By sharing the risk attached to changing working procedures, Irish company Vision Consulting is attracting clients tired of betting the farm on exorbitant new systems which fail to deliver.
This year Vision, which employs 350 people across its operations in Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, London and New York, will generate revenues of around £24 million (€30.5 million) and profits of more than £4 million. Though this marks a fall in its 50 per cent annual growth in the last two years, Vision says that as other competitors come on stream, it is happy to consolidate its position in the market by reinvesting in the company and the workforce.
Vision can loosely be described as a technology company in the sense that it manages change within organisations and develops software to achieve this. It adopts a no-nonsense approach to clients, using full and frank exchanges to redesign the way things are done and to deliver improved productivity. Within this market its biggest competitors are Andersen Consulting, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG and IBM.
To counter what Vision's chief executive officer, Mr Billy Glennon, describes as businesses' "natural mistrust" of consultants, Vision believes in taking the risk jointly with its customers where the risks are high enough.
In 1994, it gave Scottish Hydroelectric 10 per cent of its equity in order to win the contract to work with the company. Last year, Vision bought back the stake for £400,000, a 400 per cent increase on the initial stake.
Now Vision has an impressive client list, including Bank of Ireland, AIB Bank, Swiss Bank, Lloyds/TSB Bank, Paribas Bank, Bank of Scotland and The Dime Savings Bank in New York. On the insurance side, it has worked with AIG, Standard Life and Eagle Star in Ireland and Britain and more generally with Motorola.
"In the early 1990s it became obvious two thirds of large IT projects fail to reach their objectives, and business process re-engineering statistics were pretty much the same. I got honest with myself to really look at the value of what we were providing for our customers, and admitted we couched our proposals not to promise too much. We needed to be able to manage issues like trust, mood and morale as well, and link it to the technology being delivered," Mr Glennon says.
Recently Vision built all of the transaction processing software behind TheStreet.com, one of the most comprehensive financial information sites online. In February TheStreet launched on the Nasdaq in the fifth highest IPO ever.
Now Vision is pushing into the US market having achieved a strong foothold through a relationship with The Dime Savings Bank in New York where it set up an integrated telephone banking operation through its 100 branches.
Mr Glennon believes Vision is 10 years ahead of its competitors based on its approach to change within organisations. A close relationship with San Franciscobased Business Design Associates has helped Vision look at technology and process design differently.
According to Mr Saiid Ordibehest, director of Vision's Irish operations: "We take a certain business concern and try to orient towards that, and in parallel design support tools. An organisation is a network of commitments people are making to each other to make something happen for customers. We look at what tools are needed to fulfil that."
Funding growth out of its cash flow, Vision has said it is likely to make a number of acquisitions to move forward. Business Design Associates would be a potential target for the group as it drives a customer-centred approach to change.
In devising new ways of working within organisations, Vision says technology is not always the tool to fulfil requirements. Recently it conducted some work for a mortgage house which wanted to increase its market share from 8 per cent to 15 per cent. Following discussions with brokers and account managers it emerged that what was required was a service offering customers a mortgage within 30 minutes. The eventual outcome was a 1 1/2 hour turnaround without the introduction of new technology.
"We designed and delivered a tool-set based on needs, rather than building a technology in isolation. Change is generally instigated by technology, but put in place a strategy and the tool is built to sustain that. This way benefits flow back more quickly," Mr Ordibehest says.
Vision recently paid just more than £500,000 for a disused mansion on 69 acres of lakeside parkland in Mullingar to use as a People Development Centre for both employees and clients. The skills shortage is becoming a worry for Vision, and the idea behind Tudenham Park is to induct graduates into the Vision culture over a short period. Clients will be encouraged to use the development centre to engage in workshop-based projects too.
"People can step outside their day-to-day environment and get into a conversation about what the future may hold for their organisation. It is all about getting people more connected with the value of what they produce," says Mr Ordibehest.
Vision was founded as a pure software company in 1984 by Mr Gerald Adams and Ms Janet Howard, when they developed a network-based document management system for the pharmaceutical industry. Equifax has been described as a precursor to Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook, but failed to thrive without the appropriate distribution channel and marketing. Mr Glennon, a college friend and early investor came on board in 1988 after leaving his position in Andersen Consulting.
"In the 1980s the world was dominated by giants like IBM and Digital. Our niche was newer technologies, and the market gradually moved in our direction making our skills more marketable. Now information is a commodity, yet there is an inadequate understanding of what information is and how it should be used. "I believe the mobile phone and e-mail will be far more significant than any other information systems built in the last 20 years. They deal with information in the context of relationships between real people," Mr Glennon says.
