Experience Counts

HEATHER CLANCY is E-Activist at CRN, resposible for investigating the challeges e-business solution providers face in constructing the Internet economy. To Discuss your favorite e-cause celebre, call Clancy at (516) 733-8646 or e-mail her at hclancy@cmp.com.

Nothing speaks to prospective e-business customers more loudly than experience.

Web services executives at CRN's 2001 I-Builder Roundtable said they're increasingly asking their most experienced consultants and technical personnel to spend more time in front of prospects,sometimes at the cost of being involved in project implementations.

"We structure ourselves so that the people who have been with the company the longest and have the most experience in the space are able to be up front with the client earlier in the process and more often," said David Fry, CEO of Fry Multimedia, Andover, Mich. "So they work with the sales staff during a proposal or during a presentation."

At Agency.com, some employees are being asked to take on more account-management activities to help unearth more business with existing clients, said Kevin Rowe, president of North America for the New York-based e-services firm.

"Where I'm seeing the biggest strain in the organization is at the senior levels," Rowe said. For that reason, Agency.com management tracks the utilization rates of senior-level employees differently than it tracks those of junior personnel, Rowe added.

'The era of the free agent is over'. -- Kevin Rowe, Agency.com

At Emerald Solutions, Portland, Ore., employees generally represent one of three different tracks: user experience, strategy or engineering, CEO Martin Wright said. Being able to provide all three disciplines is key to the success of any project, he said.

"But having said that, the people that are the most difficult to attract and retain are probably the experienced consultants that have been in the business more than five years,probably five to 15 years,and have worked for the large integration companies and have large project management experience, technical architecture experience and systems architecture experience," Wright said.

Although the Web services sector continues to see layoffs, one upside is that turnover has leveled off, even as more resumés enter circulation, roundtable participants said. "I think that this is the good news at the end of the day," Rowe said. "The era of the free agent is over."

That development is especially true in San Francisco, which has been hit particularly hard during the Web services shakeout, especially among user-experience experts, said Kelly Rodriques, CEO and chairman of Novo.

In some cases, consultants hired during the staffing boom in 2000 are returning to past careers in IT, in part to find more stability, said Edward Bell, CEO of CrossTier.com, Fairfax, Va.

"I've been in professional services my entire career, and you either like it or you don't," Bell said. "It's very exciting, you get lots of challenges and you're constantly on the move. Not very many people can be really good at it because you have to constantly think on your feet, and it's stressful."