CRN Interview: Doug Rivard, Tallan

E-services company Tallan started in 1984 with a handful of employees working with Unix applications and systems. Now its 214 employees focus on Global 2000 firms. Doug Rivard, president and COO, Spoke with Section Editor Marie Lingblom about how his company is competing in a tough market.

CRN: What services are selling right now, and where is the company focused?

Rivard: Over the last two to three years, we've been a message-oriented, middleware-type company, which lends itself perfectly to Web services and EAI. We see a lot of consolidation. Companies built a lot of systems that two, three years later don't play nice with the rest of the systems, so you see a lot of system consolidation, which I call software infrastructure.

I see a ton of work in there for us. The trick is to be able to stay ahead of the curve.

CRN: With whom are you competing in the market?

Rivard: We see the bigger guys. I can't remember the last time we ran into a Sapient, Scient or Viant. But IBM seems to be everywhere. When we were courting one prospect in Florida, for example, IBM was in there offering three consultants for the price of one. That's pretty harsh competition. So you see a little bit more of that, which drags down the overall pricing structure, especially when you might be doing four to five of those at any given time for up to six weeks with a small amount of people trying to turn it into something bigger.

We've had success with that, but it's not a great model going forward. Our rates are down at least 20 percent, but we were never in the $250-per-hour range either.

CRN: What kind of sales cycles are you seeing?

Rivard: Sales cycles could be six, nine months long, but there's been a lot more panic than anything else. Even though it's fundamentally different than it was two years ago, I don't think it's any harder for us, as a small company, to sell business now. Five years ago we had a moderately growing economy and no track record. Now we've got a great track record, a great resume of delivery but a horrible economy. People have canceled projects that were already started. You've got to prove the project more than once now.