E-Business Is Our Business: Emerald Solutions CEO Martin Wright

Martin Wright is CEO of Emerald Solutions Inc., a $34.7 million e-business integrator in Portland, Ore., that delivers highly integrated solutions. The company morphed its business about a year ago from being strictly a technically focused organization to providing the whole enchilada. Today, the company strategizes with clients, develops Web applications, handles the creative aspects of developing a Web business, and integrates the new solution with legacy systems and enterprise applications. According to Wright, Emerald's integrated-solutions approach is the only way to go in the new economy.

VARBusiness: How would you describe your business model?
Wright: We look at ourselves as an end-to-end e-business solution provider. We are taking people through a business strategy phase, a digital strategy phase, doing all the creative or interactive work and then developing very complex Web applications and integrating them into their existing enterprise applications. It's really a total e-business development solution.

VB: How long did it take to develop this model?
Wright: It's something we've gravitated to. Our focus and our origins were clearly much more in Web development and then enterprise application integration,really in the technical space. About a year ago, we were working with partners to deliver the creative piece of the application, and we also started developing our own digital strategy capability. But our clients were pushing us by saying, "Gee, I really want a single vendor to be held accountable for this. Someone comes in, develops a digital strategy piece. Someone else comes in and does this great creative work. And then you guys come in and do the technical work and finish it off. But I don't always end up with what I thought I was going to end up with, and I don't know who to hold accountable."

VB: What do your customers like about this model?
Wright: I think its accountability, the ease of single-vendor management vs. being a general contractor. It's much easier to have one person on the hook...that's the role we step up to.

VB: How do you expect your business model to change in the future?
Wright: From one perspective, we won't be providing a different service. We have always looked at ourselves as solving business problems, not technical problems. We're there to develop a business strategy and use the most appropriate technology to solve that problem when we get into the implementation stage. But we are selling ourselves--and clients are engaging us--because they want to increase their revenue or market share or decrease their costs. They've got a business problem to solve and, by engaging Emerald, they are going to get a return on the investment they spend with us. That aspect, I think, will never change. We are always going to position Emerald in that manner. To dial forward a year or two, the mechanism for delivery may still be the Web, but broadband and wireless capabilities will change the scope of the type of applications we are building very significantly. Ultimately, there will be other technologies that will be the hot technologies in a year or three, or at some point in the future.