TechBirmingham thrives through its immensely talented and diverse group of member companies. Meet our Member Companies is an ongoing Q&A series highlighting this group of movers, shakers and makers in B’ham’s tech industry.

Meet Sara Cannon, Managing Partner and Creative Director for Range. Sara is originally from Boston and has been in Birmingham since 2001. Read on to learn more about Range and the great things they are doing in Birmingham and beyond.

Hi Sara! Let’s get started — Tell us more about Range.

Range is a web design and development agency specializing in WordPress. We work with various clients on their branding, development, user experience, and technology. As the Managing Partner, I wear lots of hats. However, my true passion lies in the Creative Direction and UX side of the business. I love working with brands on their web presence and have a deep devout passion for typography. Some of my favorite projects have been with Disney Publishing, The Flickr Blog, The Arc, and Inside Climate News.

What do you think is the biggest misconception about your industry?

Creativity is a passion of mine. I think many people misconceive that people in tech aren’t creative. We’re all problem solvers no matter if you’re designing interactions or creating complex queries. Creativity runs through all of us.

What exciting news or product/service announcements does your company have on the horizon?

We recently launched WPHost – white glove hosting where we create individualized custom stacks based upon traffic, page load, and needs. It’s exciting to see companies who have always needed something custom but at a reasonable price tag come to us.

How do you feel about B’ham’s tech scene?

I love Birmingham and I’m excited to see the tech scene grow!

Anything else about you or your company you want us to share?

We’re fully distributed and completely addicted to slack, asana, and zoom in our daily routine. I would love to connect with any other distributed companies who are based in Birmingham as well as more businesses here in the area.

Thanks so much for sharing, Sara! 

Follow Range and Sara online here:

ran.ge

twitter.com/rangeinc

www.facebook.com/range.agency/

twitter.com/saracannon

www.linkedin.com/in/saracannon

sara-cannon.com

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TechBirmingham thrives through its immensely talented and diverse group of member companies. Meet our Member Companies is an ongoing Q&A series highlighting this group of movers, shakers and makers in B’ham’s tech industry.

Meet Joshua Jones, Managing Partner of StrategyWise. Joshua is originally from Tuscaloosa and has been in Birmingham for five year. Read on to learn more about StrategyWise and the great things they are doing in Birmingham and beyond. In addition, Josh will be our August TechTuesday speaker so plan to attend if you want to learn more.

Hi Joshua! Let’s get started — Tell us more about StrategyWise.

Medium to large companies turn to us for help in understanding how they can use data science to better understand and communicate with customers and how to improve operational efficiency and profitability. Typical projects involve us pulling data from a variety of sources (like financial records, inventory systems, and CRM tools like Salesforce) and using those data to write predictive formulas (e.g. how many patients or patrons might visit in a given day or hour) or marketing strategies (e.g. “Reach out to customer group X because they’re more likely to buy that product, and be sure to mention Z because we know it’s important to them.”)

What do you think is the biggest misconception about your industry?

Many companies hire us after failing to successfully implement data science with a single individual. It truly is a team effort, and we never have less than three disciplines represented in any given team. There’s also a lot of buzz around data science and big data, and it’s a valid concern that much of it is hype. Companies that successfully implement a data-driven solution are those that integrate strategy, IT, and statistics in a cohesive way. Statistics are meaningless without relevant strategic insight and execution, and a strong IT team allows effective integration of all possible data sources to feed the solution.

What exciting news or product/service announcements does your company have on the horizon?

Many of our clients prefer we not discuss their projects on the record, but I can say one of the largest fast food chains in the country has asked us to support their customer loyalty rewards program. Any time a company asks us to review hundreds of millions of records to identify trends and patterns that will help them improve customer care, communications and marketing, we get pretty excited. If you eat fast food, there’s a strong chance our algorithms will impact your experience in the near future.

How do you feel about B’ham’s tech scene?

Birmingham’s strengths are the energy, vibe, and excitement that gets stronger with each new pub, park, startup, and restaurant. Our weaknesses mostly relate to available IT workforce and a brand image that’s still a bit hungover. The biggest challenges are successfully rebranding the city as the next tech-driven hotspot. How do we spend our money and resources wisely to get the message to the rest of the country in a world-class manner? Anyone up for product (read: city) placement in a major motion picture? Think about how Mexico paid to have their image spiced up in the latest James Bond film, Spectre. We might have to start smaller, but the concept still holds.

Thanks so much for sharing, Joshua! 

Follow StrategyWise and Joshua online here:

twitter.com/joshuanjones

twitter.com/strategywise

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