I've been keeping a close eye on Chris Anderson's The Long Tail blog, and his writings on the long tail for Wired Magazine. It's a fascinating idea. Essentially, Anderson argues quite effectively that we are moving away from a world of mass produced hits to a world of unlimited information and virtual shelf space where we can find and purchase the books, movies and music that appeals to our unique tastes. I've been thinking about the long tail as it relates to our work in IT consulting. Anderson writes it about it largely from the point of view of a consumer of goods. We are actually producers of services, so a very different take is necessary. When I first got going in IT Consulting with Oracle in the mid 90's it was a common practice to build each area of the consulting division around very large clients with very long term projects. Once you had a couple of 2 year projects going with 10-20 consultants on each you could really start to attack the market. Because you had cash. Big hits were vital at that time. Consultants expected to travel and therefore salaries were high. That was one huge constraint; you could not afford to have people on the bench until you had a lot of people billing. Travel itself was another constraint. It was hard to find the talent that you needed, so you flew them in from wherever. Costs to the client were heavy so you had to find clients with deep pockets and a lot of tolerance for pain. At the end of the 90's the consulting game started to come to an end. Clients were cutting back on both consultants and costs. No more $250 a night rooms. Local consultants were highly prized, even if they had half the experience of the guy from California or Atlanta. Now, the world has really turned around. The big companies have mostly finished their ERP and CRM implementations, which is why Oracle has been on a buying binge. The action today is in small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). From a service producers point of view, how can we service SMBs profitably on fairly short engagements with 1 or a few consultants? And from the SMB's point of view, how can they add the IT talent that they don't have in house in the short, small doses when they need it? One of the things that strikes me about the Long Tail idea is that it really describes the 'effect' in the marketplace. But what are the causes? Certainly when we remove the constraints of commerce, like shelf space, this removal acts as a passive cause, if you will, like removing a plank from the top of the dam. But the true cause of the long tail has more to do with the assertiveness of the customer. They want, no, they demand, a unique identity and the Internet has provided them with the opportunity to have it. You don't have to settle for the summer blockbuster. Try a something completely different like Knut Hamson's "Hunger" (a little plug for a forgotten Nobel Laureate). So how can the lessons and values of the consumer's long tail experience help us in our NetSuite Implementation practice? First, no travel. We work from the Internet, unless a client is bound and determined to have us at their office. By removing this constraint we make ourselves as agile as possible. Need 2 days from us this week, no problem. 3 days next week and 4 the following, ok. The client fits the implementation into their schedule. Second, we propose on the engagement in flexible, modular pieces so the client can select which ones he want to do and at what time. They could decide, for example, to do the Purchasing and A/P module first, followed by G/L, followed by Sales and Order Management. Not a problem. IT Consulting today is really all about servicing the Long Tail of systems implementation work in the marketplace. Frankly, I think that it's a huge improvement over where we were in the 90's. I think the client feels the same way, too. | 
