Sapient (company)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Sapient | |
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| Type | Public (NASDAQ: SAPE) |
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| Founded | 1990 |
| Headquarters |  Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States |
| Key people | Jeff Cunningham, Chairman Alan Herrick, President and CEO Joseph Tibbetts, CFO |
| Industry | Automotive & Transportation, Education, Energy & Utilities, Financial Services, Government, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Retail & Consumer Products, Technology & Communications, Travel & Hospitality |
| Products | Marketing Services, Business & IT Strategy, Business Applications, Business Intelligence, & Outsourcing |
| Website | www.Sapient.com |
Sapient NASDAQ: SAPE "helps clients innovate their businesses in the areas of marketing, business operations, and technology”. Sapient has a reputation of tackling complex initiatives in the consulting industry like: helping MIT create a new model for making course material available globally, working with the US Marine Corps on their supply chain, and re-architecting Sony’s web experience. It has offices in North America, Europe, and India and currently employs about 5000 people around the world. The majority of Sapient's employees are in India. The company was founded in 1990 and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Sapient is an innovator and industry leader in interactive marketing, business and IT strategy consulting, creating and implementing business technology applications, business intelligence, web solutions, and outsourcing. Consulting Magazine has named Sapient as one of the 10 best consulting firms to work for two years in a row. Sapient has been named a best place to work in Germany, the UK, India, and Canada. Sapient is also the subject of a Harvard Business School case study on leadership and organizational culture.
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[edit] History
[edit] Overview
Over the course of Sapient’s 15 year history, it has been through many changes, oftentimes completely shifting its business model to meet (or in some cases anticipate) its client’s needs. Always looking to meet client’s business needs instead of focusing on a particular technology, Sapient began offering client/server solutions, moved into Internet consulting, took on the role as one of the first movers in the growing outsourcing/offshoring field, and is now leading the explosive growth in interactive marketing.
[edit] A new model
Sapient was founded on November 6, 1990 by Jerry Greenberg and Stuart Moore sharing the titles of Co-CEO and Co-Chairmen. They met at Cambridge Technology Group where they realized that the current practice of charging clients on a time and materials basis, along with a focus on technology implementation instead of meeting business needs, led to cost overruns and inefficient solutions. To address these problems, Sapient was founded on the principle of fixed-price fixed-time engagements.
During the first couple of years, Sapient worked primarily on developing client/server application solutions, helping corporations move away from large mainframe style systems architecture. This business space proved extremely profitable for Sapient, generating 1000% revenue growth for the company between 1992 and 1994.
[edit] Turning point
1994 proved to be a pivotal year for Sapient in demonstrating its ability to change with client needs. That year, Public Service Electric and Gas (PSE&G) hired Sapient to build a wireless network to connect all their trucks in realtime to the company databases. At that time, the PSE&G project proved to be the world’s largest wireless network at completion, and was built by only 25 people. 1994 also saw Sapient’s first Internet engagement. A large bank asked Sapient to conduct a workshop about the potential for the Internet, which drove Sapient to realize the Internet’s potential for their other clients.
[edit] The Internet revolution
It was the advent the Internet that truly pushed Sapient to new heights. Between 1996 and 2000 Sapient grew rapidly. Sapient released its IPO in 1996. In order to be able to drive its necessary growth and meet client demands, Sapient acquired five other companies during this period, including Clement Mok’s renowned design firm Studio Archetype in 1998. By 2000 Sapient was worth over 17 times its IPO value, trading at a split-adjusted rate of over $500 per share. In one of its first major engagements in the Internet space, Sapient created the first real-time, online banking tool that allowed customers to access their data at any time, day or night. In 1997 Sapient expanded overseas with the opening of its UK office.
[edit] Creating a global presence
When the dot-com bubble burst in late 2000, Sapient’s fortunes took a turn for the worse along with nearly every other technology firm in America. However, unlike many other firms, and almost all of their direct competitors, Sapient was able to stay solvent principally because of its strong culture, focus on generating business results instead of developing single technologies, and large cash reserves. Also, even before the bubble burst Sapient had turned its eyes towards outsourcing to India as the next great way to make their clients successful. With that decision Sapient became the company it is today – a global innovator for Fortune 2000 companies.
[edit] Today
Today, Sapient provides marketing, business and IT strategy, business intelligence, business applications services, and outsourcing. In the past two years Sapient has acquired BIS (Business Intelligence Systems) and PGI (Planning Group International) to expand its SAP practice and interactive marketing capabilities, respectively. Based on its strong commitment to leadership and corporate culture, Harvard Business School has chosen to include a case study on Sapient in its required Core Curriculum for all first year MBA students. Additionally the Yale School of Management has added a case study to its curriculum which focuses on Sapient.
[edit] Services
[edit] Marketing Services
Sapient offers Experience Marketing, brand strategy and development, creative design, integrated marketing, marketing technologies, research analytics, and web solutions. Sapient’s marketing practice seeks to enable their clients to leverage the most current technologies to better reach their customers. It does this by using its abilities to increase demand, create better brand awareness, and drive more profitable customer relationships. In 2006, Advertising Age recognized Sapient as the second largest interactive marketing agency in the US.
[edit] Business & IT Strategy
Sapient uses a unique Business Applications Planning (BAP) approach that provides proven, results-focused service designed to help its clients measure, manage, and maximize the value IT brings to business (See Missing Millions: Unlocking Strategic IT Value). Sapient’s industry focused teams help clients dramatically improve business processes and workflows to deliver significant returns through realigned strategy, operations, and systems.
[edit] Business Applications
Sapient offers both custom built and package applications that allow its customers to meet their business needs. Sapient particularly excels at rapidly defining user requirements and gaining stakeholder alignment to create solutions that create the most value for their clients.
[edit] Business Intelligence
Sapient helps their customers turn data into value by providing solutions which provide the right information to the right people at the right time. For example, Sapient offers data warehousing, SAP Business Intelligence solutions, and research and analytics.
[edit] Outsourcing
Sapient’s outsourcing services include application design and development, application management, legacy application transition, operations management, sourcing strategy, and QA and testing. Outsourcing is a means to extract more value from Sapient’s client’s businesses. In 2006, Sapient was recognized as one of the "Outsourcing 100" by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals.
[edit] Culture
Since the very beginning, culture is an extremely important part of everything that Sapient is and does as an organization. Sapient’s culture is built around six core values:
- Client Focused Delivery
- Creativity
- Leadership
- Openness
- People Growth
- Relationships
These six values inform everything that a Sapient person does on a daily basis. This means that Sapient people are expected to be absolutely committed to providing business value to the client, that they be willing to try new things and constantly innovate, that they are leaders despite their role, that he or she can admit mistakes, get feedback, share information, go straight to anyone at any level with a concern, that they are committed to growing the people around them and take the initiative for their own growth, and that they act with integrity and earn their partnerships both within and without the organization.
[edit] Sample of clients
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[edit] Honors and awards
Harvard Business School (HBS)
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Consulting Magazine
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Business Ethics Magazine
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Interactive Marketing
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Webby Awards: Honored for 3 Sites
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InfoWorld 100 Awards
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For Developing Opodo.com
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Ranked "A Best Place to Work"
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[edit] Recent Developments
Sapient Names Alan Herrick President and CEO 10/17/2006
Sapient announces that Executive Vice President Alan Herrick succeeds Jerry Greenberg as CEO of Sapient. Full Story.
Sapient Boosts AGL Resources Field Technician Productivity With Performance Management Application 9/20/2006
With greater insight into employee productivity and talent provided by Sapient's new application, AGL Resources is improving the overall efficiency of field personnel and enabling its utilities to complete more work orders in a day. Full Story.
Gas Optimization Solution Honored by EnergyRisk Magazine 9/11/2006
Essent Energie, a major European utility, has been awarded the 2006 Best In-House Software System by EnergyRisk Magazine for its gas optimization application developed in partnership with Sapient. Full Story.
Sapient Announces Q2 Earnings 8/08/2006
Sapient announced its preliminary financial results for its second quarter ended June 30, 2006. Full Story.
Partnership with Google 5/22/2006
Sapient today announced it has entered into a partnership with Google to deliver search solutions to major enterprise customers. Full Story.
Watchfire 5/03/2006
Sapient and Watchfire, the market-leading provider of website security and compliance software and services, today announced the two companies are working together to help ensure the security and compliance of clients’ web assets. Full Story.
Blue Water Run 3/15/2006
Sapient today announced it has helped The Blue Planet Run Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on global sustainability, dramatically improve how grassroots water projects are selected, funded, and managed by creating a web-based water exchange. Full Story.
[edit] External links
- Sapient- Sapient's Home Page
- SAPE- Yahoo Finance Link
- Harvard Case Study- Harvard’s Case Study on Sapient
