Our Industry Insights

It’s true we have a bumpy economic outlook to face again - but the strong and rigorous businesses will survive. The challenge that all IT leaders will face is offering options for cost-cutting to their organizations. Accelerated time-to-value from current and ongoing projects, and new projects to support revenue growth while navigating justifiable “future foundation” investments such as SOA and EAI initiatives. Agile,  project management and development methods can help across the entire organization. IT leaders can also leverage the lessons from Lean manufacturing techniques - adapting the key lessons to IT. While your competitors focus on cutting overall costs, agile and lean organizations will continue to deploy strategic technology, positioning their businesses for future and steady growth while cutting project cycle times, and reducing waste. Agile project characteristics of accelerated value creation; a focus on business needs including revenue growth; and built-in ability to react to fast-changing conditions, like the economy, without taking projects back to square one, are tailor-made for these times of uncertainty.

What do you think?  I welcome your thoughts and comments.  Look for upcoming posts on the agile and lean advantages.

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Our partnership with Oracle constitutes a significant portion of the solutions that The Revere Group delivers to our clients in the area of Enterprise Platforms.  September 21-26, we sent a group of 12 of our best Oracle Consultants and Client Partners to San Francisco for a very successful 2008 OpenWorld. 

Thank you to our friends at Oracle for hosting a very valuable event.  Thank you to our many Oracle and PeopleSoft clients who met with us there, and thank you to our Oracle consulting team at Revere for the great work that you do for our clients. 

Here is a brief video captured by our marketing team to share the experience:

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This week I have invited a guest author, Tim Kocher, Revere’s Vice President of Marketing and Business Development to post our “Industry Insights” blog post.

Are You Using the Right Lens?

In these challenging and competitive economic times, it’s easy to lean over the microscope focused on operations and cost containment. But if you try the telescope for a moment, you can see some interesting things – like your competitors preparing to one-up you as the economy recovers.

Many of our clients are taking advantage of the downturn by investing prudently now to gain a quantum leap improvement in certain areas of their business such as next generation web/social media, supply chain, or human capital. These moves can attack the cost side of the equation now, while simultaneously better preparing them for top-line growth during the recovery with built in agility, scale, and organizational efficiency.

While the hiring faucet may be turned off right now, one way to get these business results quickly is to hire experts for a discrete set of deliverables in the desired area of improvement.

Why pay for a consultant to do that?

Here are a few reasons:

1. Speed: When compared to recruiting, on-boarding, training, and retaining a full time employee, you can be finished with your project before you even get started ramping up the internal model. There is also the natural “task compression” that occurs when a seasoned expert executes a task vs. an associate who may be trying it for the first time.
2. Cost: Yes, cost. When you compare staffing up your payrolls with a full project team for a project that lasts 90-120 days (our average project duration) it can be much less expensive for your company to leverage a consultant to do the project (and train your existing team in the process) thus netting up your organization’s skills without increasing permanent labor costs.
3. Intellectual Capital: The view from your microscope can get rather myopic. A consultant who has deep industry experience, or broad experience from your industry and others, also brings the power of those ideas to the table for your executive team. Why not get the incremental benefit of some unique outside experience and fresh ideas during the delivery of your next project?

While it may seem counterintuitive to do so now, it actually may make real sense for you to pick the right projects and get them done now, to position yourself for performance in the months and quarters to come.

What are your thoughts on the subject? Are you reigning in capital projects and squeezing operations? Are you also peeking through the telescope?

We’d like to hear from you.

In anticipation of Oracle OpenWorld this month, Revere has announced the launch of our Demantra Demand Management Solution. This is what we have added to our Oracle|PeopleSoft services and builds on the Oracle Demantra practice and organization that we have been developing since April, 2008.

You can read more about our Oracle Demantra Demand Management Solution on our web site. Note: you could also link the words web site to the same URL.

The Revere Group will be at Oracle OpenWorld ‘08
September 21-25, in San Fransisco, California. If you’ll be there be sure to stop by our booth - #3731 (Moscone West)

In further expanding our Oracle|Peoplesoft and Demantra offerings, we have partnered with Nuous Technologies. Nuous is a leading innovator in providing solutions for sales and operational planning with the Oracle Demantra Demand Management solution set.

Throughout my career, I have been involved in hundreds of business and IT projects and, each year, there are about 6 to 8 projects which I am intimately involved. I’m often asked by clients and peers alike, “What is the key to a successful business and IT project?” I think that’s a question that a lot of people hear whether they are intimately involved in a project or on the outside looking in.

However, while business and IT projects are complex by nature, I believe that there are many key factors to a successful project, I’m here to talk about one very critical key to success and that is the role of an Executive Sponsor (ES). In the role of an ES, an executive-level manager interacts with the project team leader and acts as liaison with other executive staff members taking high-level responsibility to champion, guide and monitor a project. Read more…

I’m glad you are here. This is my first post in what I hope becomes a successful tool for sparking some interesting conversations throughout the business and IT consulting industry.

First, let me tell you a little bit about my background. I am the CEO and co-founder of The Revere Group, which is in the business of successfully managing and delivering business and IT consulting engagements. I started The Revere Group in 1992 when I was 29 years old from, believe it or not, the attic of my home. Sixteen years later, we have grown into a 500+ employee firm with 9 offices throughout the US. I’m a 1984 University of Illinois graduate and have been in the consulting industry for my entire working career. I cut my teeth in sales and marketing and, over the years, have grown into the areas of strategic planning and operations in the services industry.

Come back soon to comment on my upcoming posts, based around my experiences as a consulting industry CEO. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and opinions.