By Marc Dacey

Traditionally, companies in need of advice turn to consultancies, often those recommended by their accountants. The international leaders in the field are known as "The Big Five" - KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte & Touche, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and Accenture, formerly known as Andersen Consulting.

These firms are vast "one-stop" shops, providing not only advice but also services ranging from accounting, due diligence and legal to technology provision, venture capital sourcing and marketing.

The New Economy has not gone unnoticed at The Big Five. In fact, they're positioning themselves as e-commerce service providers and incubators, using both their internal resources and tapping into an extensive network of local and international contractors, specialists and financiers.

According to a recent Gartner Group report, all of The Big Five have moved to integrate the delivery of e-business and related services to existing and new clients, and in some cases "have embarked on many innovative relationships that extend their reach beyond the traditional consultant role."

Involvement in this growing market is driving the internal cultures of The Big Five. Shayne Gregg, partner in e-business services at Vancouver-based Deloitte Consulting, explains how the needs of e-business have shaped the way Deloitte consultants work. "Deloitte is a very diversified firm, so we take e-business professionals from each group [in Deloitte] and put them together into an elite team. The goal is to present the client with a small team of multi-disciplinary professionals, rather than bringing 500 people to a meeting."

The consultants, says Gregg, must be able to locate and use the talent in their own departments to help the client. "Our half-dozen people in front of the client have to be able to reach back deeply into our own organization and really grab the key people who can solve that particular client's problems."

John Simke, e-business leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Toronto, sees his consultancy positioning itself for e-business clients "by making everything we do relate to e-business. When we go out on a consulting job, we try to make the client aware of the opportunities of doing business this way."

Simke believes that e-business consulting has had lasting effects on PwC. "We have restructured our entire consultancy around our e-business solutions, so that we are driving these strategies through our own business," says Simke. "Every person in our organization has been 're-tooled' to be a New Economy player."

PwC's emphasis, says Simke, is not on birthing new firms but reshaping existing ones. "Our focus isn't really on dot-com clients, but rather on transforming firms into online enterprises and leveraging vertical marketplaces." PwC prefers to take an equity stake in its e-business clients. The consultancy offers its clients something called the New Economy Game, a sophisticated process that enables Old Economy companies to simulate the impact of e-business on their organizations. "This, in turn, allows the client firm's management to understand New Economy principles," says Simke.

Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, meanwhile, has separately branded its e-business specialists as an ad agency-style boutique called DareStep. Says Barry Rivelis, managing director for Canada: "DareStep helps in making relationships once based on reams of paper into a pure digital connection. We created the DareStep brand to be considered in the marketplace for those opportunities that we may not have been considered for in the past." Among The Big Five, DareStep is the most overtly marketing-oriented e-business consultancy - less like sober advisors, more like advertisers who know HTML.

By contrast, the most conservative approach to helping e-business to its feet is found at KPMG. Says Calgary-based Paul Zonneveld, senior manager in e-business and risk management: "KPMG's differentiation is that we like to identify the value opportunity the technology will bring. We don't bring any hype to the table. We focus on how you can use Internet technology to either increase revenue, decrease costs or to obtain internal efficiencies."

Another KPMG hallmark, says Zonneveld, is the emphasis on results analysis. "We help to implement ways for clients to measure whether their e-business efforts are succeeding," says Zonneveld. "Companies are spending millions to move online, and they must be able to measure value. Otherwise, they can't intelligently manage the changes necessary to succeed." At KPMG, therefore, sometimes the consulting fee is earned by telling clients which e-business strategies to decline, as well as which ones to pursue. "If youÕve got three different e-business strategies you can pursue, it's crucial to risk-rank them, and perhaps to implement them one at a time after reviewing the success of a pilot project."

Accenture is the new name for an old consultancy formerly known as Andersen Consulting. No longer associated in any way with Arthur Andersen, Accenture's bid to source e-business clientele can be summed up in the phrase "source globally, consult locally." According to Toronto-based partner Jerry Garcia, the firm has started up a worldwide chain of offices to entice New Economy companies into the Accenture fold.

Through its E-Commerce Business Launch Centres in 24 locations worldwide, Accenture has acquired 300 clients since it set up the centres in February 2000. "While we're not incubators as such," says Garcia, "we are willing to take positions in promising firms after the first round of financing. We believe you should ante up if you're going to play."

If the other Big Five consultancies can be considered assayers - sifting the gold from the dross of e-business prospects through a variety of screens - Accenture's approach resembles the prospector, staking out claims where the next strike is likely to hit. "Our centres are not in obvious locations," says Garcia. "We're in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Milan, Italy."

Garcia's logic is that if Accenture's staff are the only international e-business consultants in those second-tier locations, they can collect the lion's share of the new clientele. "We can manage global deployment of our resources far faster through these centres," says Garcia. "Our local presence, on the other hand, allows us to source local venture capitals and personnel as needed via a network of local vendors and partners."

While there's no doubt The Big Five have significant resources to devote to creating e-business "rapid deployment" teams, not everyone is convinced that big is better. Kate Taylor, vice-president of marketing for Basis100, a Toronto technology provider in the financial services industry, questions whether the large consultancies have the speed or the corporate culture necessary to expedite the problems of the wired world.

"It's one thing to go in [to a potential e-business client] as a consultant and say, 'I have a high level of understanding of what you're doing and where you need to be.' It's quite another to determine which business rules have to be executed in order to automate processes that make the technology work."

Taylor believes that the large consultancies, in contrast to firms the size of her own, maintain managerial levels that can delay swift client resolution issues, a particular sticking point in the go-go e-commerce field. "Frankly, the question is whether or not these large consultancies can peel off those layers of bureaucracy and move quickly enough to bring the technologically clever people into the decision-making loop."

Critics aside, many burgeoning online enterprises still turn to The Big Five for assistance. Chalk that up to the positive associations from their more traditional accounting and management consulting roles, and to the comfort level engendered by name-brand recognition. Certainly, The Big Five are counting on their resources, connections and history of professionalism to outflank their numerous and nimble rivals.