Chicago-based Rightpoint has made a place for itself in the digital world during the 13 years that it has been around. The company — a digital consultancy working with technology at its core — has helped some of the world’s most well known brands create better user experiences for each of their businesses.
Founded in 2007, Rightpoint is the brainchild of co-founders Ross Freedman and Brad Schneider. At the start, only 15 employees worked there, with the number slowly working its way up to right under 30 by 2009.
As of today, it has 700 employees with national offices located in Chicago, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Oakland, Dallas, Atlanta, Denver and Detroit, as well as international offices in London, Auckland, Sydney and Jaipur.
Rightpoint is an award-winning company, receiving accolades such as Forbes’ “Most Promising Companies in America” and INC. 500’s “Fastest Growing Companies.” It also gained notoriety from Consulting Magazine and Microsoft, as well as local recognition from Crain’s Chicago Business and the Chicago Tribune.
The company has helped several well-known companies achieve better user experiences for their business platforms. These include Walgreens, Hulu, Cadillac, Airbnb and many more. But one company trusted Rightpoint while it was still an up-and-coming startup.
A major medical devices and healthcare company became the company’s first client in 2008. It needed help in creating a digital portal to allow its team members to communicate and collaborate easily while being located internationally.
Rightpoint presented the client with a small, yet logical strategy and were sold in an instant. From there, Rightpoint began receiving requests from other Fortune 500 companies, helping a total of 250 over the last decade or so.
In 2015, Rightpoint dove further into its growing journey. After receiving a $55 million investment from Stella Point Capital, a private equity firm from New York, more opportunities came its way and the company was able to start buying its competition.
The first came in 2016 with Agency Oasis, a customer experience agency based out of Boston. Almost two years later, Rightpoint bought Raizlabs, a technology shop from both Boston and Oakland. One year later, the company purchased Bowfin, a Salesforce and development consultancy that was also a longtime Rightpoint partner.
After the company’s own acquisitions, Genpact, a global professional services firm that focuses on delivering digital transformation, bought Rightpoint in October of 2019. Those working at Rightpoint were allowed to keep their current titles and the company was able to continue operations like normal, but it also brought the companies together to create more opportunities for its clients around the world. Freedman said that Rightpoint and Genpact complete each other, and the purchase helped prepare the company for even more growth.
“We are both companies that put people and culture first,” Freedman said. “This was the common ground we found from day 1 … If you take the best of Rightpoint — experience innovation — and bring it together with the best of Genpact — process innovation — the two come together to build this front, middle, and back end-to-end suite of digital transformation services.”
Freedman also said that he credits Rightpoint’s achievements, as well as the ones early on, to the way his team worked on executing a project with full focus.
“Our vision from the beginning,” he said, “has been, and remains, to design technology that creates the best experiences for companies as they move through their digital transformations.”
But along with its history of success, Rightpoint works to provide a positive work environment for its employees.
Freedman, who is also Rightpoint’s CEO, made it a point to make his employees feel like they are still working at a small company, regardless of how many work there. Additionally, according to his biography on Rightpoint’s official website, he is described as its CPO, or Chief Passion Officer, indicating his dedication to both his work ethic and his company’s environment.
In 2009, he and Schneider hired a “director of people potential” who helped the company establish initiatives such as a community outreach group called The Compassion Crew. They also started a Culture Club, with a mission to evolve Rightpoint’s culture in a productive way. This ranges from informal events like movie and game nights, to discussing ways to evolve onboarding new employees, showing recognition and more. He said both aligned with the Rightpoint’s values of “intrapreneurship,” and creating from within the company.
“We knew back then that if we were going to build a company with a great culture, then we needed someone to be constantly looking at everything through a people lens,” he said. “I want this company to feel like and have the energy of a 700-person startup.”
