Built to Scale

Big Companies Need Big Brains

Why don't more startups build to scale? For one thing, infrastructure isn't a priority at first. Frazzled leaders are too consumed with signing up customers to stop and define job titles in a meaningful way or to spell out sales-and-delivery methodologies. Those particulars may not sound urgent, but Netigy officials believe that they are pivotal in accelerating a company's growth. Attention to details keeps employees "aligned," so that everyone knows how to get their work done.

Another reason why startups don't build sophisticated systems is that they lack the bucks. Infrastructure isn't cheap, and Netigy has spent several million dollars on it. Few companies have that sort of cash on hand, or have the freedom to spend the cash that they do have. And once companies go public, they become saddled with meeting quarterly projections. Netigy, which expects to go public later this year, doesn't have that problem. Last year, after being courted by several VC outfits, it received $104 million in funding from Benchmark Capital, Cisco Systems, and Trinity Ventures. That was the third-largest funding total in Silicon Valley in 1999.

Armed with such riches, Julie Mickelson, Netigy's chief knowledge officer, didn't design a knowledge-management system for a few hundred employees -- she designed one for 20,000, because that's how big she pictures Netigy will be. Mickelson, 39, came from Arthur Andersen, where she'd built a knowledge system for 15,000 consultants. Shortly after Mickelson joined Netigy, Moore dropped by her office and scribbled his vision on a whiteboard: 20,000 people. Global now. The company won't succeed, he says, if there are "islands of information or expertise."

For now, Mickelson's system enables nearly 650 employees in 30 offices throughout the United States and Europe to work smarter, faster, and more focused. That's no easy feat when 80 percent or more of a staff is new. Netigy's system offers ready-made solutions and preconfigured templates in order to streamline the way that work gets done -- links to helpful tools, presentations, contacts, customer references, and, in some cases, a list of questions to ask clients.

The point is to provide more than content, says Mickelson -- it's to provide "content with context." That leads to consistency. "If you're a client with multiple locations, you can be 100% certain that Netigy's implementation will be the same whether it takes place in Cape Town or in San Francisco," says Mickelson.

Speed is another benefit of knowledge management. People find whatever they need, whenever they need it -- whether it's a specific solution or a technical expert. In early April, Netigy caught wind of a big financial-services company that was looking for help with its wide-area network. By the time Netigy learned of the opportunity, though, the work-proposal deadline was only four days away. Working into the night and over the weekend, a team of consultants, account executives, and managers amassed documentation and best practices from similar projects and pieced together a 50-page proposal. Netigy was named one of two finalists, beating out rivals that had upward of a month to prepare. Regardless of whether Netigy is selected for that project later this year, says Brendan Keegan, 31, senior VP of global sales, their teamwork demonstrated what a fast company is capable of.

There are other ways in which Netigy speeds up. When an account executive scores a client engagement, consulting managers waste no time calling around to find out who's qualified and who's available for the job. Managers consult the knowledge-management system, which tells them everything that they need to know: consultants' technical certifications, prior experience, current status, and travel preferences. Based on consultants' qualifications, the system rates them, assigning between 1,000 and 10,000 points, so that managers can easily differentiate among candidates. With that information, managers might decide to substitute a consultant on an existing job in order to free up an expert. So, Netigy not only reduces downtime between sales and delivery by quickly identifying an available team, it assembles the most qualified team available. "We believe that if we staff the right people with the right knowledge to the right job, and if we ensure that they deliver consistently, then our customers will be happy," says Mickelson.