FRAMINGHAM (02/18/2000) - Imagine an information technology consulting firm that gives away its research and analysis for free online.
If users like what they see, they can hire the firm to do on-site, fee-based consulting work through an arrangement that calls for the consultant to leave the client a set of step-by-step directions explaining how the work was done.
That way, IT groups can do the work themselves next time.
That's the play Technology Evaluation Center (TEC) is making to IT managers.
Founded by a group of former Gartner Group Inc. analysts and executives, the new firm offers IT managers detailed research on seven IT topic areas at its Web site (www.technologyevaluation.com).
And rather than pay as much as $20,000 a year per topic area to subscribe to the research services, IT managers can can get it all for free.
Plenty of other Web sites offer free information about IT products and vendors.
But many users still pay heavily for analysts' insights. Last year, for example, Giga Information Group Inc.'s clients spent an average of $52,000 for Web-based access to the company's research and analysts, a company spokesman said.
Where TEC is hoping to make a buck is on its two so-called premium content services, whose prices can range from $100,000 to $500,000.
The first service, known as continual business alignment, teaches IT managers how to prioritize - and quickly re-prioritize - technology projects on an ongoing basis to stay in sync with ever-changing strategic business plans.
CBS Corp. CIO Joe Seibert started that very process with a traditional consulting company that spent eight months studying the situation. "But business is changing so rapidly, I can't spend eight months studying what to do and spend $1 million creating a plan," Seibert said. "I need to shortcut the study process and get right to the work."
So late last August, Seibert brought in TEC, whose two consultants spent one day per week working with 12 CBS IT managers. The consultants trained the managers how to identify their company's key business stakeholders plus how to interview those stakeholders for specific information they would need to lay out a realistic, one-year IT projects agenda that was also aligned with CBS's business goals.
A month later, TEC and IT had zoomed in on electronic-procurement and data-conversion projects that IT would need to focus on quickly to advance CBS's plan to deliver more programming to PCs and handheld devices.
Moreover, Seibert said, TEC left its methodology behind, which enables the IT managers to continually poll CBS's business planners to keep their agenda on course.
"My goal is to enable my management to keep performing this process. I don't want to hire a consultant every six months to a year to do this," Siebert said.
"I want my managers to have the ability to think and act."
The Downside
But Giga analyst Julie Giera said that's precisely the downside of TEC's consulting model.
"Most companies that look to outside consultants are looking for third-party validation," Giera said. "You won't get that by having your own staff do the interviews. You lose objectivity."
TEC's other fee-based service helps users select and negotiate for new technologies, with software that automates much of the requirements-matching and vendor-selection processes.
Kathleen Vandervoort, vice president and controller at Harlequin Books in Toronto, said TEC helped shorten the process of selecting a new general ledger system from six months to a few weeks.
"They also helped us through the negotiation process," including fielding follow-up calls from vendors - all for less than $100,000, "which was a real deal," said Vandervoort.
"Our total investment in the software and implementation will be $1.5 million, and to make that kind of decision, less than $100,000 is pretty small," she said.
Also, because TEC doesn't do implementations, the firm brought a "high degree of objectivity," Vandervoort said.