CM: Given how this chapter of your career involved being submerged inside a sizable consulting population, what can you tell us about consultants?
Pulleyblank: Over time, I've tried to realize the difference between a consultant and a researcher, because people sort of talk about it as if it's all the same thing, but it's not. And my explanation is that you've got constraints you work under and objectives, what you're trying to get done, and these two groups reverse them. And so while a researcher's constraint is "I've got to get the right answer and what I want to do is do it as quickly as I can," the consultant says, "I've got to have the report in on Friday and I want it to be as right as I can." You see what I mean? Those are completely different mindsets.
CM: Of what mindset in the business optimization center?
Pulleyblank: There's also a timing aspect you get into, because for researchers, doing a job right is about five years ahead of the market. You know, we built the Blue Gene supercomputer. I launched that in 1999 and, in 2004, five years later, we were crowned the most powerful supercomputer in the world. And people say, "Isn't that a long time?" The answer is, "It's five years, and that's the right time frame, if you're doing research."
So I think that with the things like this capability we're talking about with the Center for Business Optimization, the question is: "What's the right time to do it?" And what we've decided is that this is the right time to do it.
CM: How exactly does the center interact with BCS consultants and their work?
Pulleyblank: Well, number one is consulting engagements. And this is where we produce the capability, the subject matter experts … we pull them in there to do this kind of consulting for a company. So a company may have an unusual kind of problem or an important problem, and we can bring the expertise and the teams to go in and do that in a consulting fashion. That's kind of business as usual, and the difference is that there's a capability that goes in that is special.
Point two is tools to make consultant jobs easier. A lot of the time, when you do any analytic consulting, you want to be able to pull in the analytic capability, so that you want to be able to very efficiently go in and capture what you're doing, look at your requirements. We can optimize these things.
CM: These are tools that somehow help clients abbreviate tasks and arrive at solutions more quickly?
Pulleyblank: That's right. Take an airport, for example. One of the airports comes and says: "We're having terrific congestion problems and we're thinking about changing the layout." And we'll say, "You know, if you do this, that, and the other thing, you're going to get rid of your congestion problems and you're going to have a much better approach for the planes."
How do we know that? Because we just simulated the whole thing. Now, if we had to do a start-from-scratch simulation, we could be spending months just doing that part. However, if I can get the right tools in place, we have this capability to help them.
CM: Now, these tools are just that? In other words, tools that empower simulation.
Pulleyblank: Well, another part is solutions, and these are the assets — think of them as software assets — that will be installed in the client's operations as part of the consulting services engagement. I want to distinguish this from product. Product as in the notion that it's shipped, you get it, you install it. I don't think it's the right answer, at this time at least, for the kind of thing we're doing. I mean, from the point view of running a consulting business this is a change where we have these kinds of asset-based plays coming into engagements.
CM: On these types of engagements, IBM is not just selling people's time. You really have some assets here that the clients are purchasing as well …
Pulleyblank: One side is that, as we start putting these assets into play and they pay for the assets, they start to get the economy of pricing. Look at what we would call a fraud-abuse system. If any client had to pay for all we put into developing that, it would never have been developed. You'd never be able to sell an engagement to do that. By taking the asset, the whole price becomes manageable and they can do it.
But there's another point that is really critical, and those in the business appreciate this. Consulting tends to run on tight margins. One bad project or one project that goes over budget can wipe out the profitability of dozens of projects. The asset-based play reduces the risk of the project, and this is really big. The risk goes down with these asset-based plays, because I've got this part, I know it works.
We go in and do another fraud-detection play with another healthcare provider, we know how to do that. This works for that particular application. So now, as we do the engagement, we're not hoping we're smart enough to figure out something they could never solve. We're going in with something to reduce the risk of the engagement.
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