The Minnesota Technology Association is excited to welcome Solution Design Group as a new member. Solution Design Group, or SDG, is a Minneapolis-based technology and business consultancy that helps their clients craft strategy, design products, and deliver software. They work by surrounding their client’s leaders with problem-solvers; they augment staff with key skills in areas like software development, experience design, project execution, and AI; and they offer experts to advise and craft strategy. To welcome them on board, we chatted with Doug Rhodes, the Chief Customer Officer at SDG to learn more about their organization and why they chose to join MnTech.

To start off, tell us a little bit about your organization.

Solution Design Group (SDG) is an employee-owned custom software development consulting company. We work with customers across many different industries to build scalable solutions that drive cloud adoption, modernize applications, and automate processes. By taking the time to understand what a customer is trying to achieve, we can assemble the right mix of talent and experience to help them reach their goals. Whether that’s software development, cloud architecture, experience design, or project execution and quality, our team members work alongside the customer’s teams building complex solutions, advising where needed.

We also take immense pride in the exceptional team and supportive culture we’ve built at SDG. Our employee owners are not only passionate problem solvers but also bring a rare combination of deep technical expertise and strong interpersonal skills. Their enthusiasm for sharing knowledge fosters a collaborative and service-oriented environment that benefits both our customers and our organization. This synergy creates a culture where innovation thrives, and success is a shared achievement.

Why did you decide to become a member of MnTech?

Being a member of MnTech provides us with the opportunity to be a bigger part of the technical community, which opens doors to new opportunities and education. We are able to learn and network through communities and programs such as Women Leading in Technology, the Tech Connect conference, the Tech Talent conference, the Tekne Awards, and Tech on Tap. Additionally, as a mid-size consulting company, MnTech provides us the avenue and voice to address legislative issues that are critical to our industry.

How does SDG stay ahead of technological advancements and emerging trends?

SDG stays connected with our consultants and community by hosting meet-ups and events to bring together the experts to learn and understand the emerging trends and advancements. We hire passionate technologists and fosters a culture of learning, sharing and connecting. Our consultants regularly gather to share and discuss what is happening in the tech communities and debate which ones will fade away and which ones will endure. We are constantly balancing the technology and trends that are emerging with what we experience directly with our customers to create solutions that are as advanced as possible and yet viable for enterprise grade applications. We encourage all of our team members to attend technical conferences such as Tech Connect, AWS re-invent, and Open Source North that also keep us informed of what the industry is doing and what technologies are emerging.

How does SDG approach sustainability and social responsibility in technology?

One of our core values is to embrace our social impact on the corporate and individual community. We do so in many ways, such as our internal Gives Community that focuses on serving our education and food issues in the Twin Cities community. Our employees are regularly involved in food shelf supplementing, food packing, as well as backpacks for schools and on-site mentoring. In addition, we are proud to support the CIO’s Against Cancer community through sponsorship and involvement in their programs. From a sustainability standpoint, we seek to address applications that make the best use of Design, Development, and Quality to make effective use of a business user’s experience and time.

What emerging technologies are having the biggest impact on Solution Design Group today?

Cloud technologies continue to have the biggest impact on our organization as the major platforms continue to evolve and grow. We have chosen to create strategic partnerships with major providers in order to stay educated and informed on the current and future states of those platforms. We then take this knowledge to our customers and assist them in creating the best possible applications for their organizations. Our customers are gaining an interest in seeing how emerging technologies such as machine learning and generative AI can bring innovated value to their companies, and lastly, AI-assisted coding is improving developer productivity which has a direct impact on one of our core services.

What do you see as the most valuable piece of your membership with MnTech?

As a diverse organization this could be answered differently through our different roles: Education is so valuable to not only our consultants, but to our Operational and Business development teams; The legislative awareness and support is key to our management team to stay on top of critical issues to our industry; And networking should be a part of all of our careers to help and support each of us on our career journeys.