Mr Jak Boumans (JB)
Principal consultant, Electronic Media Reporting
Consultancy
In the forum Mr Boumans was the chairman. Mr Boumans is consultant content strategy. In the ACTeN project he is the Workpackage leader for the Content Market Monitor and the Assessment packages. Mr Boumans was two years ago part of the team that researched the Dutch multimedia cluster.

Mr Herbert Pesch (HP)
Managing director, Evident
Internet Service Bureau
Mr Pesch is the managing director of Evident, an Internet Service Bureau as well as a Mobile Service Provider.

>Mr Bas Koopman (BK)
Project manager, Akzo Nobel
Client of Evident
Mr Koopman is the contact person between the Akzo Nobel company and Evident with regard to the site for the multinational.

Mr Hans Bol (HB)
Consultant, Framfab
Consultancy
Framfab is an international ISP with a subsidiary in The Netherlands. The company was involved in a EU funded project POR.com.

Mr Ab Talmon (AT)
Managing director/owner Talmon Communicatie
Multimedia communication
Talmon Communicatie is a company producing multimedia products. It recently won a nomination from the EUROPRIX2002 with regard to the CD-ROM Compact Netherlands.

Mr Martijn Arts (MA)
Managing director, ZappWerk
Internet SErvie Bureau
Martijn Arts is managing director of ZappWerk. The company was awarded the overall EUROPRIX2001 for the BoschUniverse.

Mr Fred Kresin (FK)
Project manager, Digitale Universiteit
Client of ZappWerk
Fred Kresin is the project manager for the Digital University, a cooperation between 10 universities who are implementing e-learning.

After the introduction Jak Boumans elaborated on the theme of the forum. He mentioned the Dutch survey of 2000, held on the height of the hype. And contrasted these data with the survey held in Finland in 2002/2003. The questions to the panel were projected with PowerPoint sheets for the audience.

HP: Evident is an Internet company, producing websites and mobile services. It works for corporate clients such as AKZO, also present in this forum. For AKZO Evident does the corporate site (AKZO.com) and sites on business level.

BK: Client of Evident. AKZO is presenting 80 countries, 67.5000 people; 3 groups: Pharmaceuticals; Coatings, Chemicals. Together 20 business units. Headquarters in Arnhem (The Netherlands).

MA: ZappWerk is also an Internet bureau like Evident. It works in another market: semi-government, education and culture, but it is also getting into the business market. They aim for integrated communication and knowledge networks by design.

FK: Client of ZappWerk. The Digital University is a joint venture of 10 educational institutes, among which 4 universities and the Open University. It exists 2 years. Internet is important to the Digital University for distance educational projects.

HB: Framfab is also an Internet bureau. Are 7 years active in the market. Are active in the Business to Consumer market. They offer companies the brand feel electronically. So Framfab works for Nike and Vodafone. They integrate content systems and management solutions. Are more on the infrastructural side of the companies and more technical oriented.

AT: Talmon does not have a real Internet bureau. Talmon started out as an Audio visual producer. He started in the eighties and begun only six years ago with Internet and multimedia. As a communication partner they produce movies, CD-ROMs and Internet sites.

MA: The cooperation of ZappWerk and Digital University have started after that ZappWerk contacted the Digital University, which was just starting up. ZappWerk argued that they already worked for universities in long term relationships. This gives an advantage as universities work with many parties and long term budgets. We produce one application: Internet, Extranet and Intranet for knowledge sharing.

FK: ZappWerk was quite busy with knowledge sharing and was as such interesting to a start-up in university country. WE have looked around and have organised a pitch.

BK: AKZO met Evident at a business fair, where AKZO was looking around for a new bureau. AKZO was not happy with the bureau it had.

HP: It is a problem for young internet bureaus to be recognised in the market. Three years ago there was a problem with visibility for a young bureau. There were so many bureaus, that you could not distinguish them from one another. Evident has always chosen to make the best of an assignment with a client and get him talking about Evident. Once a year they were dominantly present at a Internet business fair. But it still is difficult to find client you suit you.

HB: Framfab is hardly present at exhibitions and fairs. They approach new companies mainly through networks. It is a lot of reference sales. Framfab does its marketing very systematically by setting the sector where they want to be active and then go to get in the assignments.

AT: Talmon has grown with its clients. But the company has stayed ahead of the client and by offering multimedia Talmon has been able to stay ahead of the competition. Of course the competition knocked on the door of the clients, but Talmon had the advantage of knowledge of the company or institute and the knowledge of the communication process. In the field of multimedia it had to pick up knowledge of Internet fast. In principle we are storytellers. As a company we do not have the ambition to grow big fast. We do invest what we earn in the company itself to stay ahead and be independent of venture capitalists.

Who educates who
Development of concept
What comes on paper
How does the acceptance test work
How much certainty for the deadline
How much work is sub-contracted

JB: Development of concept and the way acceptance test are handled.

MA: A concept has to be explained on paper or by e-mail. So recording agreements with the client and sub-contractors is important. ZappWerk has the acceptation test done by a third parties. In this way it becomes an objective test. Acceptation test are twofold: functional test and stretch test.

HP: In the past three years a professionalizing of acceptance test has taken place. Project management has become the backbone of the business: Functional design, technical design, phasing the work. As such the time to sell baked air has gone. It is even better to tell a client not have a particular part of the assignment executed and save money. A client is waiting now for solutions which are effective, measurable, save money and are led very strongly management wise.

HB: Besides the Internet bureaus also the clients have grown wise and seasoned. Was the Internet bureau in the past years a black box, this time has gone. Your counter partner in a company is a sparring partners.

In the past the bureaus had a trick, writing HTML. There were not too many people who could write HTML so there was a demand for HTML code writers. This situation is over. Now you need to understand your client and add value and savings.

These days clients are also more strict. Due to the knowledge present and the economic recession, they will not accept any transgression of the budget.

JB: Digital pioneering is over.

MA: Still 70 percent of ICT projects still exceed the budgets and the deadlines, according to a marketing research survey.

Member of the audience: Exceeding budgets and deadlines still happens. In my company we have a project of 49 weeks, which is now beyond the one-and-a-half-year milestone and has known already 4 project managers. Of course, we are talking to lawyers already.

MA: But might the conclusion not be that the project is too big. Would not it be better to limit the project to a demonstration phase, showing that the basic requirements can be reached. In such a way the client start to built up a relationship with the producer. Make smaller steps.

HP: At AKZO we have projects that can be planned and executed within the deadlines and budgets given. But we have also more research like project, in which we invest ourselves.

JB: What percentage of your turn-over do you reserve for research.

MA: For ZappWerk is the division between production and research roughly 60/40 percent. But this will have to improve fast.

AT: For Talmon there has been a change of culture in the company. The company has made a change to multimedia. The division is about 60/40.

HB: For Framfab the division is going into the direction of 80/20. We have clients with similar projects, besides technology does not change that fast anymore.

Member of the audience: Did the technical people still have a need for innovation?

HB: No, the technical people have also learned. They no longer want to spend the evening hours in solving problems; besides they have grown older, have married and have kids.

HP: Evident has started to innovate amongst others in the mobile sector. Yet we believe that you should not innovate just for a client, if you have the solutions at hand. This does not mean that you should not innovate. We write about 25 percent in research. But we do this in order to improve our software. For mobile you need the knowledge, but you do not have that many projects in order to finance the research. For us the client is leading.

HP: From the beginning of 2002 the situation has become really bad for Internet service bureaus. Especially those in the consumer sector. They have seen their revenues tumble with 70 percent of their assignments. Many of them do not exist anymore. AS we have been working in the old economy, we have seen less. Yet when a client says that a project of say 250.000 euro is not going to happen, then you have a problem with 40 people on the pay list. The company has always been rather conservative in money and bureau facilities. We have become more pro-active. You need to reduce your staff to a level of being able to weather the storms. In 2002 we have gone back from 50 employees to 38. The company has a healthy state now. We consolidate.

BK: Also on the clients side there is a recession. AKZO has less to spend. Leaner and meaner. No experimenting any longer.

HP: It offers also new changes in order to think along with the client. This might reduce your budget in the short run, but increase the confidence for the future.

HB: Framfab has gone down from a megalomaniac pan-European company to a network of national companies. 2002 to 2003 has been dramatic. So many people left. The Dutch Framfab subsidiary has withdrawn now to the field of consultancy. In the Netherlands we have 60 employees.

AT: We had reduced the company already in 1999 in order to make the switch from audiovisual company to a new media company. This meant the loss of the facilities department. In 2001 there was profit with 80 percent new media activities and 20 percent old av activities.

MA: ZappWerk has also reduced its labour force. But it had first to solve a problem. ZappWerk has always had more work than people. So in 2002 we move from 12 employees to 26 employees. That meant that project managers had people that were not experienced in order to do projects, with clients that had a lower budget. ZappWerk has also reduced its workforce over the years and employs now at 17 people. Slowly we are growing again, but we need to make more kilometres in order to pick up new assignments.

JB: Do producers expect anything from the government in these harsh times?

MA: During the hype the government has concluded a lot of umbrella agreements at a high price. These agreements are running out now or soon and new agreements will have to be concluded. But the prices will be different now, of course lower.

There is also a trend, that all the package software from software manufacturere amongst which Microsoft will be abolished in favour of open source software. So this will mean a complete series of acquisitions by ministeries and municipalities. And of course a lot of programming.

In the field of policy the topic of knowledge economy is high on the list. So the government will have to stimulate the discussion about knowledge economy. Of course stimulation of the knowledge economy in multimedia and content will be part of this.

HB: Not only civil servants do have to be convinced that Internet is very efficient, but especially politicians will have to be convinced as they take the decisions about the budgets of the new media projects. But the multimedia cluster will have to convince the politicians themselves with best-practice demonstration.

JB: So far the multimedia cluster has not been able to convince civil servants and politicians of their capability to have government communicate with citizens efficiently. Part of the problem is that the multimedia industry is not recognised as a specialised cluster, but is seen as part of the ICT sector and on the other hand the cluster is too fragmented with 40 organisations, claiming to have multimedia or content as their core business.

HP: Asking the government to pump money back to the multimedia cluster for a project is not a good thing. A lot of money is burned on the way in talks and discussion and not used for the project itself. It is better for the government to invest the money in order to become a more professional organisation and set an example. Of course in the knowledge economy and education more is needed, but the government should not start programs for SME or talking groups for cabling cities and desolate areas. As a cluster you should do the things you need to do and not call on the government for help. Be creative, put plans together yourself and start trading with the government, if needed.

AT: My company is very happy with the government as it does a lot of work for the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Home Affair. I do think that it is difficult for the multimedia cluster to communicate with the government as the organisations are fragmented and not speaking with one mouth and one definition of multimedia; besides they should show more the best products and services, so as to attract clients.

Two panel member have experience with projects for the European Commission.

HP: Evident was involved in a SME project with Syntens and the EC. They experienced the project as difficult. There was a lot of red tape involved and many meetings.

HB: Framfab was involved with EC IST 5 Framework programme. The project was Port of Rotterdam (POR.COM).

Looking back Framfab has learned a lot from the project, but will be more careful to step into new projects.

AT: There are two aspects to this problem. When a CD-ROM title is sold it is disadvantaged by the high VAT rate, while other media such as printed newspapers or magazines are charged with the low VAT rate. The other aspect is that a high VAT rate is charged on blank media such as rewritable disks. This should be better regulated.

JB: Some publishing companies have been exempted from the high VAT rate by the taxman and can count a low VAT rate in order to keep their bookkeeping systems at the same VAT level.

This is subject is the last subject and acts as a bridge to the announcement of the coming EUROPRIX.nl. Two of the panel members had experience with the EUROPRIX. ZappWerk did win the EUROPRIX 2001 with Bosch Universe, while Talmon Communicatie won a nomination for its Holland disk.

MA: Having been awarded the EUROPRIX 2001 has given ZappWerk feasibility outside Holland. Looking back at it, the prize has not brought in money. But it has generated publicity and given assurance to the clients.

AT: The nomination has indeed generated publicity for the company. Besides we feel enrolled into an international community. EUROPRIX is a content prize and not just an award for technical superiority. So the EUROPRIX is a rare occasion for multimedia producers to compare themselves with other content producers.