Today we’d like to introduce you to James Fancher.
Thanks for sharing your story with us James. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Upon graduating from Miami University (Ohio) in May of 2000, I was hired by Bellsouth to begin work in their IT Department. Four months after starting my first job, I was outsourced from Bellsouth to Accenture. For the next seven years at Accenture, I spent my time working on various projects and initiatives within the Bellsouth / AT&T account. Towards the end of my tenure, I had the amazing opportunity to work in Bangalore, India as part of the off-shoring efforts with Accenture & Bellsouth. I spent six months living and working in an amazing country. Upon my return to the states, the merger of AT&T and Bellsouth was in full swing and my options were limited with Accenture.
The next adventure in my life took me to a small consulting firm, at the time, called Slalom Consulting. The Atlanta office was just getting up and running and it felt like an amazing opportunity to help build something special for the first time in my career. For the next ten years, I was part of a great group of people who helped to build out the Atlanta office for Slalom. I had the opportunity to work at great clients in Atlanta such as Coca-Cola, Turner Broadcasting, IHG, AT&T, Cox Communications, Delta Air Lines & The Home Depot. It was an extremely difficult decision for me to part ways with Slalom after all those years but I was ready for a new challenge.
I kept in touch with those who I had the pleasure of working with throughout my career. One of those people was Shaun Bank, Managing Director & Co-Founder of ImagineX Consulting. Through many meetings and phone calls, Shaun was able to convince me to join him and the rest of the team to help build a new company and again be a part of something special. I figured that this was the last chance I would have in my career to jump at an opportunity of this nature now that I had a family to consider.
The past year and a half at ImagineX Consulting has been the most rewarding of my career. The drive to get out of bed when the alarm goes off in the morning is back. The excitement of building a company is invigorating and scary at the same time. The founding team at ImagineX Consulting empowers their people to make decisions and drive the business forward with unwavering support.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Life is never smooth and throws many obstacles at you along the way. My dad worked for one company for 35+ years of his career. Four months into my career, I was already on to my second employer. I quickly realized that in today’s world that we live in, I was not going to be in the same shoes as he was. Changing employers, voluntarily, for the first time, from Accenture to Slalom, was difficult as I was taking a leap of faith that this company Slalom was going to “make it”. I quickly realized that if you get a great group of driven, motivated and hungry people together, anything is possible. That is my goal here at ImagineX; to take the lessons I learned throughout my career and apply the good to help build this company.
I have looked up to many people in my career for advice, coaching, and guidance. Good lessons can be gleaned from seeking the advice of others. It has helped to keep me grounded but it has also taught me that no one is going to hand you anything and sometimes they will tell you things you do not want to hear. You have to work hard and persevere and take the advice with a grain of salt but use it as motivation to self improve.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the ImagineX Consulting story. Tell us more about the business.
ImagineX Consulting is in the Information Technology and Business Management Consulting space. We focus on providing our clients with a high level of service and quality and by doing what is right for them; always. Our core service offerings focus on the following:
• Technology Consulting: Fuses agility, lean engineering, and security principles into traditional, time-tested process discipline to modernize project leadership and delivery. Includes process and organizational design, program and project management, business analysis, and change management.
• Cybersecurity: Provides organizations with a holistic approach to predict, prevent, detect and respond to cybersecurity breaches in a fast-moving, distributed landscape. Key offerings include: (1) Vulnerability Management Programs, from software tool selection and implementation through remediation, and (2) Security Orchestration and Automation to collect and correlate data from disparate cybersecurity toolsets for use in the automation of security-related tasks.
• Adaptive Agile: Helps clients with Lean/Agile transformations, from coaching to embedding team members (e.g., Scrum Masters, Product Owners) onto product delivery initiatives; Helps clients learn and operationalize Agile and Kanban delivery techniques grounded in respecting existing client cultures, people, and practices, while integrating Lean principles into legacy or embedded methodologies at scale.
• Software Engineering & Cloud: Focuses on “pushing complexity left” in the delivery lifecycle by utilizing Devops principles, test automation, software automation, and “on demand” infrastructure in the cloud.
As an Account Director at ImagineX Consulting, I am responsible for helping to drive the business forward from a growth standpoint. I wear many hats in my role; Sales / Business Development, Delivery, Recruiting, Client Management, People Management to name a few. What sets ImagineX Consulting apart from all the others, is our people. We are in the people business and that is what we sell to our clients. Our team is amazing, curious and eager to do great work for companies that need help solving their most strategic initiatives.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I am not sure I would call it luck per se but more of trusting your gut and going with your instincts. We all get that feeling in our guts from time to time that suggests it’s time to make a change professionally or personally. It’s important to trust it when that feeling comes and go with it. I found in my life and career that has been the case, from changing jobs to getting married to my amazing wife and starting a family that has yielded me two boys that are my inspiration and motivation. The most amazing feeling is at the end of the day when I come home from a day at work and they both come running up to me to give me a hug. I will never get tired of that feeling.
Contact Info:
- Address: 50 Glenlake Parkway Northeast
Suite 150 Sandy Springs, GA 30328 - Website: https://imaginexconsulting.com/
- Phone: 6786135603
- Email: jim.fancher@imaginexconsulting.com
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