Technology
 

 

Technology

Delphi Group

Ten Post Office Square
Boston, MA 02019
Phone: 617-247-1511 , Fax: 617-247-4957
Email: cf@delphigroup.com  

   

Carl Frappaolo
Executive Vice President and Co-Founder

Interview conducted by: Walter Banks , Co-Publisher

CEOCFOinteriviews.com

January 2001

BIO OF Exec. VP & Co-Founder

Mr. Frappaolo (cf@delphigroup.com) is the industry’s leading authority on the challenges of integrating technology and business goals when designing information management strategies for knowledge sharing and collaboration. Mr. Frappaolo has assisted many enterprises, large and small, strategize approaches for enterprise-wide knowledge, e-learning and information management, many of which begin with a 'knowledge audit' of their organization. He has authored over 100 studies on the technology of digital documents and regularly provides market commentary and analysis to leading industry periodicals and business magazines, including Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Intelligent Enterprise, Knowledge Management Magazine, Computerworld, InformationWeek, CIO, INFORM's eDOC, and The Review. He is the co-creator of Delphi’s Knowledge Management Methodology (KM²⁾, and Portal Design methodology. He is also the author of two books, Electronic Document Management Systems: A Portable Consultant, an extensive text that analyzes the role of the electronic document as the cornerstone of today’s knowledge-based paradigm of computing (McGraw-Hill, 1995); and Smart Things to Know About Knowledge Management, the leading primer on this business paradigm (Capstone, 1999).

CEOCFOinterviews – Mr. Frappaolo, please give us a brief history of the Delphi Group.

Mr. Frappaolo – “Delphi Group was founded twelve years ago at what we thought was a very critical point in the history of information technology.  We saw evolving in the marketplace, a family of technologies that were going to seriously impact the ways in which corporations manage unstructured information. This is information that doesn’t fit nicely into a relational database -- for example, documents, pictures and images.  We established the company to be vigilant on the new ways in which information technology was impacting how businesses operate.  By keeping our focus there, Delphi Group, over the last twelve years, has introduced many organizations to concepts of document management, workflow systems, business process analysis, knowledge management, just in time e-learning, and business portals.  Today we are talking about issues like, on-line communities and collaborative commerce.  We see these as connected by their ability to affect a business’ approach to information management.  We are more focused on the business application than on the technology itself.  The service we provide is a vigilance for the next new technology that will have an immediate impact on businesses.  We are visionaries. We introduce corporate America, and global enterprises, to what is coming so they can plan ahead wisely. We tell our clients how that technology marketplace is shaping up, who the leaders of that market are/will be and how these organizations should be evaluating the products coming from those vendors.”

CEOCFOinterviews – How is your information distributed?

Mr. Frappaolo – “Our information is distributed through three separate product lines: research, education and consulting. We do our own primary market research. That information is distributed to clients via a website, where users are able to interact with the information published in an electronic format.  We also publish paper-based versions of the information for our clients who still prefer paper.  We also condense our knowledge into educational seminars, and conferences. These are live-, community-focused events. We are also adding new ways to participate in these educational events through innovative web-based access.  Lastly we provide hands-on business consulting where we go into organizations and do a very targeted, focused discovery of business needs, and how these are or are not met by the organization's technology direction.. We follow that with a report that details what the organization specifically needs to do to integrate technology with their business strategies.”

CEOCFOinterviews – What types of clients need your service?

Mr. Frappaolo – “Our client list runs the spectrum of the Who’s Who in the Global 1,000, and leading government agencies.  We have worked with companies such as Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Smithklein Beecham, Bristol Meyer Squib, American Family, American Express, Clorox, and National Life of Vermont.  We are providing information to these companies that is helping them reshape their organizations through the effective application of  new technologies.”

“We do continuous research on emerging technology areas through a separate branch at Delphi.  We are market sentinels, watching for emerging technologies that solve business problems in the areas of information, knowledge and business value chains. A recent example is the business portal. From our work with end users and vendors in the area of knowledge management, we saw the seeds of the business portal emerging. We dedicated a team of analysts to identify the vendors that are starting to introduce solutions targeted at the knowledge worker's need for a single and personal point of contact -- a starting screen on their computer -- that would link them to all the information resources they used in a typical business day. We learned everything there is to know about the technology and the vendors and the business cases for portals.  We then internalized that and evaluated whether or not there is a legitimate business need for it.  Once we were certain there was, we defined the business need and architected a methodology to help businesses evaluate technology providers.”

CEOCFOinterviews – It sounds as though your website would have valuable information for investors and shareholders of publicly traded technology companies.

Mr. Frappaolo – “Investors and shareholders of publicly traded technology companies could gain tremendous insight because what we do in the market research is to assess an entire marketplace.  Therefore, an investor interested in a tech stock could learn about the demand for the technology family they are investing in (or considering investing) and that could lead to more than one stock selection.  They'd learn the potential size of that marketplace, whether there are commercial verticals that find this technology attractive, and who is the typical buyer.  An investor would learn about the forces driving this marketplace and determine who are the market leaders from a solutions provider viewpoint. It is the kind of information they'd use to assess whether or not the public companies they’ve invested in have a strong current standing in the market place, who their toughest competition is, and what makes them competitive.”

CEOCFOinterviews – Does the Delphi Group have any competitors?

Mr. Frappaolo – “We are not the only company in the world that does assessments of technology vendors, but we believe we are a unique organization in our ability to focus exclusively on how information and the way it is manipulated technically, impact the business' value chain... We do not believe that there is any other consultancy that focuses only on that area and for that reason we believe that we do it deeper than anyone else We understand the knowledge management, the portal, the e learning, the business process and the document space better than anyone out there, because it’s an exclusive focus for us.”

“What has spelled Delphi’s success over the last twelve years is our very keen sense for the next big technology wave.  Earlier, when I introduced Delphi, I said that we started out looking at imaging and text search engines. Indeed twelve years ago, that was leading edge, though at the time, there was little momentum, very few companies were using the technology, and most were bewildered as to why they would even need it.  We did not allow ourselves though to stay imaging and text search engines specialists, although there is still a need for that and we continue to do a fair amount of consulting in that area. Today, when you look at Delphi Group's market research and education, we are light years beyond that first technology focus.  Delphi Group has been successful through the years because we are able to identify the next killer technology early in the game and frame it in a perspective that is clearly understood in the business environment.  We’ve been right on for twelve years. Search Engines were a successful market place, but they are not the bleeding edge anymore.  We were dead right again with Document Management. Throughout the 1990s we were the premier resource for guidance on workflow, Business Process Redesign and Knowledge Management (KM).  We have a successful track record of knowing where the next big impact from technology is going to be.”  

CEOCFOinterviews – What is the big, impact technology of the future?

Mr. Frappaolo – “The next thing that Delphi is working on is the concept of Collaborative Commerce, e-Community Building, and the Wireless Organization.  Too often, when people hear wireless they think, “oh that’s old, you’re talking about using PDA’s, cell phones to access the web”. Actually that’s a very small piece of it. Delphi is looking at what the work world will look like when the reality of a wireless workforce has been achieved. What kind of applications are going to be running in that wireless network? How is that going to change the way your employees are located, how they get their jobs done, and how they are compensated?  We are looking at information delivery vehicles, process management vehicles, and how they will operate in a wireless environment.”

CEOCFOinterviews – How many companies are in that area?

Mr. Frappaolo – “I would say that there are somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty or sixty companies that are doing R&D, or have announced or are planning to announce availability in the wireless space.”

CEOCFOinterviews – When do you see a big push in the product area?

Mr. Frappaolo – “Possibly in another eight to twelve months.  You are hearing a little of it right now, but you will hear a great deal more over the next twelve months.”

CEOCFOinterviews – Could you tell us more about e-Communities?

Mr. Frappaolo – “The idea of e- Communities is really interesting and powerful. It is going to start off somewhat simply, as a way for organizations to better leverage their intellectual capital.  In very large multinational organizations, for example, it is impossible for anyone to track what each individual in that company knows.  Many of our clients tell us about incidents where, for example, their people in Japan just came out with a wonderful new invention only to find out that the folks in the UK have been working on the same thing for the past eight months. Neither group knew of the other, so there was no information sharing of any kind!  The challenge facing larger organizations is how do we share what our people know collectively, and how do we broker our people so that teams are not constrained by physical location, but rather united by common interests, experience, and vision? And finally, how do we build "communities that collaborate" and share knowledge, resources, information within our dispersed organizations?  That in and of itself is pretty fascinating and it is starting to evolve. When we talk about e-Communities, we see not just that, but also how can the organization start applying that knowledge and information-sharing expertise outside of its corporate walls. e-Communities will really test current business models. This gets deeply into the concept of extended value chains -- how do you start brokering your intellectual capital with the intellectual capital of partners, suppliers, customers and, dare we say, the competition?  But think about it, if you and your competition start working together and sharing what you know via these communities of like-minded individuals perhaps -- in the end, you may jointly own certain rights to certain technologies or products collectively.  You are therefore a competitor in one sense and a cooperator in another.  That is more in line with what we envision longterm when we say e-Community.  It takes a particular type of CxO to appreciate what this could lead to and what it means.  Companies such as Dailmer Chrysler, Ford and GM.are showing evidence of a similar vision.   They think the automobile market is big enough and it is going to become even bigger.  If by working with their competitors, they can grow the marketplace as a whole, they will see bigger profits in a shorter period.  They will take what they have discovered in automobile safety for example, and share that with the competition, so that the automobile industry, from a safety standpoint, advances more quickly. Buyers will purchase different types of automobiles, growing the market at a greater speed.  Daimler Chrysler can then internally make sure that their products account for a certain percent of that market." 

CEOCFOinterviews – What type of research do you provide on the technology suppliers?

Mr. Frappaolo – “We don’t just look at their technology, we look at the management team behind the company, their profit and loss track record, their standing in the community amongst the buyers and evaluators of their market space.”

CEOCFOinterviews – How is that information displayed on you website?

Mr. Frappaolo – “ It is displayed via annotated charts and graphs, which contrast and compare elements in the market place.  It is also portrayed in bodies of text and paragraphs, which position the vendor company within their market space as well as within their technology arena.. This will soon be merged into a personalized portal environment.”

CEOCFOinterviews – What types of services can you offer a CEO.

Mr. Frappaolo – “The CEOs we work with fall into two broad groups: CEOs of technology companies, and CEOs of companies who use technology to make their company better, leaner and smarter at what they do.”  With the latter group, we work with the CEOs to build and formulate a Business/Technical strategy that ensures they are using technology to leverage their intellectual capital to the nth degree, so that they achieve their marketplace goals and objectives more readily.  When we work with the CEO of a technology company, or one who is thinking of becoming the CEO of a technology company, (and we’ve done both), we help them clarify their value proposition and determine what their chances of success look like.  We help them understand the competitive marketplace into which they are going to be playing. We evaluate what it would take for them to succeed. We'll also review their product vision.  If they already have a product, we can rate it on a feature-by-feature basis, to give them a sense of how competitive it might be and what the user community's reaction would be.  We see many new products that have some very nice features, but if the user community isn’t interested in them, it won't spell market success.”

CEOCFOinterviews – We would like to close by letting our readers know that Mr. Frappaolo is available for public speaking on the following topics: Survival in the Knowledge-based Economy, The Empowered Document, Information Management in the 21^st Century, Building Effective e-Communities, eLearning, Content Management, Knowledge Management, and Business Process Redesign.                                                

Mr. Frappaolo – “Thank you for this opportunity. "