Called A Digital Village (www.adigitalvillage.com) the concept is being driven by Steve Karolewski, Vice President of Interactive Marketing, RLAi. 

iBiz: What is the Digital Village? 

Karolewski: I think it's a very unique concept. There are hundreds of companies, thousands of companies that are our there developing web sites, web pages. RLAi is one of the best at it. But we wanted to get better so we took a look at how do we meet every potential customer's Internet needs? How do we put together enough people, without pulling one of the scenarios that happened to a lot of companies back in the late 70's and early 80's? Where they had a bunch of people on staff and then all of a sudden their expenses exceeded their incomes. So we wanted to know, how do we put something together to serve, potentially, every customer's needs. 

The major advantage of the Digital Village is, it is not a group of companies in the same building that say, "Oh yeah we can design that." It is a group of "Best of Breed," non-competitive partners, who can handle any project, large or small. It really depends on what the client needs. 

We formed a relationship with AT&T on the communications side. From a communication standpoint who knows more about communication than AT&T? 

On the hardware side, when someone says we have every thing that we need, but we want to do a web system and we probably want to host it ourselves. In that case we will bring in OPM Information Systems. They are very good in networking. 

For customers with large legacy systems or those getting into building huge data bases in multiple locations, we have Born Information Services. When you start getting into building those complex eCommerce sites that require large, heavy-duty security; large legacy systems where we have to work software into it or wrap software around it, or rewrite code. Born has the people on staff for that. 

iBiz: What does RLAi bring to the table? 

Karolewski: The best analogy would be if you went out to the parking lot and you took the body off of a car. The car is sitting out there with beautiful tires, a sparkling clean engine, all of these wires hanging off of it, nice clean seats, but you have no clue what kind of car it is. Some engineer has designed it. Some hardware engineer put all together. 

What RLAi does is come in and build a beautiful body for that car. We attach all of the wires. We make sure all of the plumbing on the car work, all of the wires, all of the mechanical works. Now you are able to start it and drive it away. Now people can recognize it and say, "Yeah that is a Cadillac." 

Just like that car, the Digital Village came out of a joint collaboration between of the best people that are out there. Born and AT&T and with RLAi, and OPM. So what we bring to it is the creative design that is the first thing. 

The second thing that we bring to it is no matter how big the Internet gets, no matter how powerful it becomes; we are always going to need traditional marketing. You are always going to need expertise in driving people to your site. As a matter of fact, the larger the Internet becomes, the more powerful the Internet becomes, the more the need for traditional marketing. 

RLAi has been in business since 1993. RLA, Risdall Linnihan Advertising, has been in business for twenty-five years building traditional marketing concepts. We bring the body, the flavor, the smell, the branding, and the perception of value. We bring all of these things and we know how to market them. You have to have some way to get people's attention. That is what RLA does. 

iBiz: What part do you see AT&T playing. 

Karolewski: I'm firmly convinced that we are going to be the leader in the country for AT&T in the Upper Mid-west. Based on my conversations with upper management and based on my conversations with some of the salespeople, they are really gung-ho on it, they really like this concept. It really is a solution sell. 

iBiz: How does a project begin? 

Karolewski: Every project we do begins with a PDP (Project Definition Plan). We really develop blue prints for clients before we even write one word of code. 

Our assessment covers the four major elements of the web: the hardware, the software, the creative design, and the communication end of it. We assess all four of those to make sure that we are not over-looking anything. We look at it from today, from yesterday, and tomorrow's standpoint. We have taken the time to look at the future. 

Our major objective here, at RLAi, is project management. We will coordinate with Born. We will coordinate with OPM. We do this all based on the PDP. A PDP for large accounts is a very, very big, detailed document. On the smaller ones, we still do a ten or twelve page document. It outlines, this is what it looks like. This is what you are going to get. This is what we see. 

The we ask. What do you think? Do you want more? Do you want less? Do you want to do more marketing? So we really think it out before we sit down. People like the fact that, someone isn't coming in drawing something on a board and saying, "Now this is what it is going to look like. It is going to be real pretty." That's what the Digital Village is all about. 

iBiz: So is it scaleable or does it only work for big companies? 

Karolewski: Totally scaleable. Small or large, if we can not handle it on the inside, we go out and bring people in to make sure it works. 

iBiz: Sure, Well it appears mutually beneficial to all five parties. The four companies and the customer. The customer comes as the last twenty percent of this, is that correct? 

Karolewski: We can not do any of this without the client. Because the client really understands his business. Try as we may, it is very hard for us to get in and within a week, or two, or even six months, learn as much about their business as they know. So client involvement is vitally important to every project we do. 

iBiz: Do you have project milestones that are in place throughout this? 

Karolewski: Yes, yes we do. We have the detailed, project milestones in writing. The client will actually be required to sign off on them. We will accomplish this by X, and accomplish this by Y. It is not like we are going to just throw it out there. It is a very structured process. 

iBiz: With all the alternatives out there, why would a customer choose to do business in the Digital Village? 

Karolewski:No one company can take all of the expertise necessary for a very complex web site and put in under one roof. If you find a company that says they got it the overhead has got to be extremely large. By utilizing the Digital Village concept it really does decrease overhead. It does decrease expenses. So, for the customer, the project price is probably less than if they went to a large company that said they had everything under one roof. It's a total solution sell. 

We are going into companies and saying, we can provide you with a solution to answer what the net can do for you. We can show you. We can document, in many cases, return on investment. We can give them a total solution to problems they may have not even known they had. 

iBiz: What's going to keep this collaboration together? 

Karolewski: The key, the cement, that bonds our relationship with our partners is trust. They trust us. We trust them. If the day comes when we they don't trust us or we don't trust them, we have no more Digital Village. The walls will come tumbling down. 

That is the perspective we got from the architects of the Digital Village plan. We followed up with phone interviews to representatives from each of the Digital Village citizens. The first person we talked to was Jim Leslie, president of OPM Information Systems. 

iBiz: Jim, how did you get involved in the Digital Village? 

Leslie: We have been involved with RLA and the Digital Habitat for a long period of time. We have been aligned together now for probably a year and a half, or two years. RLA as you know is not just RLA interactive, they also do print and other design work. We first went to RLA based upon web development for our clients. That relationship moved to doing a lot of our collaborating with the company for our clients. We would provide the network infrastructure, they would provide the design services. 

We have people ask us a lot why don't you just bring on some people who can do HTML coding and develop the web pages yourself. It wouldn't be a huge step for us to have the technical ability. But what I say to clients is, Giving me a scalpel doesn't make me a surgeon. We are not a marketing company. I have no idea how to deliver that message. 

What I know is how to get you onto the wire and make sure that when your client presses this, click, the bid comes off the ERP server and goes out to the web server very quickly. But we have no clue on how to send the message that's going to make somebody want to order. You might see value in what we do. I see a ton of value in what RLA does. We couldn't begin to execute that part of it. 

iBiz: Let's back track a little bit, tell me about OPM. 

Leslie: We are a local company that is twenty-three years old now. We had revenues last year of a little over eighty million dollars. We have about 125 employees. We really have three disciplines that define the company. One is, we are one of the twin cities largest name-brand personal computer providers. We also do a lot with enterprise computing. We are one of the strongest providers of Risk Unix servers, Internetworking Networking technology, databases technology, and the like. Lastly, over half of our employees are dedicated to service delivery here in the twin cities. 

iBiz: Your part in this is hardware then? 

Leslie: Hardware is a big part of what we do, we are really the platform guys. So it would be not only the hardware but also the internetworking of the hardware and then the implementation and tuning of the data base technology. 

The two that we really support are Oracle and Sequel Server. Once you have the database loaded on the server, you have to tune it to the environment to extract performance. We have really good tuning and design skills. 

iBiz: So what's your perception of the Digital Village? What is it? 

Leslie: I would define it as being presented to the customer as a single entity that will take responsiblity for solving their Internet and eCommerce requirements. I think that is what is significant about it is that most end user clients already know, or quickly find out, that getting on to the web or doing eCommerce is more than just a T-1 line and a web server. There is an awful lot that is involved in preparing a business for transactions over the net. 

I am not aware of any single company that is a master of all of those different disciplines. So what ends up happening is either the clients or the user has to assume the responsibility of a general contractor who qualifies the different participants and asks them all to work together. That is really what Digital Village is all about? 

iBiz: What does OPM get from this directly? Besides potentially more business? 

Leslie: We benefit from a way to present to our clients a seamless solution for Internet or web site access or what I think is a lot more significant is the eCommerce. The ability to execute eCommerce. So we provide a seamless solution to our clients. Then they begin to appreciate what we can deliver from a foundation and our business relationship with them hopefully goes beyond just the web server and eCommerce. 

iBiz: One of the things that I liked about the collaboration is "the.alignment of multiple, non-competitive companies." (a quote from Steve's presentation) 

Leslie: I hate the word non-competitive. I would say complimentary not non-competitive. The reason I say that is because non-competitive sounds like we're not very good. 

iBiz: What do you like best about the concept? 

Leslie: That there are different skill sets in each company. The other thing is each of the companies has excellent reputations in their field. 

But this relationship is still in the formative stages. We haven't actually begun to work on anything yet. We don't really have any success stories that demonstrate the vision right now. 

iBiz: Do you think you'll be co-presenting to prospects? How will you handle that? Will your company come into the game after the project is sold or will you be involved from day one? 

Leslie: "We'll get together early. In the beginning stages of the PDP. On our side of the equation there are lots of different ways we can approach say, just the different server devices. That makes a difference in how Borne and RLA execute their parts of the job. We definitely need to be involved at the PDP stage of the process. 

iBiz: What about scalability? I know this solution can work for a big corporation. There is a niche for each of the four players in any Fortune 100 company. But what about the other way? What about the $20, $15 or even $10 Million company? 

Leslie: Quite frankly, that's a lot of our existing client base. 

iBiz: Are you going to actively market this? Are your reps going to present this solution to your prospects? 

Leslie: Absolutely. It is our lead solution for customers that are looking for a total solution or really even Internet access. We will bring the Digital Village process into play to explore what a client wants to accomplish with a web connection. It's conceivable that there could be a prospect that only wanted a web presence. In which case we would have RLA do their piece but there might not be anything there for Born. Similarly I'm sure RLA could pursue an opportunity that would involve Born but not us because the customer already has all their servers in or whatever. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing solution. 

We caught up with Andy Crevaro, general manager AT&T, just before he left for vacation. Crevaro is in his own words, ". . . the guy who runs AT&T operations in the two Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska." 

iBiz: How did you get guys get involved in the Digital Village? 

Crevaro: We have a formal program by which we reach out for partners. Especially in areas where we feel we don't do terribly well. RLAi was identified as one of those partners. One of those things we at AT&T have come to realize is we can't do everything. Especially when you start to move into the Internet space. There are parts we feel we are very good at, other parts are just not our bag. Creative content and things like that is not a core competency of ours, but it is something our clients ask us about." 

iBiz: That led you to RLAi what about Born? Had you worked with them before? 

Crevaro. We certainly are aware of them. We had worked with them before in different ways. The Digital Village came very much out of our association with RLAi, they really brought us all together in that. 

iBiz: What is AT&T bringing to the table? 

Crevaro: "The finest transmission network system in the world. We will do (Internet) hosting if they (the customers) want us to. The biggest part of any Internet application, you have a hosting piece of it, you have content then you have access to the Internet. The thing that we bring is the access. We will do hosting. We consider that a core competency but it's not a necessary thing to us. 

We're trying to build traffic on our access network and our customer base there. That's what we bring to this. And then we figure the content, etc. that is really where the other partners come into play. The hosting is a negotiable piece of this. 

iBiz: Do you think most of the customers you'll see coming to the Digital Village will have their own server systems? 

Crevaro: "Yes and no. It kind of depends on the customer and their size. Some of 'em, in order to have a really reliable network, to have 7 by 24 service, will want to let someone else do it. Others, if they already have a data center, they already have people doing the care and feeding of computers every day, they'll be more comfortable with it. I think it will be different correct answers for different people." 

iBiz: Will the Digital Village concept be a part of your pitch? A part of your marketing strategy? Are you going to be active in the promotion of this solution? 

Crevaro: "One of the things that happens is sometimes the customers are already very far down this road. In that case, no we won't promote it. The customer will already have made these decisions before we got there. 

Other times we'll go in. . . I've had CEOs ask me "How are we going to get people to come to our web site?" that kind of stuff. When they need this kind of help, yes, we will promote it." 

iBiz: What about the non-competitive aspects of the concept? How do you think that will work out? 

Crevaro: There are times when this becomes a big edge for us. There are other times when,the person we're talking to has already got their own set of plans. In the end because the partners are not competitive, it's fine by me if somebody's doing their own advertising, their own data management.. Then I'm there to sell my own access. When they're not though it's been a real help to us to have someone we can refer them to. 

iBiz: That seems to be the prevailing attitude among the partners. Everyone seems to understand and be comfortable with not having a piece of every deal. But it seems no matter what, AT&T can sell access in every project. 

Crevaro: I hope so! I sincerely hope that's the case. We think that, but we know there will be time when the customer will have made another communications decision. So I don't expect to be in on every deal either. 

iBiz: How about your people, are they excited about this? 

Crevaro: The more involved my people are the more excited they become. This is a much more complicated sale a lot of time than say 800 service. We know how to do that. But when you get into an Internet sale you very often get right into the guts of a business' marketing. How they're defining themselves as a business. It's a great place to be. The deeper my people get into this the more they understand it and the more they understand how much we need partners. 

The last of the companies we talked to was Born Information Systems. Born is definitely the brightest star in Twin Cites IT circles and one of the most successsful, fastest groweing IT consulting firms nationwide. Jay Lendl is their Internet National Technology Leader. 

iBiz: Jay, when did Born get involved with the Digital Village? 

Lendl: It was maybe January when we first chatted. Their folks came out and we did some brainstorming. 

iBiz: Born is very successful on its own. Why did you consider this type of semi-formal association? 

Over the last few years we've continued to give it thought. You know, the whole idea of the creative advertising kind of thing. We've worked with a couple (agencies) and we've had some we thought we would pursue. But the RLA one was unique in that they were as interested as we were. We hadn't really found that before. We were interested in partnering and saw the value of what they did well versus what we did well. That was the unique part. 

iBiz: What value do you see for customers in each of the four partners in the Digital Village? 

Lendl: The Digital Village isn't about these four companies, it's about the services these four companies can provide. We've spent some time here at Born trying to identify, specifically what each one of the partners strengths and weaknesses are. We tried to do a quick evaluation of RLAi initially. The one thing we had going for us was that we had recently hired somebody who had worked on a project with some recent hires of RLAi's. It was a sort of relationship through employees, which for me goes a long way. 

Then we looked at some of the things they had been doing. They threw out a number of 300-320 web sites they had done. We have never actively hired folks like graphic artists or people with any kind of marketing or advertising background. What we had been doing is putting up either internal or external Internet technologies but there was that missing opportunity of driving people to the site. That's where I felt we could use some assistance. So we talked to them (RLAi) about some of the programs they had done for customers in the past using print mailings and advertising. Add that to the fact that they have creative people to create the look and feel. 

iBiz: How do you all determine who does what in the village? 

Lendl: As we look at a project, it's between us and them how we split it up. They (RLAi) are probably better at putting together the look and feel front end side and we focus a lot on the data integration and creating the engine , either the transaction or forms based engine, for the site and whether it's internal or external. 

With the OPM folks, there's only a small area of overlap in the networking area. We do have a small networking practice but that's primarily for our current customers so it's not really a big overlap at all. 

Certainly on a lot of the projects we get involved in there's a need for hardware, a need for service contracts, a need for installation services, things along that line. If there's some wide geographic needs that certainly a good place for those guys to play a role in getting the hardware installed and up and running. Then we can focus on the custom development, the logical systems integration. If this thing has to hit against live Oracle information, or data on an AS400, or data hitting on a Microsoft Sequel Server or things along that line. That's where we can come in and pretty much nail that part of the project. 

The perfect scenario is one where we can use AT&T to provide hosting or bandwidth services. We can use RLAi to make sure it looks good and helps with the image of the company. Use OPM to get the hardware wherever it needs to be, get it up and running and serviceable. We can come in with some of the logic and tools like Site Server and then with customization for security, the actual transactions, or doing business to business commerce. We can plug that stuff into the systems companies are currently using and help with that whole side. 

iBiz: Is it a scalable solution? 

Lendl: I think it is. I think the individual companies have focused on a little different market. I think that's a part of the beauty of the collaboration as well. Not only are we bringing different skill sets, but we're bringing different market experiences as well. 

If you look at OPM, although they do some work with many of the larger company's in town, that's not really their focus. They've got really good experience in sort of that middle market. They're really comfortable in that space. Those customers value the higher touch service which is his value proposition versus some of the other national resellers. 

RLA has pretty much run the gamut. I've seen work from them for the very smallest companies but they're also doing work for Honeywell and 3M and folks like that. 

We probably have typically focused on larger accounts. Mostly because they seem to appreciate higher level professional services more than a medium or small size business. Our biggest selection criteria in an account is that we want a sophisticated buyer. If they're not very sophisticated they may not be able to be a great customer. We do more and more work in the middle tier but very little in the smaller end for that reasons. 

iBiz: Who do you think is the ideal customer for this partnership? 

Lendl: I think it will play well to the medium size business and the departmental/divisional portions of the very largest businesses. RlAi has done well with business units of very large corporations. They're not usually selling to the CEO of the largest organizations, they're plugging into a division at Honeywell or an area at 3M. 

Which is probably very much like the way we sell. We do a lot of relationship selling where we can get into one division and then we're going to use those people as a reference or launching point to get to other people at 3M. You gotta build that demonstrable capability. That method works well for us and I think it will work well for this kind of relationship. 

iBiz: Are you comfortable with not getting a piece of every deal the village takes on? 

Lendl: Well yeah. The way we look at it is there's a lot of work out there. We don't need the village just for more work. My whole focus is better not more. If there's something we can do better for the customer and it's the kind of work we want to be doing? Let's do it. There's gonna be times there's stuff that we can just nail. There'll be times when other village members can do the job without us. 

iBiz: Are you going to actively promote this? 

Lendl: Yeah. We've been trying to make sure we get the right references in line. We need to be able to identify our messages and that kind of stuff. We know what we want to do and don't want to do. Yeah, definitely. I just want to make sure we can do what we say we can do. 
 

 iBiz.