For Search Engines: Tune-Up Strategies
World Wide Freebies: Sol Libes
For Eastwind, New Destinations
Corrections or additions?
These articles by Teena Chandy and Melinda Sherwood were published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on July 14,
1999. All rights reserved.
Consultants’ Niche: IMCCorporate downsizing may be bad for American workers,but it’s been good for the corps of consultants who do the mop-up.Robert E. Sabath, who runs his own consulting firm in Chicago,has been in the business long enough to see big firms like ArthurAnderson become house-hold names, and to see a market for small consultingfirms like his own emerge. “It’s the kind of consulting that mostprofessional consultants enjoy doing the most,” he says. “Ratherthan being an administrator running minions of junior staff, thiskind of consulting involves being a confidante or executive counsel,someone who adds thought, originality, creativity, and experienceto the client’s process.”
Sabath introduces consultants and management teams to what he calls
“The Five Billion-Dollar Niche: Opportunities for Small Consulting
Firms,” on Monday, July 19, at 6 p.m. at the Doral Forrestal Hotel.
Call the Institute of Management Consultants: 908-233-6265. Cost $50.
Sabath started a career in consulting at 15, when he reorganized his
father’s warehouse of restaurant supplies in Chicago. “I was always
coming up with ideas for how they could do things better and I realized
I loved to do project type work that made improvements,” he says.
Today he specializes in supply chain consulting with Integrated Strategies
Inc. He earned a BS in industrial engineering from Purdue University,
Class of 1965, and received his MBA in marketing and computers from
the University of Chicago in 1967. Until just a year ago, he was one
of the “minions,” working for large consulting firms like
AT Kearney, Mercer Management Consulting, and Lesser B. Knight and
Associates. “During those 30 years I have seen a transition in
the arrangements that consultants have with clients,” he says.
“When I started I was counsel to senior executives; in the ’90s
consultants have become more systems integrators, basically putting
things into place to change companies. The consultants’ role there
is almost like replacing those heads that were cut in the ’80s.”
Y2K anxiety and other issues of the Digital Age justify the need for
“implementation” consultancy — the kind that large firms
do best — but smaller firms, says Sabath, have the kind of senior
consultants needed to escort management teams through major technology
transitions. “Small consulting firms can be much more concentrated
with senior people and can give advice in marketing, supply chain,
strategic executive counsel,” he says. “It’s not in the economic
interests of the large consulting firm to offer those kinds of services.”
Small consulting firms also make sense in a business environment where
“knowledge management” and “competitive intelligence”
are the buzz words. Small firms are made up of veterans, the specialists,
the “one of five people in the country that knows the most,”
says Sabath. “If you need it, you need that person, if you don’t,
you’d never need it at all.”
Family-run businesses and IBM-sized operations both benefit from small
consulting firms. To select the firm that best understands your company’s
unique problems and needs, Sabath suggests the following:
Understand the specific experience of the consultantswithin the environment being discussed. Don’t just look at the organization;investigate the background of each of the senior-level consultantsto be sure they demonstrate experience in the appropriate area.Use several consultants, assigned to different tasks ordepartments within the company. “I know of some small consultingfirms that actually help their clients make decisions on hiring consultants,”he says. “Most of the clients would be using more than one consultingfirm. The issue really is that there’s a range of services that isnot offered by the larger firms because it’s not financially viablefor them.”Use the Institute of Management Consultants directoryto find a complete list of small, specialty firms, as well as largefirms.If you have considered starting your own consulting operation,the time has never been better. Consulting firms now make up a $150to $250 billion profession, says Sabath, but large ones only accountfor about $100 billion. “What is left over is this little marketniche of traditional high quality senior professional consulting,which still has a high degree of value to clients, but isn’t promotedby larger consulting firms. It’s just there for the taking.”– Teena ChandyTop Of PageSex & the Workplace: DeitchNo business is immune to the potential upheaval causedby sexual harassment in the workplace, but until now courts had beendoling out punishment at an average cost to companies of $200,000,in the most expedient manner: the employer is legally responsible,period.Several recent Supreme Court cases (Faragher vs. Boca Raton and Ellerthvs. Burlington Industries) may have taken the onus off employers somewhat,says Angela Deitch, who runs her own consulting firm in WestTrenton (609-883-6327) with numerous management training programs.”In both of these cases,” says Deitch, “the Supreme Courtsaid that the employer could claim an affirmative defense,” ifthey could prove action was taken to prevent the harassment. “Beforethis employers were subject to liability whether or not they evenknew their supervisors were committing sexual harassment. It’s a victoryfor employers if they take the precautions.”Among those precautions: a written and verbal policy against harassmentthat is well-known throughout the company. Deitch is offering trainingsuggestions at the Princeton Council’s networking meeting on Thursday,July 15, at 8 a.m. at the Hyatt. The Princeton Council, a networkinggroup, currently has membership openings for a law firm, insuranceagency, accounting firm, advertising agency, travel agency, computerservices, and heating/air conditioning company. Call 732-615-9096.Attendance is free by reservation.Prior to starting her own firm, Deitch worked several years on a programfor the prevention of sexual harassment for the State of New Jersey’s70,000 employees. A graduate of Rutgers University with a mastersin education, Deitch currently leads several training programs forcompanies that cover a wide spectrum that includes team leadership,communication, and conflict management.Deitch also writes articles on realistic and usable policies for theprevention of sexual harassment at Primeseason.com (https://www.primeseason.com).”The way I come at sexual harassment is by looking at what isappropriate behavior in the workplace,” she says. “Peoplesay `we can’t even be friendly.’ I say that’s not the case, but youhave to remember that you’re involved in business for business reasons,and we’ve got such a diverse population that you can’t assume thatwhat is appropriate from your perspective is going to be appropriatefor others.”Quid pro quo harassment (“this for that”) is much easier toidentify, and much less frequent, says Deitch. It’s “hostile environmentsexual harassment,” in which an employee feels discriminated againstsexually or abused, uncomfortable, or demeaned, that constitutes themajority of complaints.The exact definition of harassment may still be murky, but the legalresponsibilities of employers are crystal clear. “You can’t justput up a policy,” says Deitch. “You have to have a policyand a procedure, and whenever there is a problem, you take appropriateaction immediately. If the employee fails to use the policy and procedurein place then the employer may be less liable.”Even small businesses should follow the following guidelines, saysDeitch:Circulate a formal written document to everyone that explainsthe company’s policy against sexual harassment. You do not need alawyer to draft it, says Deitch, but you should submit it to an attorneywho is a specialist in employment law. Samples of sexual harassmentpolicies are available from the Society of Human Resource Management’swebsite (https://www.sherm.com), and at several collegeand university websites.Offer training from a management training consultant whois up-to-date on what’s happening in the law. Newmedialearning.com(https://www.newmedialearning) has several samples of trainingprograms.Select a person in upper management with some experiencewho can make sure an investigation is conducted properly.Act quickly to investigate suspicion of sexual harassment.Not only is it difficult to get evidence, but a quick response toalleged reports will be weighed in the event that a separate incidentgoes to court later. “If you didn’t have a sexual harassment policyfive years ago, and you instituted one two years ago, the court mightlook differently at you than if you had no policy or you had beenignoring it all the time,” says Deitch. “The best thing acompany can do is treat it seriously and establish a culture thatthis is a respectful place where people treat each other with respecta lot of the situations don’t occur.”Top Of PageFor Search Engines: Tune-Up StrategiesEver had the sneaky feeling that your search enginewasn’t running on all cylinders? A new study just confirmed your worsesuspicions. Steve Lawrence and C. Lee Giles, two scientistsat NEC Research Institute (https://www.neci.nj.nec.com/)on 4 Independence Way, recently returned from a year-long trip tothe outer limits of cyberspace and published their findings in theJuly 8 issue of Nature magazine (https://www.nature.com). Whatthey discovered: the Web is comprised of over 800 million indexablepages, but only 16 percent of that information appears in the resultsof any given query.If you use the Web for business or research, it’s important to notetwo other discoveries in the study: websites that appear first inthe results of a query are “popular” (having many links toother websites), and the best way to scour the web is to use multiplesearch engines when conducting a query.Technologically speaking, says Lawrence, an Australian-born researcher,it’s not impossible for search engines to scour the Web more thoroughly;it just happens to be impractical. “There are diminishing returnsfor indexing the Web,” he says. “Many of the searches madeare relatively simple and can be satisfied well with a small database.”It can takes months to index new pages on the Web, he says. “They(search engines) probably have a trade off between indexing more theweb, and diverting the resources elsewhere; they may be better servedby advertising.”When Lawrence and Giles conducted the first study of the Web backin December, 1997, it created a massive media stir. The two scientistswere getting calls from the New York Times, Associated Press, andNational Public Radio, among others. The best search engine then onlyscoured approximately 34 percent of the Web, which was only half thesize that it is now.For the February, 1999, study, the two scientists hammered out a newmethodology: after tracking IP addresses, they calculated the numberof public (non-Intranet) webservers: 2.8 million. Then they crawledall the pages on a random sampling of servers, estimated the numberof pages per server, and multiplied that by the number of servers.At the same time the scientists were coming up with a figure for itssize, a portrait of the Web began to emerge. They noticed that approximately85 percent of the Web is devoted to commercial use; 6 percent to scientific/educationalmaterials; 3 percent to health; the remainder to community and government-relatedmaterials.Then the scientists queried the major search engines: AltaVista, EuroSeek,Excite, Google, HotBot, Infoseek, Lycos, Microsoft, Northern Light,Snap, and Yahoo. An important point: they only counted documents thatincluded the exact terms of the query, not “morphological”or related terms. To do otherwise, says Lawrence would prevent anaccurate comparison, as “relevance” is very subjective.As the results came in, Lee and Giles discovered that search enginesare inherently biased towards sites that have more links, “popular”sites; this automatically excludes both new material and the bulkof scientific and educational material. At 16 percent coverage, NorthernLight (https://www.northernlight.com) emerged as the most thoroughsearch engine, having substantially increased its coverage since 1997.Infoseek (https://www.infoseek.com), however, indexed more randomsites, indicating perhaps that it indexed the Web more broadly: moresites, not just more pages per site.Given the limitations of search engines, Lawrence offers the followingtips for getting the best results to a query:For well-known information, says Lawrence, Google andDirectHit are useful. “They use popularity information in theirranking,” he says, so pages with more links will get higher ranking.For harder to find or relatively new information, Lawrencerecommends engines like Northern Light, Snap, Altavista, and HotBot.Repeat the search on different engines or use a multiplesearch engine such as MetaCrawler. Since there is relatively littleoverlap between engines, a search that employs several engines scoursroughly 40 percent of the Web.Use more specific queries: keywords within the title orURL, documents from a certain date range or geographic area, documentswith specific phrases rather than single terms, etc. Excite uses concept-basedclustering and Infoseek uses morphology; both will return documentswith related words.In spite of all the hype, the Web may be one of the worst placesto turn for serious research. As Lawrence and Giles proved, a disproportionatelylow number of scientific and educational material is retrieved bysearch engines. If the promise of the Web depends on the equal availabilityof information, then it has failed, say Lawrence and Giles: delayedindexing of research could lead to the duplication of work and a skewedinformation that impacts how social and political decisions are made.There is no doubt that the Web is changing society; but is it enlighteningus?Top Of PageWorld Wide Freebies: Sol LibesIt is still possible to stake a flag on your own pieceof cyber-territory for free, says Sol Libes of the PrincetonPC Users Group. He is currently putting together a list of webservers,community groups, and E-mail services that are free on the Web, andwill introduce amateur Web-users to secrets for “Creating a PersonalWeb Page” on Monday, July 19, at 6:30 p.m. at the LawrencevilleLibrary. The seminar is free. Call 908-281-3107.In the meantime, Libes hand-picked some bargain Internet servicesfor U.S. 1 readers:Free Web Servers: Geocities is still the most popularweb server, with 2.1 million users, but Homestead (https://www.homestead.com)was rated best by PC magazine. It has an extensive image library,and offers templates, an editor and a Wizard.Libes suggests using a server that has extensions for PageMill andMicrosoft Frontpage, such as Tripod (http:/www.tripod.com).This allows you to create forms on your site without having to writescript.Free On-line Club/Community Servers: Deja Communities(http:www.dejanews.com/clist.xp) offers a discussion area, news,whiteboard, and your own URL; eGroups (https://www.egroups.com)allows you to build a personal and group calendar and link to messages;Excite Communities (https://www.excite.com/communities/directory)has a photo book, contact list, forum, shared calendar, chatroom,and file sharing.Free Internet Access and Free E-mail: Net Zero (https://www.netzero.com)works with any browser (i.e. Netscape) and any E-mail software (i.e.Eudora), whereas Juno (https://www.juno.com), which offersfree basic E-mail with Internet services ($19.95 per month) requiresthe use of proprietary software. Freeweb (https://www.freeweb.com)provides full Internet access for a one-time charge of $119.– Melinda SherwoodTop Of PageFor Eastwind, New DestinationsTo a handful of low-cost flights, airlines at Trenton-MercerAirport have added two destinations — St. Petersburg/Clearwater,Florida, and Norfolk, Virginia.Eastwind Airlines has added a daily roundtrip to St. Petersburg/ClearwaterFlorida to its Florida destinations, and ShuttleAmerica has startedgoing to Norfolk.An Eastwind Boeing 737 leaves Trenton-Mercer Airport at 7:05 a.m.and stops in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Orlando, Florida, beforelanding in St. Petersburg at 1:15 p.m. St. Petersburg is near Tampa.The return trip leaves Florida at 1:45 a.m. and lands in Ewing at7:15 p.m. One-way fares are as low as $59 and $79 with advance purchase.Eastwind also has kept one flight to Boston, leaving Ewing at 7:50a.m., arriving at 9 a.m.. It returns at 6:15 p.m., arriving in Trentonat 7:25 p.m.ShuttleAmerica was scheduled to start Norfolk flights on Tuesday,July 13, leaving at 11:30 a.m. and arriving at 12:40 p.m. The returnis at 1:05 p.m.Shuttle America’s Buffalo destination is apparently going well; itnow has three flights on weekdays, two on weekends. Weekday planesto Buffalo now leave at 7:15 a.m., 2:35 p.m., and 6:10 p.m. for the75-minute trip. Return trips are at 9:55 a.m. and 3:45 and 7:45 p.m.Mostly for the benefit of those transferring from Boston or Buffalo,ShuttleAmerica also has added a daily flight from Trenton to Wilmington,Delaware. It leaves at 9:15 a.m. with returns at 6:30 a.m. and 5:20p.m.For Eastwind, call 800-644-3592 (https://www.eastwindairlines.com).For Shuttle America, call 860-386-4200 or https://www.shuttleamerica.com.Top Of PageCorporate AngelsB>J. Seward Johnson Sr. Charitable Trust has madea $20,000 donation to HiTOPS (Health Interested Teens’ Own Programon Sexuality) for its core program, educational outreach and clinicalcare for teenagers.Comcast’s New Jersey cable systems was awarded the 1999Media Award by the New Jersey affiliate of the Literacy Volunteersof America (LVA). Over the past year, Comcast’s New Jersey cable systemshave contributed more than $12,000 in grants to LVA’s community affiliatesaround the state.The Princeton Regional Scholarship Foundation has announcedfirst year college scholarship awards to 16 graduates of PrincetonRegional High School for study at 14 colleges this fall. The foundationfunds its awards from current contributions through an annual directmail campaign and from limited endowment income.The 1998-’99 campaign, the most successful in more than a decade andaugmented by generous local foundation and corporate gifts, markedthe first step in the Foundation’s attempt to endow a larger numberof scholarships. Individuals or institutions interested in workingwith or contributing to the foundation may contact Judy Leopoldat 609-924-7398.Top Of PageDonate PleaseCalling all paving contractors, calling nearly everybodyelse in the construction business. The New Jersey Alliance for Action,the 25-year-old statewide nonpartisan nonprofit that concerns itselfwith infrastructure and economic development, solicits ads for theprogram book for its 25th anniversary celebration. It will be Wednesday,October 20, at 5:30 p.m. at the New Brunswick Hyatt. The ads rangefrom $400 to $700, and the dinner costs $200. Call 732-225-1180.The alliance seeks to help local organizations find state and federalfinancing, permitting, and regulatory approvals for various projects.The list of alliance members tells the story: contractors of all kinds,engineers, materials dealers, trades, and various chambers of commerce.For instance, everyone connected with roads is a member, from theasphalt pavers and the crushed stone association to the mixed concreteassociation and the American Concrete Institute.All those who attend the dinner will get a copy of a history of thealliance written by Muriel Smith and see an NJN documentaryon the group.The New Jersey Builders Association (NJBA) is seekingsponsors for door prizes for its 12th annual golf outing on Monday,July 26. The event at Forsgate Country Club is almost sold out withgolfers registered from many of the leading building industry companiesin New Jersey.”Restaurant dinners, sets of golf clubs, golf foursomes, and vacationgetaways are some of the items we would like for door prizes,”says Bill Stapleton of the Cranbury-based Matrix DevelopmentGroup, one of the golf committee co-chairs. To donate, call MaritzaMcGhee at 609-587-5577.Top Of PageWaterfront NetworkingBring a company T-shirt or product to the door of theTrenton Thunder Networking Dinner, scheduled for Tuesday, July 27,at 6 p.m, and your company will be eligible for promotional considerationby New Jersey’s Communication and Marketing Association (CAMA). Donatea door prize, and your business will be entered into a drawing. Thereare still plenty of tickets available through CAMA for the TrentonThunder vs. Binghamton Mets game. Contact Heidi Rossi at 609-734-5050.Cost: $45.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
