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 Mercer Manages Much More Than Its Clientele To access a gif file of the Centerfold graphic, click here. It may take some time to load in your browser! 
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By Mona R. Litt What do you look for when choosing a management consultant? Reliability, reputation and the skills to move your company successfully toward the 21st century. Boston's Mercer Management Consulting not only offers its expertise from human resources to payroll, but it shows its te chnology expertise by maintaining its own worldwide frame relay network. "Our network allows Mercer's geographically distant offices to function as one global firm," explains Patrick Brennen, Mercer's network operations manager. Consultants need to gain access to the company network from any location worldwide and Mercer makes this possible by offering fault tolerance and performance with Bay Networks Access Stack Node routers. AT&T provides the frame relay service for North American offices and MFS Worldcom services the European sites. Bay Networks' Site Manager helps Brennen's staff manage all routers from a central location. Concord Communications' Network Health captures historical data and real-time statistics to efficiently monitor network activities. Optimal Networks' Optimal Performance modeling tool simulates traffic loads for research purposes. Consultants and administrative assistants design and edit reports for clients using Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Microso ft's FoxPro 3.0 database software provides a repository for employees' skills, which enables the staff department to assign people to the appropriate projects. Recruiters post job openings on Mercer's Web site (www.mercermc.com) and find information on many candidates. Pote ntial clients can learn about Mercer's services at the site and contact consultants. Staffers send important documents and information to each other using cc:Mail. Claris' FileMaker Pro stores the senior-level consultants' knowledge bank. ON Technology's Meeting Maker helps organize schedules for all consultants and administrative assistants. Contacts are stored in ACT and GoldMine databases. "Anyone who works in a network environment views every problem as mission critical," says Brennen. "It's a great challenge to convince the higher-level managers that we need to spend money on these things. They don't seem to understand why. I view our network as a highway with improvements needed along the way. You need to repave and replace things as you go." Brennen says he plans to install Lotus Notes within the next six to eight months. Employees would input timesheets and expense reports, as well as track lead proposals by dialing into the Lotus Notes server. LotusPump would move the data from Notes to Oracle Financials for processing. All Compaq ProLiant 1000 servers will be replaced by this August with Compaq ProLiant 5000s and 6000s to double the disk capacity and memory, according to Brennen. He also anticipates an upgrade in router hardware within the next year. |
Updated March 25, 1997 |
