18 months after Jay Fulcher took charge of PeopleSoft's fledgling global services initiatives, consulting services account for 40 percent of the company's $1.7 billion in annual revenue and its consulting workforce numbers 2,575 strong.
Today, those numbers say a lot about PeopleSoft's growing consulting ambitions, and the 39-year-old executive vice president who's described by colleagues as a force of nature.
"We discovered in working closely with customers that they're very anxious for us to take a much more proactive role in their implementations of our product," says Fulcher. So the consulting unit built a new Internet methodology and road maps for implementing, optimizing, and upgrading PeopleSoft.
"As we were involved more significantly — as project managers or as part of a recipe — the success rates of PS products increased substantially," he adds. The group participated in 2,200 PeopleSoft implementations over the last two years. Last year, more than 50% of those projects were successfully completed in less than 16 weeks.
Last fall, Fulcher made another gutsy move by slashing PeopleSoft's consulting partner ranks by two-thirds.
"At one point, we had over 90 partners that had built practices around PeopleSoft — some very deeply invested, some in a more limited way," Fulcher recalls. "We wanted fewer but much better partners in place. So I cut it down to about 30 global partners." Today, global partners include Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Accenture, PwC, IBM Global Services, and KPMG.
Fulcher insists that although PeopleSoft Consulting has seen a "modest increase" in business as a result of the cuts, the real benefit went to the customers and remaining partners.
So where did this consulting outsider get the inside track on the industry? Fulcher says he's been in and around consulting for 17 years through his work at Red Pepper, Dun & Bradstreet Software, and SAP America. Before his current role at PeopleSoft, Fulcher was president of PeopleSoft's products division, overseeing all sales, marketing, product strategy, business development, and consulting. Then, in late 1999, president and CEO Craig Conway tapped Fulcher for the global services role, where he was charged with leading the consulting transformation.
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