Pulling the Strings

Her influence in the CRM space has brought in clients like General Electric, which awarded the firm 37 CRM projects last fiscal year; Microsoft, where KPMG Consulting delivered the third-largest Siebel implementation ever; and Sears Roebuck & Company.
Inside the firm, young consultants are eager to ride her coattails. About 150 professionals report directly to Rhea, and two partners were made on their GE work alone under her leadership. Even senior executives are singing her praises.
"We believe in her," says Bruce Culbert, senior vice president and global practice leader for CRM and supply chain. Year over year, the CRM practice has grown 30 percent to 40 percent. "Ana has had a significant impact on that. It really does get the ear of the company."
Rhea began working in the CRM space "way before CRM was fashionable," she recalls. In fact, she remembers a time when "clients didn't want to pick Siebel because it was too risky."
Rhea joined KPMG Consulting in 1991, after a brief stint at IBM, because KPMG was the only firm at the time with a dedicated sales and marketing practice. As the CRM space evolved, Rhea developed vast experience implementing every available CRM package, and eventually her career took off along with the industry.

Rhea's reputation and experience expand well outside KPMG's CRM practice. Soon after making partner at age 31, she was asked by Chairman and CEO Randolph Blazer to teach a monthly course that introduces all levels of new staff to KPMG Consulting. As a result, she was able to meet almost 2,000 people in the firm every year and spread her CRM message. The experience also put her finger on the pulse of the firm.
Today, about half of Rhea's 60- to 85-hour workweeks are spent on client-related projects that take her all over the country. The balance is spent with alliance partners, analysts, and solution development. That pace isn't likely to change even with her marriage in December to Robert M. Rhea, KPMG Consulting's senior VP, consumer packaged goods, she says. In fact, Rhea plans to continue driving CRM initiatives at KPMG.
"Once we see an opportunity and I can sell it to management that this is where the market is going, there are very few constraints within KPMG that prevent us from going and doing it."

Michael Gregoire
PeopleSoft Global Services
Senior Vice President, North America
Age: 36
Years as a consultant: 16

When the climate changed in the enterprise resource planning market and clients began shifting more of the blame for bad implementations to the software makers themselves, PeopleSoft knew it had to raise the bar on its service offerings.
CEO Craig Conway needed a top gun to revamp the company's professional services arm. In April 2000, he hired Michael Gregoire from EDS Corp. to lead the charge. In his short term so far as leader of PeopleSoft Global Services, Gregoire has set a new course for the 3,300-member team and has grown revenue by 20% and profits by 40%.
"We were finding that customers wanted a deeper relationship with PeopleSoft the corporation rather than trading dollars for a CD full of software. So we reorganized around the way that customers wanted to do business with us," Gregoire says.
That meant a massive reorganization and retooling of the management team. Gregoire instituted a products certification program in which all consultants are required to pass three written exams that are monitored by a third party. Some 1,600 employees have received certification so far. "We've had a major uptick in the overall capability of the consultants," he adds.

He also brought in professional management at the executive level. Today, the 13 executives who report directly to Gregoire have long-standing professional services experience.
Finally, he put in place a new methodology called Compass, a purely Internet method for implementing PeopleSoft products.
Gregoire says that the reorganization has been challenging but welcome. "[Employees] were willing because everybody wants to win. At the time, we were not winning. They were in a situation where the corporation was changing," he says. PeopleSoft was moving from a client/server to a pure Internet architecture, and the firm had to be sure that the staff was adequately trained.
To keep the transition running smoothly, Gregoire spends two days a week in meetings with CEO Conway, his staff, finance teams, and product developers to "synergistically tie things together." Then he's off to visit clients or regional PeopleSoft staff in New York or Chicago for the balance of the week.

Steven Berez
Bain & Company
Vice President of Information Technology and E-Business
Age: 42
Years as a consultant: 10

To management consulting purists, IT is practically a four-letter word. So the quest to build up a dedicated IT strategy practice within Bain & Company is an uphill climb for Steve Berez, the firm's vice president of IT. But he has managed to attract top IT talent from outside the firm and even win converts within Bain to build a practice that he says is critically needed by companies today.

When Berez took the vice president position in 1999, CEOs were more concerned with "which on-line exchange they should join rather than technology issues," he recalls. Today, clients are making "a very healthy migration" to focus on the broader set of technologies to help make companies more efficient. The increase in demand for IT strategy and management services has fueled the practice's growth. Though Berez won't disclose just how large the practice is, his group has been hiring top IT talent at a time when most firms are laying off staff.
Berez acknowledges that technology workers at some management consulting firms are considered second-class citizens. At Bain, Berez has pushed to "have these people completely integrated into the firm and on the same level as everyone else. By demonstrating that we have success stories of people who have been promoted while being in technology-focused roles, and by being given greater chances to create value for our clients," the new practice has won over many Bain insiders, he says.

Berez himself is a testament to the power of IT skills at the firm. He joined Bain in 1980 fresh out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in computer science. His career path included projects such as IT-enabled process improvement, supply chain management, customer relationship management, and IT vendor selection, effectiveness, and cost reduction.
He also founded BainNet, a noncommercial alliance of technology solutions providers, to better understand their products and functionality. The program differs from other alliances because Bain doesn't share in vendors' revenues.
Through BainNet, Berez's team has access to information on 50 enterprise applications vendors, including their capabilities and a history of Bain's work with the vendor for its clients. "We can better position [clients'] success because we've put in place all the other things around the technology to make them successful," he says.

In addition to his BainNet and recruiting responsibilities, Berez advises Bain leaders on using technology to better serve their clients, creates methodologies, and develops training programs to build IT capabilities among Bain's consulting staff.
"Our long-term objective is that we have a CEO-level dialog on their key technology issues with every one of our core clients," Berez says. "In many of those cases, the CEOs might not be having that conversation with anyone today."

Gil Irwin
Booz-Allen & Hamilton
Partner, U.S. IT Strategy for the Financial Services Industry
Age: 46
Years as a consultant: 15

Early each year, every major insurance company in the United States anxiously awaits one of the most comprehensive e-business reports in its industry, Booz-Allen & Hamilton's Internet Insurance Study. The annual 160-page report examines the on-line strategic positioning of every major insurance firm in the industry and forecasts the industry's future.
Readers of the study are interested not only in the survey's findings, but also in the interpretations of its main author, Gil Irwin, who has been with Booz-Allen for more than15 years and leads its U.S. IT strategy practice for financial services.
"It's the most comprehensive in terms of strategic thinking in the industry," Irwin says. In 2000, the study was the most requested report that Booz-Allen published that year. In 1997, the study predicted that if the insurance industry continued to lag behind banking and financial competitors in their use of the Web, these institutions would steal insurance market share. Today, the study shows that insurance companies have not done enough to attract and retain browsers on its sites. As a result, "brokerage firms like Schwab will see more insurance traffic than insurance companies will," Irwin says.
Now entering its fifth year, the free study has helped Booz-Allen win new insurance clients, as well as build the firm's reputation in the financial services industry. Irwin's practice is now the second-largest industry-focused IT practice in the firm, behind its media practice.
Irwin's experience comes from 17 years spent mostly in the financial services industry. A graduate of Columbia Business School, he spent seven and a half years doing IT projects at Citibank. He was introduced to Booz-Allen when the two groups worked on a Citibank project together, and he joined the firm six months after the engagement ended. Irwin made partner in 1994, and has been involved with Booz-Allen's financial services practice since then.
Today, Irwin spends his weeks hopping among five clients, working on 10 different IT projects in St. Louis, Atlanta, New York, and London. He says that many times the work has been implementation-oriented, but the firm is trying to stay true to its focus on strategy while still offering some IT implementation and program management help.
"The strength of Booz-Allen & Hamilton has been our ability to do IT strategy and marry that with our business strategy capability," Irwin says. "We will continue to do that, and we believe that is the strength of what we deliver. We understand the technology and what it can do, and how that can shape the overall corporate strategy."