What Easie did in 2024
Summary
In 2024, Easie's seventh year, our company continued to expand as an implementation-focused solutions service using our centralized team and expert network to complete projects across diverse industries.
Operational excellence projects focused on profitability and cost savings have become a higher priority for clients.
Strong client interest in AI persists, driven by large-scale investment and real-world applications.
Nonprofit clients are increasingly adopting technology solutions and AI for day-to-day operations.
Clients prefer implementation-focused solutions over advisory or strategic consulting.
Demand for tech-enabled services and custom software continues to grow across industries.
Looking ahead to 2025, Easie plans to scale tech-enabled solutions, strengthen partnerships and drive innovation through R&D initiatives.
Introduction
As Easie's seventh year of business closes, it is interesting to see the range of projects from clients that see major benefits from using a single-source service for handling diverse business needs. Since the founding of Easie in 2018, we have continued to evolve to offer broad-based technology, business and creative services to varying clientele in the public, private and nonprofit sectors for 40+ different service offerings.
Easie’s model operates using our expert network combined with our core team to provide a centralized, quality-controlled service.
How Easie works
Many of our clients previously hired multiple firms or large internal teams to get projects completed which led to overly complex project management, cost overruns or unpredictable project outcomes. The size of Easie’s clients ranges from seed/startup firms to middle market, all the way up to enterprise and publicly traded companies.
We are incredibly proud of the Easie team and network and wanted to thank everyone who has supported us during our first seven years of business. The value of implementation-focused solutions for all business needs continues to be validated by our new and existing clients.
Throughout the year 2024, Easie has continued to establish itself as a critical resource for many different types and sizes of businesses and organizations. This article summarizes five major trends we observed in 2024, notable developments and our high-level plans going into 2025.
Trend 1:
Operational excellence being prioritized
After the U.S. zero-interest rate period (“ZIRP”) ended in late 2022, fundraising became more challenging for firms. New investment activity and M&A slowed down, holding periods increased and investors held higher stocks of “dry powder”, leading to a shift where operational excellence initiatives emphasizing profitability, cost savings and financial sustainability became a higher priority than “growth at all costs”.
A recent survey by Boston Consulting Group of more than 600 C-suite executives titled “The CEO’s Guide to Costs and Growth: Strategic Priorities and Opportunities in 2024” indicated that despite this environment, business leaders are cautiously optimistic despite ongoing economic and geopolitical uncertainties (1). After operational excellence projects related to achieving cost savings, growth and expansion remained high strategic priorities for business leaders with initiatives generally supported by digital transformations, AI pilot projects and expanded product lines.
Although most programs designed for cost savings met initial targets, many companies struggled to sustain savings long-term, with some cuts impacting growth. Given this observation, we saw clients be especially sensitive to implementing systems that may impede long-term growth at the expense of short-term cost savings.
Figure 1.1 - Effectiveness of cost reduction efforts from Boston Consulting Group survey (1)
Easie has conducted operational excellence projects since our founding and was excited to see a growth in these projects this past year. Our team saw this trend continue in 2024 with clients focusing on projects where process auditing, implementation of automated solutions and streamlining systems for staff were seen as high strategic importance for future operations.
Prior to investing in any new software, technology or operational improvement initiatives, Easie strongly suggests doing a thorough technical and operational audit of your organization’s operations and procedures to identify pain points and high-impact pilot projects for operational excellence.
To evaluate your organization’s unique pain points or areas that could be candidates for optimization, we suggest using the “Easie pain point prioritization matrix” and focus on high-frequency, high-impact pain points as the first areas of focus for operational excellence initiatives.
Figure 1.2 - Easie pain point prioritization matrix
Trend 2:
Strong interest in AI continues
The technology sector has generated 32% of the global equity return and 40% of the US equity market return since 2010 (2). A recent report from Goldman Sachs titled “Gen AI: too much spend, too little benefit?” found that large technology firms, corporations and other organizations are projected to spend approximately $1 trillion on capital expenditures by 2027 to support AI initiatives and the interest in the technology remains strong rather than driven by a bubble or sentiments of exuberance.
This report, along with others like Sequoia’s “AI’s $600B Question”, highlights the significant investment into AI, particularly in foundational models and AI companies more broadly (3). The sheer scale of capital expenditures far outpaces immediate returns, creating a lopsided short-term ROI landscape.
This reminds us of past infrastructure buildouts like the internet boom and subsequent dot-com bust of the early 2000s. Back then, these ideas were often sound, but the timing was too early. Companies like Webvan seemed premature during the dot-com era, but now, with services like Instacart, we see those concepts were just ahead of their era.
Easie anticipates a similar pattern with AI, where massive funding will lead to many ventures that may seem wasteful initially, but the innovations that survive will shape the future, producing a handful of significant companies. As consumers, we will benefit immensely from accessible, affordable AI tools. However, the path to consistent revenue and profitability for many AI companies remains uncertain.
That said, from a business perspective, Easie is already seeing significant client interest in adding AI-enabled solutions to traditional business processes. 2024 saw multiple initiatives in offering real-world AI solutions to our clients including services in retrieval augmented generation, mass document processing and chatbots that can be installed on a website or app that are trained on custom knowledge for a specific organization.
The use of emerging technology has been a critical aspect of Easie’s R&D strategy including AI projects prior to the release of mainstream large language models like ChatGPT. Easie’s focus has primarily been on computer vision, natural language processing and automated data extraction from unstructured text. We will continue to roll out products and services supporting these areas in 2025.
The following examples were found to be high-impact AI use cases across clients that we observed in the past year:
Using chatbots to reduce customer support requests by up to 75% by handling tier 1 queries before escalating to human agents.
AI-driven content creation to personalize communications, increasing ROI by up to 5x to 8x.
Automating data extraction from documents to reduce data entry time by up to 95%.
AI classification of data, files and images accurately and efficiently for large datasets.
AI analysis of lengthy documents almost instantly via a chat interface, streamlining the review of 100+ page reports.
AI-enabled government affairs and policy analysis, automating bill tracking and creating advocacy materials aligned with priorities.
AI-enabled statistical analysis combined traditional methods on large datasets.
Further, throughout 2024, Easie team members spoke at multiple events, including webinars and panels, on the topic of practical AI examples for business leaders.
The following is a recorded webinar conducted by Rock W. Vitale, Founder and CEO of Easie, in 2024 on this topic for the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce:
Trend 3:
Nonprofit sector project growth
The nonprofit sector was an increased area of focus for Easie after observing that nonprofit organizations can benefit substantially from tech-enabled operations and focused AI implementation projects. Implementing technology initiatives to complement staff and volunteers can significantly accelerate the ability for a nonprofit organization to serve a higher number of people at lower costs, strengthen mission-critical activities and increase operational efficiency on time-consuming day-to-day tasks.
As nonprofits grow, there is expanding demand for time, resources and attention to complete operating tasks, fundraise and maintain accuracy of data. Management of volunteers, staff, members and administrative work can become time-consuming and rely on repetitive, manual tasks. As automation and AI are adopted further, there is a significant opportunity for nonprofits to achieve operational excellence through implementation of tech-enabled systems.
We also saw a consistent demand for AI workshops and training programs for nonprofit leadership teams and Easie provided multiple in-person events to conduct staff AI training. These events helped onboard leadership teams to support decision-making related to feasibility studies, pilot projects and strategic investments in technology.
Seeing consistent opportunity in the sector, Easie is currently making focused investments into R&D related to technology and product offerings for the nonprofit sector and will continue to roll out these initiatives going into 2025.
After noticing this continued trend from multiple nonprofit clients, Easie released an article on our blog titled “How nonprofits are using AI and automation to achieve operational excellence”.
Trend 4:
Implementation-focused solutions over consulting
Similarly to 2023, the majority of Easie’s projects were implementation-focused in 2024. We observed a continued trend that clients prefer implementation with tangible outcomes instead of projects that were purely advisory or consulting services. Implementation projects generally require larger teams, research, expert judgment and more in-depth project management.
Historically, traditional management consultants that focused more on strategy and advisory have been frequently shown to provide “tone-deaf” advice that can lead to negative outcomes for clients that end up responsible for implementation. Large consulting firms have often faced criticism for providing recommendations that prioritize short-term gains over long-term sustainability (e.g. “terminate 75% of this division to save costs”), which can lead to challenges or unexpected problems during implementation.
While Easie has been implementation-focused since its founding, this trend also is apparent in the larger consulting market as demand for pure consulting and advisory services appears to be decreasing (4).
This preference for client spend being tied to real-world solutions and the direct application of expertise is a major reason why the majority of clients that complete a project with Easie tend to return for follow-on projects or new scopes of work after seeing clear, positive results as demonstrated by the following testimonial for an automated application Easie developed for a client in the industrial services sector:
“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
This shift in client preferences reflects a growing awareness that strategy without execution often fails to deliver long-term value. This point is underscored by countless stories similar to McKinsey’s recent $650 million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department in December 2024 for their role in advising Purdue Pharma on increasing OxyContin sales without implementing safeguards, contributing significantly to worsening the opioid crisis in the U.S. (5). The settlement highlights the risks for clients accepting strategic advice without ensuring accountability for implementation.
It is clear in 2024 that clients continue to want clear results and implementation rather than a “$40,000 PDF”.
Trend 5:
More demand for tech-enabled services
While our client base continues to request projects in our historical scope of services like web development, brand management, public relations, logistics/procurement and creative design, Easie saw an increased interest in requests for projects that required the use of technology, software systems or the creation of customized applications to support project outcomes.
Easie’s ability to rapidly develop custom applications supported by user-authenticated systems, a database and API integrations has consistently helped clients achieve successful project results. These projects often involve mass data processing, automated review of business systems, management of hundreds or thousands of workforce participants or statistical analysis of extremely large datasets.
For example, in 2024, Easie installed behavioral analysis software on a custom web application for a large insurance agency alliance to analyze user behavior and conducted a comprehensive analytics campaign based on specific client questions.
These activities helped the client have data-driven insights to optimize the user interface, make decisions on future development and understand exactly which reports were useful to customers and which were not actually being viewed.
The combination of software configuration and analysis supported the client in a way that would not have been possible without tech-enabled services.
Easie also partners with software companies like Fullstory to roll out shared offerings in tech-enabled services as shown in the following testimonial:
"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
Our R&D team consistently explores tech-enabled offerings driven by client demand and data insights. We conduct feasibility tests to evaluate new opportunities that align with our expertise. Moving into 2025, we will continue developing tech-enabled program areas based on client feedback and research.
Easie founder & CEO Rock W. Vitale wins the 2024 CEO of the Year award from the San Diego Business Journal
We are proud to report that Easie’s founder and CEO, Rock W. Vitale won the 2024 San Diego Business Journal CEO of the Year Award in the Rising Star category. This award acts as continued validation of Easie’s business model.
Figure 1.3 - Easie Founder & CEO Rock W. Vitale CEO of the year article from the San Diego Business Journal
Featured projects of 2024
New case studies added to the Easie website
Easie’s portfolio page includes over 600 case studies characterized into project types demanded by clients over the past seven years. Clicking on a category leads to a collection of micro-case studies for that specific service (e.g. engineering).
Engineering, operational excellence, artificial intelligence, analytics, research and marketing were some of the most frequently requested types of projects in 2024.
The following featured projects represent the broad, specialized skills and creativity of the Easie team:
Plans for 2025
Building on the progress from 2024, here are a few areas we are planning to focus on in the upcoming year:
Roll out tech-enabled solutions for clients based on R&D progress. Building on existing research and current initiatives underway, roll out applications and standalone software products to support clients in tech-enabled operational excellence.
Expand partnerships with new and existing clients. Execute master services agreements, unique cross-business activity opportunities and other partnership programs. Consider work in the public, private and nonprofit sectors.
Continue research using emerging technology. The Easie R&D group led by James Lee will continue to work on targeted engineering initiatives in the Easie lab. Consider both B2B and B2C ideas.
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, software engineering, AI, lithium batteries, biotechnology, analytics, research, design, machine learning, engineering, field services and international supply chain management.
Rock graduated from Champlain College’s Stiller School of Business with a Bachelor of Science in International Business. He is also a certified project management professional (PMP) and was a Dangerous Goods Safety Advisor (DGSA) from 2015 to 2020.
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, AI, 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 seven years. Your continued support has shown that clients across diverse industries can benefit from implementation-focused solutions from a single-source provider. We look forward to addressing your interesting projects in 2025 and beyond.
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