Letters

Someone's in the Kitchen with Porter

For many of us who have been in and around the consulting industry for a year or two, there must be guttural chuckles down each and every hall in the brass- and glass-studded lairs that house these great minds. For years I have read article upon article about integration, end-to-end solutions, and super branding in the consulting industry, and why the "insert company name here" integration has not yet reached its full potential "A.T. Kearney's Seven-Year Itch" (August, p. 14). For the masses who may be wondering why, I have a simple home experiment to show you firsthand why ATK/EDS is simply the latest incarnation in a very long string of great names who have "not yet reached the full potential" or worse, died trying.

Here's the experiment. In one of Grandma's old mayonnaise jars, put one cup of water. Depending on whether you work for a systems integration firm or a top-drawer strategy firm, use tap water or Evian, respectively. Add to that water one cup of oil. Set the jar on a flat surface (a Porter strategy book works great).

What you will see is that strategy firms, consultants, engagements, and performance metrics differ so dramatically from the same at IT systems integration and outsourcing firms that they are all beating a hasty retreat from one another.

The broad divergences in talent profiles, compensation, engagement size, and scale and utilization targets are but a few of the key differences between high-end strategy firms and IT systems integrators. Maybe there is a third additive out there that will provide the necessary neutralization power to allow these entities to coexist. Many have claimed to have found that panacea, but time has proved most claims false, or premature at best. It is a grand vision, and one that would bring great value to clients. The excessive hand-wringing, however, causes some of us to sit back and get a good chuckle.

Ralph P. Stow

President

Whitehouse & Pimms, LP

Dallas

Oracle Playing "Catch-Up" with SAP

Re: "Larry Ties the Knot" (July, p. 18): I'm not sure why Oracle is making a big deal out of this. In fact, Oracle's lack of embedded best practices business practices has been a void in their enterprise product set. Thus, before 11i, most Oracle implementations were highly customized. It's sort of like rich food: It's good when it's going down, but you pay for it later. The negatives that flow from this are: Replication of the "as-is" legacy model into the new to-be system without regard to best practice, a bear of a system to maintain, a system that is not very easily upgradable when the vendor releases a new version.

Oracle's enterprise application software has always been "OK" in certain areas, but they are really playing catch-up with the likes of SAP and i2 when it comes to standard industry solutions and best practices.

Regarding how consulting plays in this type of world: Yes, traditional IT programming work tends to be less, but a whole other world opens relative to industry best practice guidance, matching the client to the software processes, organization change management, configuration of the new software, etc. All of this moves consulting up the client's value chain, and much closer to the "C-levels" and the company's business model.

Joseph Edwards

Vice President

Atos Origin Consulting Services

Connecticut