IBM Patterns for E-Business yields great results - saving time and money, while increasing effectiveness of consultants.

These challenges have given rise to a new wave of consulting firms that specialize in integrating such disparate components, creating seamless systems that provide a single view of an enterprise's information. These systems are also increasingly extended beyond the enterprise to the entire value chain, reaching sales and distribution channels, as well as partners, suppliers and even customers.

Leading the way in this field of services is IBM Business Partner Foundation Technology Services (Foundation).

Since its inception in 1991,Foundation has been a leading developer of custom applications for human resources, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM)and e-business transactions.

Foundation helps companies integrate these systems to become competitive, collaborative e-businesses.

But some things never change. Rapid implementation is still a competitive prerequisite. Foundation's customers can't afford multiple cycles of trial and error in the development process. This puts the responsibility on Foundation to produce the best solution the first time? and to do so quickly.Providing these all-encompassing solutions requires a team of consultants that not only specialize in specific areas, but also have knowledge of the complete e-business infrastructure to be deployed. Foundation had to consider how it could develop a team of such well-rounded and cross-trained consultants despite shortages in the labor market.

It wasn't long before David Shefter, Foundation's director of integration services, found the answer to the dilemma in a familiar place? the IBM Web site. While exploring the Web site to research new e-business tools, Shefter came across the IBM Patterns for e-business (Patterns). The Patterns are sets of reusable, proven guidelines formed from the experience IBM has gained from more than 20,000 e-business engagements. The Patterns are the best-practice implementations of the IBM Application Framework for e-business. Shefter realized that the Patterns could allow Foundation to dramatically decrease both the time and risk associated with large IT projects. In addition, Foundation could also leverage the Patterns as a training vehicle for its growing team of consultants.

Foundation's Patterns-based training program is producing consultants with a higher level of e-business understanding.

"The Patterns allow us to show our customers a pre-existing, tangible solution that has been consistently proven to work. This is invaluable to companies that are under so much pressure to get their systems up quickly and under budget." - David Shefter

Graduates of Shefter 's new Patterns-based training program are considered junior architects. The designation of architect is evidence of the consultant's ability to understand the overall structure of an e-business engagement from beginning to end ?not just the specific components. Assigning these junior architects to new engagements has led to a 40 percent reduction in the time required for initial assessments. After the assessment, the architects can leverage the prebuilt Patterns to decrease implementation time by 20 percent.

The Patterns-based training program is also saving Foundation $6,000 in training costs per consultant by eliminating the need for additional e-business classes. These savings are likely to be substantial,as Foundation 's Web consultant team is expected to grow to 120 employees by the end of this year. Moreover,the four weeks each consultant saves in training time can now be spent generating billable work for Foundation >> boosting the company 's revenues by at least $20,000 a month.

Word of Foundation's success is spreading among existing and potential clients, and the company is expecting new integration projects to drive up revenue by 30 percent next year. Shefter attributes much of this success to the Patterns.

"The IBM Patterns for e-business are prebuilt, reusable and tested architectures that dramatically decrease both time and risk for our customers by helping them avoid developing systems from scratch. They allow our consultants to reduce the entire development cycle for our clients from assessment to implementation."

Currently, Foundation is implementing Patterns-based solutions primarily for state and local overnments, educational institutions and mid-size financial institutions. The sales cycle for these projects is a maximum of three to six weeks. When engaging Foundation, customers typically express the need to reduce complexity and streamline their overall infrastructures. Foundation demonstrates how the Patterns can provide a software layer that connects the customer's existing systems, such as back-end IBM CICS ® applications,as well as ERP and CRM data streams? with newer Web-based applications, such as online storefronts.

"Being able to fortify our experience and knowledge with that of a company like IBM has proved to be extremely valuable to us." - David Shefter

The support and knowledge that Foundation receives from IBM is an important component of the company 's overall success.

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