Small Is Beautiful

A recently released report by market-research firm Summit Strategies confirms what I've felt in my gut for a while: that smaller boutique integrators are slowly but surely becoming the preferred solution partners of these customers--especially as companies change their IT spending habits.

While a large percentage of the approximately 200 CIOs responding to the Summit Strategies study said cost is still a major factor in their decision to pick one integrator over another, a higher number, 52 percent, said whether or not an integrator had special skills tuned to a particular project was even more important. Vertical industry knowledge and local presence also ranked high on the side of the smaller integrators.

Another finding that proves even more telling: The survey revealed that regional integrators consistently outscored their larger counterparts in terms of customer satisfaction in almost every single area, especially application development and security assessments. The only area where they didn't come out on top was business strategy consulting.

The satisfaction numbers are telling. The fact is, the IT-buying public has grown weary of committing to seemingly endless systems integration projects, something they associate with the group of integrators that my boss loves referring to as "The Final Four." Work is phased now, which plays right into the traditional strength of the smaller, boutique-skilled integrators.

And while we hear all the time that companies are interested in shrinking the number of integrators they deal with"a fact that on the surface seems to favor the larger integrators--it turns out they're fine with subcontracting, just as long as they don't have to manage the relationships. That means we're hearing a lot this year about even more partnering between the global guys, who have been contracted to manage larger projects, and the regional firms that can come in and get the job done, SWAT-team style.

A note to you vendors out there fawning over IBM Global Services: Are you giving regional integrators the credit they deserve?

If you're a small integrator that's growing fast, e-mail HEATHER CLANCY, editor at CRN, at [email protected].