Blog
We enjoy sharing our experiences through blogs posts, as we continuously seek new ways to serve our clients.
Since our founding in 2002, Highlands Consulting has provided project management services for public sector clients, including many large-scale projects for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, California Department of Public Health, and California Department of Water Resources. A key factor in our success is…
Working remotely isn’t always easy, especially during real-time business process improvement (BPI) efforts involving many stakeholders. In the past year, we’ve evolved three success factors for facilitating BPI sessions virtually: Take time to scope the effort to avoid rework. Though it can be tempting to…
For over a year now, I’ve had the privilege of helping the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) respond to the COVID crisis. It’s been a colossal effort by CDPH and its partners to stand up new systems and processes to support the testing, contact…
Video is a powerful and effective way to train staff and develop a team. Here are four reasons why: Videos are flexible You can customize videos for unique audiences. Different people learn and absorb information differently, and video accommodates everyone. You can make the video…
At Highlands, we have a passion for learning. In fact, it’s one of the top five values we share as a firm. Each of us has a yearly training stipend to grow in our chosen areas, but to kick off 2021 we came together as…
As this crazy year comes to an end, we have much to be grateful for: our ability to keep working remotely, be responsive to our clients, support our friends, and care for our families. We are also grateful that we can give back to our…
Highlands Consulting has long served State transportation clients and has been closely following the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on this area. In September, the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) released a new transportation policy post on the “Impact of COVID-19 on State Transportation Revenues.” It…
“Change is hard at first, messy in the middle, and gorgeous at the end.” –Robin Sharma For most organizations, teams are facing a flurry of change in 2020 – not just technology and business changes, but also lifestyle changes due to the pandemic and working…
FI$Cal, or the Financial Information System for California, is far more than the state’s accounting, budgeting, and procurement system. As a robust enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, FI$Cal has unique capabilities that departments are beginning to realize. We’ve previously highlighted our work implementing FI$Cal functionality…
These days it’s easy to feel disconnected, especially if you are working from home full-time. Gone are the casual hallway conversations, replaced by days filled with virtual meetings. As wonderful as it is to see other people (even digitally), virtual meeting fatigue is common. To…