[thelist] web companies in NY

[martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com]

Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

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Hi Peter

Be careful with companies well known for web work -
large clients are becoming increasingly suspicious of them.

Clients are now viewing such shops as having outlived their usefulness,
and that they're now not much more than boutiques for whizziness. And
as the .com bubble showed that such whizziness doesn't make a viable
business, guess who loses out?

Because what clients are increasingly realising is that eBusiness is
*business*, just done through another channel.

What they're increasingly doing is returning to their old friends -
marketing
agencies and business consultancies - who have the solid understanding
about their *business*. Clients are now feeling that such players are no
longer playing catch-up - they've learned from all the successes
and failures of the .com boom and are the only people who really understand
the underlying issues..

These players will buy in any web-specific knowledge (chiefly presentation-
layer design) if required, but will do most of the thinking around "What do
you
want/need to *do* with this?" themselves. And certainly all of the system
development.

I'll give you a couple of examples from projects I've worked on lately:
Project A:
Business model & project management support[1] by a large management
consultancy
Site Design, content & web front end by the direct marketing agency who'll
run the
   site and resulting relationship marketing programme
Site development by the management consultancy
Site testing and integration by the management consultancy

Project B:
Business model & project management support[1] by management consultancy
Site visual design by a web design company simply because they'd done
   a similar site before
All testing (including usability work) by management consultancy
Site content by 2 agencies: one with subject matter credentials and
   one with editing skills
Site IA by web design co., subject matter content agency and management
   consultancy collaboratively
Site development and integration by management consultancy

[1] yes this is very vague, and intentionally so, sorry

Once apon a time, a web shop would have done all of the above.

As the link someone posted the other day points out - the hot developer
need
isn't for pure HTML, CSS & Flash, it's for Java, XML and systems knowledge
with HTML as well. These days, clients don't need a web site - they need a
web front end to their existing systems. If you're talking large clients
(and from
your portfolio you are), this is real big iron: the stuff that makes the
business work.

And clients towards the larger end of the spectrum don't think that
Sapient/Viant/
Scient/Razorfish et al can do it. They're already consolidating - iXL got
bought
out by Scient. The mid-size ones are dying - look at Entranet in the UK.

Yes, there's still a strong need for IA-type roles (hey, it's organising
information -
every company in the world needs that), but business isn't buying it from
companies
with pink walls any more.

Cheers
Martin





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Subject:  [thelist] web companies in NY


Hi,
what are some well regarded web development companies that operate in NY
(USA)?
List so far:
- sapient
Where would be a good place to make such a list? I'm looking for larger web
development companies, not small shops.
Thanks!
Peter


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