Such is the nature of the IT services community that has sprung up in the Cambridge area of England, that the local phone book sports literally dozens of names implying an affiliation with the City or its seat of learning. Take the Japanese word for 'bridge' - the Romanji transliteration would be bashi and the derivation drops into place when it is realised that the founder, Mike Evans, established Cambashi on his return from working in Japan in 1984.
For all the oriental implications of its name, the company has remained focused throughout the past decade and a half on the application of information and communications technology within European industry. Clearly, the scope of that focus has changed as the demands of IT users have evolved in the light of emergent technologies. At the time of its inception, Cambashi was almost entirely involved in computer-aided technologies such as CAD and specialist aspects of design engineering.
Were the practice to be working with the same computer-aided design vendors today, however, the emphasis might well be on examining how that client could employ electronic commerce to publish design data through a Web browser for its customers to incorporate into their own developments.
Cambashi works with three distinct groups of customers, according to Peter Thorne, Director of Consultancy. One is the IT vendor community, a natural constituency for a consultancy which claims to keep market trends and statistics constantly under review.
Another target is the IT users concerned with second-guessing developments as they prepare to invest in current generations of information technology. "The third group consists of intermediaries who have a vested interest in seeing the first two succeed. These are typically venture capitalists, governments and public institutions such as the European Commission."
The broad spread of the customer base goes a long way to drawing the boundaries for the company's activities. Cambashi does not become involved in product selection or implementation, for example, as this would conflict with its role advising IT vendors. There would certainly appear to be adequate scope for the company's activities without entering that contentious area, however. It operates, for example, the national contact point for the Integration in Manufacturing domain of the European Commission's Esprit project. By the start of the '90s, Cambashi was reflecting the trend towards the closer integration of specific types of solution with the IT environment in which industry's applications were then being applied. "We had recognised that users were demanding improved integration between partial solutions which were individually best of breed."
Where the company has made significant inroads has been in its work with the marketing groups inside IT organisations. Part of the relationship involves supplying detailed market information. No less important is the interpretation and analysis of the data which Cambashi would claim to bring to the table.
Peter Thorne believes that the company makes a significant contribution to those customers by helping them focus their product and marketing policies. "We have a chance to get close enough to be members of a team considering marketing and pricing issues. Our role is to stimulate pro-active research; trying to make developers understand what end-users are doing."
With its declared focus on the European scene, can an operation which supports just eight full time consultants at its Cambridge base provide either the depth or the breadth needed to assist vendors who are taking an increasingly global perspective? The question of resources on the ground is one which Cambashi addresses like many other businesses of its type; drafting in specialist skills as required for specific projects. In the past financial year, for example, the permanent team was augmented by nearly twenty consultants at various times.
There is an international dimension to Cambashi, however, which should add to its credibility in the marketplace. The company is a founder of the CATN 'federation' of consultancies operating across Europe. A total of a hundred permanent consultancy staff across these independent businesses would provide effective coverage for projects which were multi-national as opposed to UK-based with a few international outposts.
With the emphasis of business integration now firmly on the Internet, and electronic commerce as the enabling tool for business-to-business transactions, Cambashi is being called upon increasingly to advise its vendor and user customers on the implications of their technology for business applications.
No two vendors have evolved quite the same strategy for their electronic commerce platform, which might suggest that Cambashi has had to 'back' one particular approach and thereby narrow its horizons. The company's management argues that its approach is not to espouse the platform promoted by any one of the emerging players but to take a considered view of how best the solutions that have been adopted will link electronic commerce most effectively into the business process.
Peter Thorne sees the take-up of electronic commerce as following the classic four-phase model for product development. The stages in the model are risk, function, price and brand. For most vendors working in the electronic commerce marketplace, the risk phase - characterised by there being no consensus over what a solution should achieve, at what price, or the functionality that would need to be provided - is almost over.
Awareness of electronic commerce has been raised sufficiently for vendors to gauge the potential take-up and thereby eliminate much of the risk associated with further investment in platforms and solutions.
That no two vendors are providing identical functionality in their solutions would suggest that customers will select electronic commerce solutions on the basis of the functionality that each can provide. Is there a provision for handling electronic cash payments, for example? Is there a well established applications interface which allows third party developers to create solutions specifically for the vendor's platform - or readily adapt their existing applications? The vendor which can demonstrate the greatest number of 'ticks' in the product check boxes will win that round of the ratings war.
By the time that vendors have evolved towards a common array of functionality, the acceptance of electronic commerce will be complete. There will be little to choose between them in terms of the competing systems' capabilities, and competitive pressure will start to force prices down to the point where awareness can be turned into take-up.
The fourth and final phase is where the marketplace has accepted that functionality is identical across the board and that prices have levelled out. The selection of an electronic commerce solution will then be down to brand awareness and hence the ability of one vendor rather than another to keep its solution more firmly in the purchaser's eye.
With its eye set firmly on the market acceptance of a product, Cambashi is perhaps best regarded as a business consultancy with expertise in IT rather than the other way round. Thorne accepts that interpretation, arguing that the company's strength lies in understanding the economic drivers, whether regulatory pressure, the need to preserve margins, sustain growth or optimised investment. "We cannot work with a client to design the best solution unless we understand those factors. An ERP vendor, for example, might be thinking in terms of sales force automation, so that what they need is a solution offering product configuration capabilities."
With its eight-strong complement of permanent consultants - even the total of twenty-five experts it deployed last year - Cambashi must surely be viewed with deep scepticism by the product development and marketing teams whose business it is to develop product strategies. What is the added value that such a company can bring?
"The chances are that we have greater access to information on every aspect of the market than are available to the client. One of the skills we bring to the table is the analysis and interpretation of that raw data. And most management teams can use an informed independent sounding-board to help catalyse their plans into action."
The decision to open up an office of Cambashi in the US, at Boston, Massachusetts might suggest that the company is now changing its perspectives and seeking new business outside Europe. The move is seen by the company, however, as raising its profile in a marketplace where many of its potentially global corporate players are based.
Steeped in the culture of electronic commerce, and with its profound understanding of the vendors' philosophy, Cambashi would make a logical partner for corporates considering their first foray into this field, enabling Cambashi's potential to further extend by working with vendors of eCommerce products. There would be no instant turnkey solution at the end of the day; there would be no product implementation. On the evidence put forward by the Cambridge-based company, the customer would make its own investment confident that its strategic direction were correct; that its interests would be served; that its management would not end up doubting whether it had been drawn on to a bandwagon with very little benefit.
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