DSstar SPEAKS WITH BI LUMINARY DAVID FRIGSTAD
by Tim Staub, managing editor

DSstar: Please tell us about your background. Who and what were the key influences in your life? How did you get your start, and how would you characterize the course of your personal development?

FRIGSTAD: Born: Minneapolis Mn BS: Management Information Systems: Indiana University MS: Japan American Institute of Management Science MBA: Indiana: International Marketing

I got my start when I was a student intern in Japan and I realized what an incredible lack of market knowledge and competitive information companies actually operating on. I saw a huge need for improved information systems which brought critical market and business information directly to the key decision makers. I have spent my career trying to accomplish this via consulting, training, and IT solutions. I'm not sure we have made much progress yet, but, the prospects look better than ever.

Key Influences: Working with my Father on Wall Street and a college career as a competitive gymnast. In working with my father I got a real idea of the huge amount of risks both investors and managers must take to get something to work. It was there where I learned that failure was not an end result but a requirement of success. As a gymnast I learned that perfection never happens, but, it is a continuous journey with many disappointments and great achievements combined. Very much like business.

DSstar: What are your current responsibilities, and how do you go about the business of fulfilling them? How do you see yourself and your firm within the IT community and the business community at large?

FRIGSTAD: Current Responsibilities: Chairman Frost & Sullivan

Key responsibility are:

• developing a global management team
• globalizing our research program to match clients needs
• create killer content which clients cannot live without
• launching our new e-crm platform to our key clients

There is a tremendous need at this phase of our development to travel the globe to keep in constant communication with our consulting and training offices. The company is going through an enormous change due to the advent of the Internet, CRM solutions, KMS platforms and telecom technology that the only way we can keep ahead of the change is to double our communications and training efforts.

Training is a key driver for the company. There are no experts in the new economy and much of the traditional experience which consultants and managers have developed has become obsolete. This creates a tremendous demand for continuous training and workshops for our global consulting teams. Its a huge time sink at the moment, but, we feel confident that the results are already coming through.

Frost & Sullivan has a huge role in the IT community both as a pioneering end user and as and industry observer. As aend userer of KMS, CRM, B2B, and e-commerce, and ASP platforms Frost & Sullivan has provided the vendor community with invaluable case historiesapplicationon notes and white papers. Since Frost & Sullivan is very market measurement based we provide unique insights into a new technologies potential return on investment and productivity improvements.

In my own role as a Chairman I focus a significant amount of time at conferences and tradeshows discussing how to implement new technology in order to improve productivity and markepositionon. There are huge gains to be made if the management teams understand how to integrate the challenges of managing people with the complexities of IT solutions.

DSstar: What are your views on the current business environment? What advice would you give to others who seek success?

FRIGSTAD: The current business environment is very very exciting. Never before have I seen so many market opportunities for growth. Most investors, companies and VCs, have turned chicken which has resulted in a drastic lowering of investment prices and investments which are going unfunded. Now is a great time to expand via acquisition, producdevelopmentet or strategic alliance.

Everybody's in a big panic about the economy. The panic has been caused primarily by the politicians who basically cried "fire" in the movie theater. The basic economic outlook is solid. Never in my lifetime have I seen an economic slowdown with solid productivity gains flowing from the IT sector, literally no inflation, no unemployment and other economic indicators relativelheathyly. My advise to anyone sitting on the sidelines today is to increase their current risk to reward ratio and focus in on the best rated opportunity available.

DSstar: Where is your firm headed, and what are you doing to steer it in the appropriate direction. What are the greatest challenges you face in this task?

FRIGSTAD: Our greatest challenge today is to develop a new client relationship platform which delivers all the things wcouldn'tnt do in a paper world during our first 40 years of operation. The key elements of our new client relationship is direct electronic access to our global team of consultants, real time market information updates, global access to our clients staff needs, an e-commerce platform which matches clientbudgetingng systems and new content to help our clients to more rapid access new market opportunities.

Thgreatestst challenges in front of us is traininmanagementnt teams how to use and benefit from the rapidly increasing flow of business information and IT solutions. I find that most managerdon'tnt have a clue how to maximize the impact of these new tools. Another issue which complicates this challenge is the constant staff turnover in middle level management. With an average investment of 2 years in each position it is nearly impossible to truly maximize the impact from the integration of these tools and experience in decision making.

DSstar: How would you characterize BI today; what is the "state of the art"? What will BI become, and what will it take to get there?

FRIGSTAD: BI today is a very confused topic. Depending on who you discuss it with you will get very different answers. The MIS types will talk in technology and the CEOs will talk about improved speed in accurate and informed decision making. I believe enormous resources will binvesteded in the BI sector in the coming 5 years with the eventual goal of integrating KMS, CRM, BI,CI, and MR. We are a long way from integrating these systems today and an even longer way from getting the average employee to understand what we are talking about.

In the coming 5 years many leading edge companies will make it to full integration. These companies will have very powerful economic advantages over their competitors in the quest for increasing market share. This is a trend which cannot be safely ignored.

Contact Frost and Sullivan, Cara_Battaglia@frost.com.