Jan, I had a nice talk with Philip Lian today after the Aon meeting in NYC, and I read him your question. It turned out to be an excellent question and one that should explain many things to people here hungry for news.
Aon and TPRO work together, but they each target different people in the organization. TPRO talks mostly to the people on the floor-- the ones that know they have a problem and are looking to figure out their options. Aon talks to the "suits", usually the risk managers and people who are in charge of figuring out whether there is a cost-benefit to paying an independent organization, like TPRO, to assess and remediate their Y2K vulnerability. When either TPRO or Aon get a lead, they inform the other to see if they might mutually benefit.
Philip was quite candid in saying that TPRO has had the most success with clients since they deal with employees that have first-hand knowledge of the potential problem and know what a concerted effort it would take to fix it. Unfortunately, he says there is a big wall between those in the trenches and those pushing paper, and it has been very hard to overcome management's mentality that it can't be all that hard to replace a few "bad" chips. This has been very frustrating for both Aon and TPRO. Nevertheless, he says TPRO is very much for real, is signing some deals, and is positioned quite well to take advantage of any opportunities that may arise.
Philip gave one example (which I don't believe involved TPRO) where Aon was asked to evaluate a 1000 room hotel (one of those $180 per night class ones). They identified a myriad of embedded chip problems that needed to be fixed and priced an assessment for the entire place at $50,000. The management balked. Quite surprising considering they could be out substantially more than that if they lost merely one days worth of business due to a "surprise" Y2K related failure. I suppose, in this instance, the moment we read about one hotel having a Y2K related closing, all the others will fall in line. I guess we don't have long to find out.
Lastly, as to demand, Philip said software right know is well ahead of embedded systems on the awareness scale. Thus, Aon is having better success in this area. BTW, both Ed Yardeni and Tony Keyes, the speakers in the economic part of the program, echoed that sentiment in their presentations, although they ranked "infrastucture" last (i.e. how one company's problem is another company's problem as well).
Well, hope that helps!
- Jeff
P.S. Over the next few days I'll post more about the conference on the general Y2K thread. BTW, the whole thing was taped for a documentary to be aired in the next several months. |
