InformationWeek

July 7, 1997

Services Get Creative

By Bruce Caldwell

emand for Web-site design and construction has helped spawn hybrid services companies that bring together two formerly separate g roups of professionals: marketers and systems integrators.

Marketing firms-accustomed to creating material for their clients in the print, radio, and TV media-now are scrambling to assemble the technical talent needed to create Web sites for clients. And systems integrators need partners who can grab, and keep, customers' attention through creative Web designs.

Enter the hybrid, a services organization that meets the needs of both the marketing and IS departments. Align Solutions Corp. was established with that in mind. It was co-founded by Richard Scruggs, a veteran of Andersen Consulting and client-server integrator BSG Corp. After selling his object-oriented technology firm, RothWell International, to Perot Systems Corp., Scruggs wanted to get into Internet technology.

His partner, Amy Looper, was founder and president of 7 Seventeen Group Inc., a marketing company. She was frustrated by relying on outside technical talent to build her clients' Web sites. When a contract developer scheduled to help make a client presentation was delayed, Looper realized that IT had become as important to her business as marketing skills. "That was my wake-up call," she says.

Scruggs and Looper joined forces in February as Align Solutions, setting up shop in the Houston offices of Looper's former firm. She brought in the marketing and multimedia developers; Scruggs brought the systems integrators.

Align's clients include startup CertiSource Inc. in Houston, which needed a Web site ready for business within a month. CertiSource had won a contract with BMC Software Inc. in Houston to train and certify developers in BMC's Patrol suite of products for automating application management in distributed-computing environments. Walter Rogers, CertiSource's president, wanted to do as much of the testing and certification over the Internet as possible to keep costs down.

The first day the site went live, it generated $12,000 in revenue. Rogers projects $1 million in reve nue for the first year from certification and referral fees, as well as from sales of CD-ROM training courses in Patrol.

Align Solutions isn't alone. One new competitor is Navesink River Group Inc., an eight-person marketing and public relations firm in Shrewsbury, N.J., that's merging with Arc Communications Inc., a publicly held Web designer in Tinton Falls, N.J. To fill out its services with electronic-commerce software development, Navesink earlier this year formed an alliance with E-commerce developer InterWorld Technology Ventures Inc. Next up is a similar deal with a systems integrator, says Navesink's managing partner, John Lisovitch.

So who buys these services, marketing or IS? Navesink, like Align Solutions, says most clients form a team of IS and marketing managers. If that sounds like a headache, Arc Communications will gladly offer you relief via its newest Web-site design, www.bayerus.com , done for Bayer Corp.

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