risk by providing fully planned, staffed and scoped projects for all areas of business operations. Our centralized project management team ensures consistency in communication and quality across project deliverables. Growing businesses require both specialized professionals and executive-level experience in key areas like project management, technology, design, research, analytics, marketing and 40+ other skill areas.
Our continued adaptation to new trends and emerging technology has led to a diversified service offering that has proven to be extremely useful to businesses across a wide range of industries. Offering high-impact, customized industrial solutions for our clients using repeatable, workflow-driven project management has been a critical focus in our long-term strategy as a business.
Since the creation of Easie in 2018, we have continued to evolve to offer broad-based technology, business and creative services to varying clientele in the public and private sectors for 40+ different project types.
Our early adopters believing in us has been instrumental in our growth and the expansion of our services over the years. As a self-funded company, we are deeply appreciative of our clients and supporters who recognized Easie's potential as a comprehensive B2B service model.
We are incredibly proud of the Easie community and wanted to thank everyone who has supported us during our first six years of business. The value of an implementation firm for all business needs continues to be validated by our new and existing clients and the projects their teams involve Easie in.
Throughout the year 2023, Easie has continued to establish itself as an essential resource for many different types and sizes of businesses. This article summarizes five major trends we observed in 2023, notable developments and our high-level plans going into 2024.
Trend 1:
Implementation requested more than consulting
We observed a growing trend that clients favor implementation projects with tangible outcomes and direct involvement with Easie’s team as opposed to projects where Easie only provides advisory or consulting services. Implementation projects typically require larger teams, research, expert judgement and more comprehensive project management.
This trend reflects a growing preference for practical, hands-on project execution rather than consulting services. This approach involves more in-depth engagement, from project planning to completion, emphasizing real-world solutions and the direct application of expertise in various fields like artificial intelligence (“AI”), cloud computing, analytics, healthtech and fintech. This shift indicates a demand for concrete results and a more active role in project implementation, moving beyond just strategic advice.
From rapid growth support to crisis intervention, the Easie team is rapidly deployable across different business use cases. Easie is the most useful when we can work alongside companies as they scale and evolve in their needs. We can be a strategic partner to help grow a business, from creating customized tech products and artificial intelligence solutions, to managing complex projects through to completion.
This trend seems to also support the larger idea of “big consulting fatigue” that was observed across the larger consulting industry in 2023 during periods of layoffs and higher interest rates. It seems clear that businesses want clear results rather than a “$40,000 PDF”.
Engineering, operational excellence, analytics, research, project management and marketing were some of the most frequently requested types of projects in 2023.
New case studies added to the Easie website
Easie’s homepage has a responsive word cloud that visually shows project types demanded by clients over the past six years. Clicking on a tag in the word cloud leads to a collection of micro-case studies for that specific tag (e.g. engineering).
This interface allows site visitors to intuitively filter and explore over 600 micro-case studies in a matrix architecture using clickable labels representing each program area.
The following screenshots can be used to visualize the most popular skills demanded in 2023 compared to 2022 using the word cloud:
2022
Most demanded program areas in 2022:
Engineering
Business development
Marketing
Operational excellence
Backend-IT
Healthtech
2023
Most demanded program areas in 2023:
Engineering
Operational excellence
Analytics
Research
Project management
Marketing
Trend 2:
Diverse industries have use cases for Easie
The majority of Easie’s clients are growing businesses, investment groups with portfolio assets and other high-growth entities. Many of our clients previously hired multiple firms or large internal teams to get projects completed — when presented with the idea of a single-source implementation model, Easie clients saw the immediate benefit of a firm that can help with any department. The size of Easie’s clients range from seed and startup firms to middle market and up to enterprise.
Each year of business has seen increased examples of how Easie’s model helps businesses of all sizes across industries achieve unique goals using a single-source service. Some clients require many diverse types of projects with different skill requirements while other clients require highly specialized, niche types of engagements with a focus on a singular skillset. The duration of projects can vary from a single engagement with a defined deliverable to a long-term, ongoing service scope under a master services agreement.
Because Easie conducts work as a single, centralized team, we learn about our clients and adapt to their specific needs. As a result, we are able to support clients on a recurring basis due to deep familiarity with their teams and systems across their organization. The Easie team often meets in person with clients directly in the field to support quality execution of work.
The following are examples of industries that have benefited from Easie’s single-source implementation model:
Food and beverage
Environmental
Technology
Healthcare and health tech
Finance and fin tech
Construction and real estate
Non-profit
Public sector, government and universities
E-Learning, training and ed tech
Private equity and investment groups
Reflecting on work with diverse industries and business models, here are some comments clients have had about working with Easie:
“We wanted an automated process that was simple to implement for our daily employee self-screening survey. Easie was great to work with. After an initial discussion and consult, Easie quickly put together a proposed solution that was right on target! Implementation was quick. Testing was thorough and we went live with our survey within 2 ½ weeks of our initial discussion.”
— David Blye, President of Environmental Standards, a Montrose Environmental Company
"FullStory's partnership with Easie as a service partner for our clients has been a pleasure. Easie's diligence in every customer project goes above and beyond to ensure each engagement not only meets but exceeds expectations. Their exceptional service coupled with deep technical expertise, plus the ability to extend their services beyond FullStory, showcases their versatility in meeting our customer's diverse business needs. Rock and the team at Easie makes partnership easy and we look forward to continued collaboration and success."
— Anna Helmken, Partner Success Manager at FullStory
"Easie was great to work with. Our web app project was completed ahead of schedule and on budget. Their experience with technology, AI and engineering was impressive and their project management team was communicative about the status and schedule throughout the duration of the project. We would definitely work with Easie again."
— Candace Mraz, Founder of Mraz & Company
"The Easie team really made things "Easie" for us...as a growing startup, with limited manpower, Rock and his team helped us build out our MVP in AWS using AI-based computer vision systems which ultimately allowed us to integrate seamlessly with live camera feeds. With their team keeping us informed on their progress, our project was completed within our budget and on schedule. We strongly suggest working with Easie!"
— Nicholas Yarnall, Founder of Postestiam
"I really appreciated how Easie lived up to its promise that no project or budget is too small for their help. Easie lined up a shortlist of solid candidates, taking into account my company's industry and the types of tasks I needed help with. Once I selected a candidate to move forwards with, Easie also conducted a background check to help us meet our SOC II certification hiring standards. It's great knowing that I have Easie's support!"
— Christina Drum, Director of CX at Loris.ai
“Easie has developed an excellent e-commerce program for my company and I highly recommend them to anyone that is looking into growing their e-commerce business. Easie has outstanding knowledge and are always willing to listen and share their ideas to maximize our sales. We are very satisfied by choosing to work with them!”
— Marco Rega, CEO of Acai Roots
“Easie's value proposition is simple: whatever you need help with, they've got you covered. Whether it's marketing or data analysis, we love working with them for all of the peripheral projects that still need tending to when our team is overloaded.”
— Zach Vouga, COO & Cofounder of Plant Power Fast Food
“As my interior design business is growing, Easie has been amazing to work with as they are able to step in and complete behind the scenes work that is necessary to keep the business running smoothly. I highly recommend Easie.”
— Ariel Richardson, CEO at ASR Design Studio
Trend 3:
Investors are conducting technology due diligence before making investment decisions
In 2023, we observed a trend of increased importance on thorough technology due diligence before making an investment.
After working with multiple investment groups and startups, the Easie partnership program was created to offer services to investment groups, private equity and technology firms looking for implementation partners. Easie conducted comprehensive technology due diligence work to support this trend in 2023.
The increasing reliance on technology across all industries has intensified the need for firms to conduct comprehensive technology due diligence even outside of the tech sector. Amid higher interest rates, the abrupt end of the zero-interest-rate-period (“ZIRP”) and a climate of economic uncertainty, investors must ensure that their target companies have robust, scalable and secure technology infrastructure in place.
Assessing the technology stack, intellectual property and cybersecurity posture of potential investments is essential for understanding the opportunities and risks associated with each target company. Not doing thorough tech due diligence can lead to catastrophic consequences including financial loss, security breaches and slow/non-existent growth due to “tech debt”.
Easie’s specialization in conducting technology due diligence helps firms navigate this complex landscape with confidence. Our multidisciplinary team of experts is equipped to assess the technological viability of potential investments, uncover hidden risks and provide actionable insights to support investment decisions.
By partnering with Easie, you can ensure that your portfolio companies or technology initatives have the robust, scalable and secure technology infrastructure needed for long-term success.
The Easie blog released an article on this subject in early 2023 after seeing a growth in due diligence projects.
Trend 4:
Artificial intelligence adoption by the mass market
Artificial intelligence entered mass market awareness in 2023 with the emergence of generative models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Amazon’s Claude and Google’s Gemini. Prior to this, the use of AI in technology was already quite pervasive but had not seriously entered the public consciousness on its potential use cases.
Easie saw several requests for AI-related engineering projects in 2023 with multiple firms wanting to build applications incorporating AI for varying use cases that involved processing text data from users. Easie successfully developed multiple AI-driven applications with databases, user functionality and web/mobile operability for clients in 2023.
Throughout 2023, the number of AI startups, .ai domains and ChatGPT-esque interfaces exploded in popularity. The almost immediate adoption of OpenAI’s API across the business sector, including by large companies, showed the potential of integrating AI into virtually every business model and sector. Multimodal models that can accept text, images, video, audio, spreadsheets and other file types are seeing greater awareness as the wide array of use cases becomes apparent to most businesses.
Society is still in the very early stages of AI and systems will dramatically improve over time. It is likely that highly customized AI systems will be part of most businesses in the near future.
As AI has captured public awareness, there has been an emergence of “GPT wrapper” type applications released where an application is essentially just ChatGPT on a third party interface or a system that relies exclusively on the OpenAI API to operate. Building other dynamic functionality into an application outside of just making API calls to OpenAI can help a business remain competitive and create a truly differentiated product. AI wrappers without other functionality or other compelling value propositions may struggle over time due to having no “moat” in their business:
On the other hand, other businesses are building completely closed proprietary AI models and competing for market share at the model level with other closed-source AI systems.
The emergence of open-source AI models found on platforms such as Hugging Face are also gaining popularity where the developer community collaborates on models, datasets and applications. The range of use cases with AI has sparked significant debate on open-source versus closed-source models and only time will tell how the future of AI technology will look. The significant compute cost associated with training and running custom models may lead to a future where highly specialized models requiring less compute may be favored over all-encompassing models such as GPT-4. It is also possible that there will be open-source models that perform similarly or better to GPT-4 in the future.
Easie has been working in AI in fields such natural language processing and computer vision for several years and have built business-specific systems to automate work for our clients:
Figure 1.1: Computer vision research prototype involving PPE tracking from Easie labs
Some of Easie’s past work includes using our expertise in AI to build a cutting-edge PPE tracking app for a client. Leveraging AWS to handle image/video streams, Easie developed a custom solution that used computer vision algorithms to detect and track personal protective equipment (PPE) usage in real-time.
Easie also created fintech software for automatically reviewing invoices that offers up to 95% time savings to focus on other areas of business. Easie was featured in the San Diego Business Journal for the creation of this software.
Figure 1.2 - Easie Invoice AI example 1
Figure 1.3 - Easie Invoice AI example 2
In 2023, Easie created an AI marketing tool called “Easie Deep Puppet AI” to help write personalized emails and follow ups in a customizable way that integrates with CRMs.
Figure 1.4: Easie Deep Puppet AI email example 1
Figure 1.5: Easie Deep Puppet AI email example 2
Easie team members appeared in a webinar on the topic of artificial intelligence in 2023:
In 2023, Easie also spoke on a panel hosted by the New Haven Chamber of Commerce and at a separate workforce roundtable at the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science alongside Connecticut Senator James Maroney:
Figure 1.6: Easie CEO Rock Vitale speaking at a panel on AI for business in Connecticut
The potential future for AI is profound and will likely change society forever. The advent of hyper-smart systems and the eventual emergence of smarter-than-human models in the future may create a reality that is vastly different to what we know today similar to the impact of the internet or mobile phones.
Easie will continue to explore new AI business opportunities according to client demand and research and development initiatives moving into 2024.
Trend 5:
Research & development continues to be important
When Easie receives requests for new projects or see new opportunities that we could offer based on our existing skillset, we conduct feasibility testing to determine if it makes sense to formally launch a new program area. We will continue to develop potential new program areas based on feasibility research and demand-driven feedback from our clients moving into 2024.
We also found that internal research efforts to develop solutions to meet scaling requirements and achieve greater operational excellence led to breakthroughs and ultimately new products and services for our clients. Further, research services have been a consistently demanded program area throughout the existence of Easie.
Here are some examples of notable research work the Easie lab conducted in 2023:
Partnerships. Active efforts from the Easie team led to numerous new partnerships being created leading to successful business outcomes. Investment groups, nonprofits, private equity and technology firms looking for implementation partners are examples of groups we have formed partnerships with. Easie continues to look for bi-directional partnership opportunities as an area of research and development.
Automated reporting. With clients facing requirements in reporting, communications, data analysis and compliance, Easie developed novel architecture and custom automation for numerous business applications. The emergence of digital analytics implementation support with FullStory led to further specialization in this area.
Rapid interface development. The ability to iterate rapidly on software ideas through the use of functional interfaces and minimum viable products was developed further in 2023. Easie is able to rapidly produce functional full stack software rapidly for both web and mobile as part of research of new product offerings for clients. This has also allowed research groups seeking to conduct product experimentation to move more rapidly.
Artificial intelligence. Clear demand exists for artificial intelligence and Easie has been working for years in different fields of AI such as natural language processing, text extraction and computer vision. We will continue integrating and fine-tuning new frameworks into our software suite to provide unique and compelling business applications.
Cloud computing. With clients on Amazon Web Services, Azure and Google Cloud, cloud computing continues to be a major area of core competency for Easie. We actively monitor the latest developments in services, frameworks, security and new systems to support clients in using the best available technology in their development endeavors.
Easie journalistic arm. We launched the Easie blog in 2018 to share helpful business philosophy, current events and research. The Easie journalistic arm also continues to publish high quality, diversified editorial content on the Easie blog on a regular basis.
Featured projects of 2023
These projects represent the broad, specialized skills and creativity of the Easie team:
Plans for 2024
Building on the progress from 2023, here are a few programs we are planning to focus on in the upcoming year:
Expand partnerships with new and existing clients. Execute master services agreements, unique cross-business activity opportunities and other partnership programs. Consider work in both the public and private sector.
Conduct research using emerging technology and continue experimental technology development. The Easie R&D group will continue to work on targeted engineering initiatives in the Easie lab. Consider new areas of development such as telecom, SaaS and corporate training. Consider both B2B and B2C ideas.
Further work in artificial intelligence, interface development and emerging technology. The Easie lab will continue to experiment with a range of AI frameworks and breakthrough technology to generate unique product offerings for business.
Grow the Easie network with impactful recruiting. The continued growth of the Easie network through recruiting with its unique perks and mutualistic benefits is a critical element of our business model. We continue to advance our organization using demand-driven recruiting.
Easie executive team
Rock W. Vitale, CEO
Rock founded Easie in early 2018 and brings significant experience to the business. He is responsible for overseeing new business development, creative direction, research, operational excellence, client relations and journalistic efforts.
His career has encompassed multiple industries including energy, lithium batteries, biotechnology, analytics, research, design, machine learning, engineering, field services and international supply chain management.
Rock is also the Vice Chair on the board of directors for a literary and performing arts non-profit in San Diego, California.
James Lee
Head of Research & Development
James joined Easie in 2020 to apply his knowledge and experience in project management and business development. He is a subject matter expert in technical project management, complex research and niche tax compliance.
His accomplishments include multidisciplinary research and development of program areas in design, business and software development, fintech, competitive intelligence and other expanding areas. James also frequently contributes to drafting, review and editorial for multidisciplinary creative projects within Easie.
His previous experience includes financial compliance consulting for Fortune 100 to Fortune 500 companies. He led and managed projects pertaining to analyzing and monitoring large sets of data, developing process efficiencies and automation, researching gray area topics and compliance with mandated regulations and requirements.
James’ educational background is centered around business administration and accounting. He is a certified project management professional (PMP) and a certified member of the Institute for Professionals in Taxation (CMI).
Jack Marchese, Ops Executive
Jack was an original member of the Easie team from their 2018 launch. Jack brings executive-level business and marketing experience to the team and helps guide strategic and product vision.
Throughout his career, Jack has been a business consultant for high-growth brands in consumer-packaged goods, technology and other sectors. Some areas of focus for Jack include marketing, analytics, new product development and leadership.
Conclusions
Once again, thank you to the Easie community for the support in this business model over these past six years. Your continued support has shown that clients across diverse industries can benefit from single-source business solutions. We look forward to addressing your interesting projects in 2024 and beyond.
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