Although some companies are hiring external auditors such as KPMG Peat Marwick LLP to double-check their year 2000 readiness, others are finding it just as useful to hire contractors to act as the extra set of eyes examining project plans.
"We're a public company, and we owe it to our shareholders, customers and employees that, come January 2000 we will survive," said Brad Kerr, CIO at HA-LO Industries Inc., a Niles, Ill.-based promotional products company. The only way to do that, Kerr said, is to bring in outsiders to review its year 2000 project and give its board of directors "a comfort level." HA-LO brought in Metamor Technologies Ltd. -- a Chicago-based services firm to which it
outsources application development and other functions -- to handle its year 2000 project management.
Other companies, such as Cessna Aircraft Co. and Grange Mutual Casualty Co. also are using outsiders to make sure they haven't taken any millennial missteps. "Everyone knows that year 2000 problems are going to manifest themselves, even in shops that have been extremely diligent," said Peter Burris, an analyst at Meta Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn. Outside parties often review year 2000 projects and locate trouble spots insiders overlooked.
Grange, a Columbus, Ohio-based property and casualty insurer, hired Cincinnati-based Tominy Inc. in April 1997 to help it expand the date fields in 400,000 lines of a commercial Cobol-based claims processing code that it had heavily modified.
Using Tominy's Comp2000 system, which modifies source code and expands date fields from six digits to eight, Grange was able to complete its systems remediation in August.
In addition, Grange was able to lean on Tominy to review its work. "If we had an issue, they were either working on it [at Tominy's offices] or came up here the next day," said Brent Wyrick, manager of personal lines applications at the insurer.
Cessna used Interim Services Inc.'s technology group in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to review its methodologies, according to Sandy Gieber, year 2000 program manager at Cessna.
HA-LO Industries, whose revenue has increased from $75 million six years ago to more than $500 million, has been outsourcing IT services such as application development, help desk and year 2000 project management to Metamor for the past 15 months. The benefit to HA-LO, Kerr said, is that his company can add technology resources as needed at "attractive" prices in tight labor markets such as Chicago and Detroit.
Having Metamor double-check HA-LO's work made the deal even more advantageous, Kerr said.
