IT Powerbrokers

Despite initial insecurities, Smith's self-assurance returned, and as her skills matured she was selected to join the firm's newly minted Women's Leadership Program — an initiative she singles out as a significant contributor to her professional success. Still, in certain ways she knew she was different. Success to Smith had always been personal, and she would never care how others defined success.
 If she had cared, she may never have dropped out of college to care for her terminally ill mother.  She may never have spent as many hours at home during her son's early years.

And perhaps startlingly, she may have sidelined her professional career when she battled cancer for the first time — or given it up all together when the disease returned.
"You learn a lot about yourself. You learn about what's important to you. You learn about the people around you," says Smith, about her battle with the disease that doctors pegged as giving her only a 30 percent chance of surviving the first time, and a 20 percent chance of surviving the second around. However, as any cancer survivor will tell you, it's a battle fought not only against the disease, but also with the aftereffects of treatment.
All along the way, Smith has been asked, "Why get on another plane? Why eat room service in another remote hotel room?" Conventional wisdom tells us that life is too short for the humdrum underpinnings of a consultant's life. For Smith, though, so-called work/life balance is a myth. Success isn't about balance, she explains, but instead it's more about time and the integration of those things an individual cares for most.

Until recently, Smith had served as CGEY's group managing director of technology services, where she became tasked with overseeing all of the firm's technology offerings — a $3 billion business, with 20,000 professionals. Today, given her global role, Smith's responsibilities have grown to where they impact the everyday dealings of 40,000 consulting professionals. At the same time, her new role has instantly put her at the center of one of the most hotly debated economic issues of a presidential election year.

Never has a response from the profession's leadership been in greater demand, as the deportation of tech jobs to cheap labor sites around the world stirs emotions yet unknown to the consulting sector, and yet few consulting leaders have dared to step into the fray and issue a evenhanded reply to the thorny questions now routinely being posed by various political camps.

All eyes now fall upon the center ring, where a lone figure stands. How did she get here? Why would any consultant choose to be here? Few doubt that Chell Smith is the right thing, at the right time, for CapGemini as well as the profession she calls her own. – JS

The Lone Ranger
Tim McChristian, IBM Corp.

First, let's be clear. Tim McChristian is not a consultant and never was.
But the fact is that very few consultants will ever have the impact on the technology consulting marketplace that McChristian has had over the last three years.
While some may doubt that his success is due to anything more than the technology his company (IBM Corp.) develops, it would behoove doubters to fill McChristian's shoes for a day.
As the IBM executive responsible for fostering alliances with the likes of Accenture, BearingPoint, Deloitte, and other large consulting firms, McChristian's performance is rewarded for helping IBM's consulting partners win. Make no mistake that these are the same partners that compete head-on with the consulting world's 800-pound gorilla: IBM's Business Consulting Services. "We're in the belly of the beast," McChristian frequently repeats, as he tries to sum up the challenge he and his team face each day.
It all began a little more than three years ago, when, after 21 years with IBM, McChristian was tapped to lead an effort that would ultimately energize the company's consulting alliances strategy. The effort was triggered by an internal report which estimated that Hewlett-Packard and other large technology vendors were having something close to 70 percent of their client engagements keyed-up by consulting and software partners, while only 20 percent of IBM's client technology sales could be attributed to such alliances. "Although customers had at times brought us together with [consultants], in general, we had typically not viewed consultants from a complementary standpoint," explained McChristian.
It was an oversight that was costing IBM dearly, and one that would soon dispatch McChristian into the alliance-building encampments of many of IBM's fiercest rivals.
"This isn't easy. I joke with my team that this business is not for the faint of heart," explains McChristian, who claims that he's more apt to find friendly faces among his consulting partners these days than inside the IBM cafeteria. It's a claim that speaks to McChristian's atypical role — one that requires him to forfeit home-team comforts in exchange for the never-relenting hijinks of the alliances frontier, a treacherous plane where consultants are one day your partners and the next day, your rivals.
For McChristian, that plane got a tad rockier 18 months ago, when IBM announced that it was buying PwC Consulting — one of the technology vendor's premier partners. Besides losing a strong partner, McChristian found himself assuaging the fears of multiple consulting leaders, including BearingPoint chairman & CEO Rand Blazer.
"It was a fairly energetic call with Rand — one where I was trying to explain why we still needed to work together despite the fact that we had acquired what everyone had agreed was one of the fiercest competitors in the marketplace," says McChristian, at the same time explaining that the test of time has proven that both BearingPoint and IBM continue to enjoy success as a team.
BearingPoint is not alone. Today, the quantity of client opportunities coming to IBM via its partners is reported to match or even surpass that of its technology-developer rivals — a reversal of fortune that IBM partners say has made McChristian one of the consulting world's most popular lunch dates.
Meanwhile, back inside the IBM cafeteria, the alliance world's high planesman dines alone.  – JS

Atul Vashistha, The NeoIT
The Go-To Adviser

Last fall, at a Wall Street analyst briefing held by Keane Inc., one of  Keane's guest speakers found himself cornered by a blockade of analysts as he stepped down from the gathering's podium.
 Atul Vashistha had just completed a 30-minute presentation when nearly three rows of analysts vacated their seats and attempted to approach him one-by-one. The presentation — on what Vashistha calls the globalization of the technology professional services industry — apparently hit a nerve with Wall Street's professional services number crunchers.
"The fortunes of companies like Accenture, Keane, and IBM are today greatly tied to their success offshore. They see our company now as having a six- to 12-month look into the market's future," says Vashistha, whose mob appeal is perhaps linked to his willingness to speak in consulting work price points and profit margins.
As CEO of neoIT, the offshore advisory and management firm based in San Ramon, CA, Vashistha approaches Wizard of Oz–like status with business and Wall Street observers for his vision and influence in the offshore outsourcing market. With 75 offshore outsourcing transactions under his belt valued at $1.5 billion and having nearly doubled his firm's own revenues in fiscal 2003, the 38-year-old has the goods to back it up.
Vashistha cofounded neoIT in 1999 after traveling around the world as senior VP of global business development for Cardinal Health Inc., Dublin, OH, a $50.5 billion provider of products, services, and technologies for the healthcare industry. He began noticing the growing IT knowledge base of workers in India, Russia, the Philippines, and other countries, and knew that cheap labor in those countries could save U.S. businesses money.
At first, the team tried producing software that would help a firm buy services and manage them worldwide. But they later realized that clients were looking for expertise, not technology and tools.
NeoIT then took off as a consulting firm that helps global 2000 companies develop an outsourcing strategy, find sourcing options, and manage offshore work. Today, neoIT's marquee clients include JP Morgan, Procter & Gamble, Dupont, and ExxonMobil.
Vashistha also finds himself center stage as the election season reaches full swing and deployment of U.S. jobs offshore becomes a major election issue.
He points out that jobs lost to offshore outsourcing represent a very small portion of unemployment in the last two years, citing statistics by the Bureau of Labor which say that of the three million jobs lost, no more than 50,000 went offshore. "But in an election year … people use this as a flag," he says. "Outsourcing keeps companies competitive. … We continue to do higher-value work here. Typically, initially it's the lower-value work that goes offshore."
There's no doubt that the offshore outsourcing train has left the station and is gaining steam. Vashistha has taken his place as conductor. – Stacy Collett

Deep Impact
Marty Cole, Accenture

When Marty Cole took over Accenture's outsourcing business in September, 2000, his first order of business was to differentiate the firm's capabilities from its competitors'. Seven months later, he led the launch of what became known as the firm's Business Transformation Outsourcing (BTO) strategy. Today, having grown nearly 30 percent a year over the last three years, Accenture's outsourcing business accounts for nearly 30 percent of the firm's overall revenue.
Asked about Accenture's all-powerful three-letter acronym, Cole can't resist divulging a trusted boilerplate definition.
"We define BTO as using outsourcing to give us the control and governance mechanism to then enable business transformation, bringing in our consulting, industry, and process expertise," says Cole, who then quickly begins to detail the firm's first large-scale BTO engagement — Sainsbury, the United Kingdom–based supermarket chain.
After a decade-long decline, Sainsbury needed to restore once-loyal customer relationships, replace aging technology, and rapidly reduce costs. The supermarket chain had been spending 90 to 95 percent of its IT budget simply on keeping the operations going. Accenture took over all aspects of the food retailer's information technology infrastructure, including taking on approximately 800 Sainsbury employees. The strategy involving the modernization of the company's business processes and store layouts has captured $50 million a year in savings for the food retailer.
 "We're willing to sign up with our clients to take responsibility for a real business outcome, as opposed to guiding them using consulting resources solely to manage the program," says Cole, while deploying some of the catchphrases that helped BTO first resonate with some of Accenture's largest customers.
Cole joined Accenture's Austin, TX, office in 1980 after receiving a master's in public administration and doing several internships at the federal and local government levels. "I have personal aspirations and professional goals to make a difference in how people live and work and interact every day," he says. "I could get there, but at a relatively slower pace, by being part of the government system. I felt I could be much more impactful by working in the consulting profession for a large, prominent firm that had access to significant decision-makers."
Most recently, Cole has been tasked with a new challenge: rolling out Accenture's offshore strategy while enhancing the company's unique network of global strategic delivery centers. It's a challenge  unlike any Cole has faced before, given the growing political obstacles offshore strategies face during this election year. Still, few doubt that the 48-year-old Cole is up to the challenge. From what we hear, the theme song for this 24-year Accenture career is "takin' care of business," as sung by Bachman Turner Overdrive … otherwise known as BTO.  – ML

The Groundbreaker
Edmond Cunningham, PA Consulting Group

How does a U.K.-born consulting firm stake a claim in the already crowded U.S. market?
PA Consulting Group succeeded by staying true to its independent business model, by keeping out of the Internet boom, and by sending in a leader with the Dr. Phil–like ability to "tell it like it is."
Edmond Cunningham, head of the firm's U.S. IT consulting practice, fit the bill. Beginning in 1999, with a lean group of employees, Cunningham helped lead successful engagements with two marquee clients that would put the midsize firm — and Cunningham — on the must-see lists of many billion-dollar U.S. companies.
"We're probably one of the only large global independent consulting firms still available in the world," says the 41-year-old Ireland native who worked for several years for Unisys in the U.K. before joining PA Consulting there in 1996. PA has no formalized affiliations with outsourcing firms or hardware and software delivery partners. The firm also gambled by staying out of the Internet delivery business in the U.S., and instead chose to stay true to its IT outsourcing, IT assurance, and service management roots.
It was just such a focus that helped Cunningham break ground with one of PA's first big clients for the U.S. IT consulting group. In 2000, Wilmington, DE–based AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP, the U.S. subsidiary of AstraZeneca International in London, signed a seven-year deal with IBM Global Services to outsource its IT services. Cunningham and his team helped to manage the outsourcing process and to define delivery standards and performance targets for customer service. "That sourcing engagement has been very successful for us," Cunningham says. The project helped build PA Consulting's clout within the pharmaceutical industry.
But the firm really struck pay dirt in March 2001, when it orchestrated the 10-year, $2.2 billion outsourcing deal between Sabre Holdings Corp. and EDS Corp. A year earlier, Sabre had specialized in supplying total IT outsourcing services to major airlines and other transportation companies. But while the company's core business of providing travel distribution, marketing services, and software products flourished, its outsourcing business saw only limited growth. PA management helped Sabre make the tough decision to sell and then purchase back outsourcing services.
Today, Cunningham and his team have completed projects for nearly 45 U.S.-based clients, primarily large multinational organizations in the financial services, pharmaceutical, utilities, and energy industries. His team of consultants has grown from 25 in 2003 to 50 today.
Cunningham says that he'll grow the business by building on services associated with outsourcing deals, which requires a solid client foundation. "If we don't deliver, well, the possibility of following on … just evaporates."  – Stacy Collett

Something About Maryann
Maryann Lawler, BearingPoint Inc.

For those who have already met Maryann Lawler, a relatively new player to the consulting world, there is no denying she makes a strong impression. For Lawler, getting down to business means getting things done, and at BearingPoint Inc. that means bringing new resources to bear on client-facing initiatives.
Such initiatives almost always involve technology partners, a fact that has allowed Lawler, as the firm's senior vice president of alliances, to move to the front lines of the consulting world's alliance-building marketplace.
"There is a new energy in alliances; there is accountability," says Lawler, who describes a partnering culture where trust is being amplified by greater transparency.
Lawler's team also prides its efforts on what are known as the scouting aspects of alliance building, or where new technologies can be first analyzed and then deployed as part of a client's partnered solution.
Before joining BearingPoint, Lawler had spent nearly two decades at Xerox, where she garnered the kind of operations experience she claims enterprise integration projects now demand. Despite her background, Lawler was no stranger to the type of firm she'd someday be part of.
"Back in the '80s, I built the first sales team to work with systems integrators in the field," recalls Lawler, "and managed some of those key relationships. So, yes, my career spans from industry to services,"
What's evident to colleagues is that Lawler enjoys the work. "I get a lot of phone calls about running large organizations, but I like this business; I like this industry."  – Shawna Rice