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Defining The Business Value Of Technology
September 27, 1999
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IT Puts The Right People In The Right Place
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The same is true at business and accounting consulting firm KPMG LLP. Y2K accelerated the replacement of its back-office systems by about 12 to 18 months, letting the company deploy PeopleSoft and create its own Web time-and-expense module for the firm's 22,000 employees.
The time-and-expense module ties into PeopleSoft and is also available offline to the 80% of KPMG professionals who travel. The new back-office system is accessed via a portal and lets employees quickly review customer requirements on a single screen and map them against company and client goals. In the past, employees would have to hunt and peck to get a comprehensive look at such information.
To control access to specific applications, KPMG is standardizing on Microsoft Active Directory. Initially being used for messaging, Active Directory will spread to other applications by the end of next year, letting KPMG give "people the right access to the right information," says CIO Al Giordano. "Directory is an important baseline that is critical to us," he says. In part, that's because KPMG International, KPMG LLP's international arm, is deploying KWorld, an online messaging, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing platform, built almost entirely from standard Microsoft components. Those standard components include Microsoft Windows NT Server, Exchange, Site Server, and Microsoft Office, Outlook, and Internet Explorer.
KWorld was rolled out in June to KPMG's four largest national practices-the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands. It will be deployed quickly in Canada, Australia, Sweden, and Switzerland, followed by all remaining KPMG practices. The firm is committed to investing about 1% of its $10 billion in revenue in knowledge management.
Global consistency is also a concern for Wackenhut Corp., a diversified global company that provides security and staffing services. Wackenhut, which had 1999 revenue of $2 billion, found a way to meet its global needs and still customize applications for its business units by building an enterprise resource planning solution using Infinium Software's Infinium suite.
Wackenhut has implemented more than 20 modules of the ERP system. They're letting the company more easily understand profitability for each job it performs. The system tracks a job as employees sell it, specify service levels, and perform services.
Benchmarking Partners, a consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass., reports a savings of $7.7 million to more than $10 million for an ERP implementation similar to Wackenhut's and of comparable size with large-scale custom development work and high transaction volumes.
Hiring and retaining staff to implement such a large-scale project isn't easy, but Wackenhut's CIO Diego Saenz says he relied heavily on internal development teams. Team bonuses based on specific objectives are one incentive to get these teams to gel. A strong partnership with the human-resources department also helps Saenz attract and retain staff. "If there are any employee career-planning issues, 10 out of 10 times HR and I come up with a joint solution," he says.
Creating a professional team atmosphere appears to be the key focus among professional services' IT organizations. KPMG's Giordano reduced turnover from more than 30% to less than 20% in the last four years by creating one technology group for the entire firm that fosters teamwork and shared resources, instead of separate groups that will repeat each other's work for different internal clients. "If the same project comes up again, we have a template that everyone is aware of and can work from and improve upon," says Giordano.
Comdisco Inc., which provides disaster-recovery services, also focuses on atmosphere and culture to attract and retain quality IT staff. "Money is no longer the primary motivator," CIO Greg Sabatello says. "It is more the softer side, like health care and other benefits, and creat- ing professionalism in the company."
Sabatello is setting up separate facilities focused purely on software development to help create a more exciting work environment for his developers. That's important, Sabatello says. In an era of tightening budgets, the demands are only increasing on IT staffs. "Inside IS is a pressure cooker," he says. "The faster you are, the more you get to do."
That's true across the board for professional services companies as they look to IT to help them cater to diverse constituents, inside and outside their companies. Speed and teamwork make the difference between successful, innovative use of IT and failure.
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