Who Are You Really?

Who are you? The question sounds simple enough. But for today's solution providers, those three words can instill confusion, uncertainty and even fear.

Thanks to the Internet, yesterday's channel has been wiped out. In its place has emerged a new, unfamiliar entity where product margins have been overthrown by the need for end-to-end services, high-profile clients and future growth.

As a player in this new game, chances are your role has changed just as dramatically. Are you a Web integrator? An ASP? An e-business consultant? A digital architect? Or, heaven forbid, are you still a VAR?

Instead of helping to clarify roles, the industry's love affair with all things "e" has forever blurred traditional dividing lines. "everybody related to IT today is e-business this

or e-commerce that," says John Berry, vice president of marketing for Web integrator AppNet Inc., Bethesda, Md. "It's hard to differentiate. You can't even tell who is a software company as opposed to a services company or network company."

It's time you separate yourself from the crowd.

"It's becoming an increasingly crowded market, so the ability to differentiate yourself is an important ingredient for long-term success," says Roy Wetterstrom, CEO and founder of e-business integrator Plural Inc., New York, which recently changed its name from Micro Modeling Associates to better express its Internet services focus.

Here's a look at how some of today's hottest e-consultants are striving to separate themselves from the pack.

Plural: Two-Tiered Know-How
Wetterstrom has a relatively simple strategy for success: Know who you are, what you're good at and the market you serve. Although that mantra sounds similar to those of some of his competitors, Wetterstrom is banking on Plural's ability to meld all three together for one solution.

Wetterstrom believes that, in addition to technology and general business expertise, it's becoming increasingly important for integrators to have a deep knowledge of the specific industries they serve. "That is different than having just a great client list," he says. "It's truly understanding the business so clients are hiring you just as much for your industry knowledge as [for] your technical expertise."

That's an area where Wetterstrom thinks Plural has the biggest advantage. The 11-year-old company got its start building high-end technology solutions for the financial industry. By 1996, the company moved away from client-server and desktop work to focus heavily on e-commerce and Internet applications. That two-tiered expertise in the financial industry and technology proved invaluable for Restor Johnson, president of small cap market portal RedChip.com Inc., Portland, Ore., which recently launched a new Web strategy under Plural's Propeller incubation program.

"I'm a stock guy, so I can't talk technology," Johnson says. "They can, but they also understand stocks, and more importantly, research. That 'been there, done that' experience is worth paying for."

In addition to designing and deploying a second-generation Web site for the start-up, Plural also helped RedChip.com enlist its own technology team, employ workflow management solutions to save 60 man-hours every two weeks, and integrate its wealth of back-end research with the new Internet applications.

"Those guys moved mountains for us," Johnson says. "When you are a Web-based business, you can't just look at the Web site. Everything else to get information out through various channels is a necessary investment as well."

C-bridge: Old And New
Joe Bellini, CEO of C-bridge Internet Solutions, Cambridge, Mass., sees his company as a hybrid of old and new worlds: a services-driven company leveraging a product-oriented sales model. C-bridge began in early 1997, developing its own application server design patterns and frameworks, while also adding value to existing server platforms. It quickly found a niche building compartmentalized Internet solutions that could be easily implemented and upgraded.

When Bellini took over the company in 1998, he made the decision to focus exclusively on services rather than products. "I knew strategy was going to be very important: knowing what to change, when to change it and how to change it," he says.

Bellini also made a strong push during 1998 to expand C-bridge's creative side, building a new center for interface design while also creating learning centers to support research programs and provide workshops and seminars on e-business. The initiatives have helped C-bridge cut down on its employee attrition rate because the company can offer its consultants valuable training opportunities.

When Central Carolina Bank Inc., Durham, N.C., made the decision last year to expand its Internet strategy and build a full-service financial portal, the bank tapped C-bridge because of the integrator's expertise as well as its willingness to work in a true partnership. "They came in with a value proposition where they would transfer knowledge and methodologies to us so we could keep it going," says Howard Brooks, Central Carolina Bank's senior vice president of Internet banking. "That was the biggest point of sale."

Bellini wants to continue differentiating C-bridge through its service offerings, recently forming partnerships with USinternetworking Inc. and Qwest Communications Corp. to provide virtual ASP services. The move is a logical extension of C-bridge's strength in building compartmental solutions. "As we assemble these Legos, the client sees it's a homogeneous environment and asks if we could come in on a monthly fee basis and support the systems for them," he says.

MarchFirst: Size Matters
If you're trying to figure out where Internet professional services company MarchFirst Inc. fits in the Internet economy, take a look at the businesses it competes with on any given day, says COO Bob Clarkson. You'll see Web pure-plays such as Scient Corp. and Viant Corp., traditional IT giants such as EDS and IBM Global Services, strategy businesses such as Bain & Co. and McKinsey & Co., and even digital advertising companies such as McCann Erickson Worldwide.

Chicago-based MarchFirst was formed earlier this year by the merger of Whittman-Hart Inc. and USWeb/CKS. It kicked off a PR campaign earlier this month to get its name out to the media and industry players. "MarchFirst is not a well-known brand name today, so we are spending a significant amount of money to raise the level of understanding, knowledge and exposure," Clarkson says.

The combined resources of the two companies that make up MarchFirst include a whopping $1.1 billion in 1999 revenue, almost 9,000 employees working in 72 offices in 15 countries, and an expansive client list of dot coms, midsize corporations and global Fortune 1000 companies. But the company's main selling point, according to Clarkson, is it can provide creative solutions to rival any Web design boutique.

"Most technology integrators are coming from the systems and solutions perspectives. Not many people would believe that a company like IBM Global Services can bring world-class creative skills to a site," Clarkson says. "On the other hand, I don't think anybody would look at a McKinsey, OgilvyInteractive, or Bain and say they have the technology chops to put in a system that feeds into a back-end infrastructure. In fact, we can take those three things and leverage them with best-of-breed capabilities."

As part of its ongoing strategy, MarchFirst looks for customers with high-profile brands and deep supply-chain processes. What's more, the company wants clients that are willing to fundamentally restructure the base of their businesses to better compete in the new digital economy--not necessarily those that simply want to add a Web site to an existing business.

Gearworks.com: An Engine For Innovation
Keith Lauver, CEO and founder of Gearworks.com Inc., Northfield, Minn., doesn't consider his company a consulting or technology company. Instead, he calls it "an engine all about innovation."

It's that innovation, plus its focus on vertical-specific solutions, that Lauver says sets Gearworks.com apart. Lauver got his start in technology solutions 15 years ago at the tender age of 15, when the self-described "little geek from Montana" spent his time building database applications for local companies. By 1995, Lauver and his four-person crew were building custom applications on Web-based systems. Two years later, the company began focusing solely on B2B Internet applications for transportation and logistics companies.

As a result, Gearworks.com has managed to differentiate itself by focusing on back-end and supply-chain processes. "People don't come to us if they want a Web site," Lauver says. "They come if they are into the supply chain and are part of a logistics or transportation company that needs to leverage the data collection and data-delivery capabilities that come from the latest mobile data technology."

Despite its modest size,

Lauver says his $2 million company's greatest strength is the level of talent it attracts through its professional staffers. "If I do the job successfully, we will be able to attract and retain world-class people," Lauver says. "Then as an outcome, we will attract the really smart, talented people."

Gearworks.com encourages its consultants to spend about a quarter of their time in what he calls the technology "sandbox," playing with the newest technologies and then regrouping with peers to brainstorm on ways to solve customers' problems.

AppNet: Before B2B Was Cool
In 1997, when B2C e-tailing and auction sites were all the rage, AppNet and its founder, IT veteran Ken Bajaj, were probably considered by their peers to be a little out of the loop. The company was focusing on enterprise and B2B projects, courting established brick-and-mortar clients instead of flashier start-ups.

Everyone knows what has happened since then on the B2B front.

"A year ago, B2C was all the rage, so in some ways, Wall Street was knocking us a bit because we didn't have a strong B2C focus," AppNet's Berry says. "But with Ken's background, he understood from the beginning that the better focus for long-term growth would be in working with large corporations in developing their e-business solutions. Now, as we see, the market has directly moved to that area."

Berry says AppNet managed to carve out its own B2B niche early on by focusing on three key areas: business strategy consulting and support, effective user interface applications and killer e-business technology. Over the years, it has won client contracts with companies such as Citibank, Daimler-Chrysler and Ford.

"Eighty percent of our work now is with Fortune 1000-type clients, and we expect that to grow to 85 percent by the end of 2000," Berry says.

That growth will likely take the form of application development, Internet development and increased reliance on outsourcing--maintaining and operating the e-business applications that are being developed for the company's clients, Berry says.

AppNet is better-suited for B2B work, Berry says, because it usually involves a much deeper understanding of the business processes and strategies that are imperative to the integration of Internet technology with back-office systems and legacy apps.

"There is a lot of heavy lifting on the back end," Berry says. "Reports say that 50 percent or more of all e-business activity in the next few years will be heavy application development work and systems integration. You'll have a lot of problems going to a company that is trying to morph from a pure-play Web design shop to a full systems integrator."

AnswerThink: Green Berets Of E-Business
When deploying complicated e-business initiatives, would you rather have an army of mediocre talents or a surgical strike team of a few skilled players on your side? AnswerThink Consulting Group Inc., Miami, thinks it knows the answer.

"We do a good job of bringing in the Green Berets, not necessarily the entire infantry," says Lee Fields, executive vice president of sales. "We believe in co-managed projects with our clients, so we will bring in folks who are self-sufficient right from the start."

Incorporated as a systems integrator in April 1997, AnswerThink made the move to embrace Internet computing soon after, winning high-profile clients such as Bostonian footware, Isuzu Motors Ltd. and Time Warner Corp. The company has striven to position itself as a full-service provider for e-business, leveraging many of the skills it developed as a traditional systems integrator.

"Let's assume you want to do interactive development with Web skills and an e-business strategy," Fields says. "Then you may want to add a supply chain behind the scenes, CRM and back-office integration to a legacy fulfillment system and tie it all into a pure-play infrastructure. We play in all those areas, and have for the last several years. We can bring together a cross-functional team very quickly without having different silos that have to be brought together."

The company recognized early on the importance of leveraging industry research to design and support its methodologies. And it was with that idea in mind that the company acquired Hackett Benchmarking Group in 1997.

"From a benchmarking standpoint, they basically had in their database 80 percent of the Dow Jones industrials and 80 percent of the Fortune 500," Fields says. "We felt we could bake that information into our methodologies and practices, so when we go out on client engagements we can use best practices."

Fields says the company practices what it preaches. "You can sell as much as you want, but if you are actually using the tools you tell clients you can build, then that is more important than anything else."

Another key acquisition for AnswerThink was a merger last year with e-solutions provider Think New Ideas Inc., which brought the company to a new level of interactive development. "We created the first marriage of a front-end creative piece with middleware and back-end solutions integration pieces," Fields says. "You will be seeing more of that over time, but we have a head start."

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