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The Business Monthly - April 5, 2002 Stuffed with computer-friendly conference rooms with chic Aeron chairs around the tables, and decorated in post-Modern industrial, the 62,500-square-foot building has a sleek minimalist corner office for Deutsch, offering a panoramic view of the UMBC campus. For the moment, it's his second office, but after 30 years growing two different public technology companies in Columbia, Deutsch may abandon his 12th floor view of Columbia when the company's lease expires. "We were just talking about that this morning," Deutsch admitted at a March 22 press briefing in the new digs. The lease on the RWD building on Little Patuxent Parkway is "up in seven quarters," he said, and "it isn't clear" whether RWD will stay put or move hundreds more employees to the research park, which is admittedly closer to his Pikesville home. UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski is happy to have Deutsch and RWD on campus. Hrabowski had put Deutsch on UMBC's Board of Visitors 10 years ago, and plans for the research park have been in the works for just as long, finally overcoming dogged opposition from some Arbutus community activists who did manage to have the project scaled back. "We are very excited about this research park," Hrabowski said. "We hope this becomes a magnet for other companies," and a way "to attract good people to work here." There are 150 university-related research parks in the country, said Ellen Wiggins, director of the nonprofit corporation that oversees the park's development. "But a lot of them don't have strong relationships with their tenants". We're looking for technology companies that have a substantial collaborative relationship" with the university to occupy the four building sites left. Latitude 360's connections to UMBC couldn't be stronger. The division's president, David Yager, Hrabowski noted, is officially on loan to RWD from UMBC, where he chaired the visual arts department and pioneered its programs in imaging research and digital arts. Yager said he even sat on the first committee that discussed the research park. He is a very personal illustration of how academic technology innovation can be transferred to real-world commercial products. "We're bringing in fresh ideas from the university," Deutsch said. Losses and Restructuring Recently, the company has certainly seemed like it needed fresh ideas. "Last year was the first year I've ever lost money in business," said Deutsch, 78. RWD had a $13 million loss on $117 million in revenues, a 12% drop from 2000 sales. "We got hit" by the Y2K aftershock, Deutsch said, when "nothing ever happened," and companies cut back drastically on information technology spending. Initially, "we didn't fire anybodyÉ. But despite predictions [of a rebound], it didn't turn around." As revenues fell, the company laid off workers, restructured divisions and shuffled top executives. A nuclear science professor, Deutsch founded General Physics Corp. to train operators of nuclear power plants in 1966, and ran it for 21 years, leaving after a corporate merger. In 1988, he founded RWD Technologies to apply computer-based training for technology to other industries. "I've always liked the training area," Deutsch said. He realized large manufacturing companies were investing a lot in technology, but getting very little return on their investment, because "they weren't showing the end users how to use it." RWD's initial business was "showing people how to use what the companies buy for them," principally by working with blue collar workers on the shop floor to match the capabilities of the manufacturing technology with the processes that needed to be done. "We bring people and technology together," Deutsch said. Two of RWD's biggest customers are Ford and Daimler Chrysler. "Last year, automotive was down, and we got hit more than I expected," said Deutsch. The Performance Solutions division has expanded its lean manufacturing consulting to the aerospace and rail industries. Forty percent of the company's revenues come from its Enterprise Solutions division, which principally integrates eBusiness software like SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft. SAP integration is "the fastest growing part of our business," said Deutsch. Over the last two years, RWD has invested more than $4 million in Latitude 360's development of University 360, a web-based electronic learning system for corporate training. "We've got the best system right now," said Deutsch, but "we're still looking for our first major account" with a Fortune 500 corporation, RWD's target clients. But the company's University 360 is being used for training of the 7,300 employees at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, at the Flight Safety Research Institute and for the regulatory group at the National Association of Securities Dealers. Yager said there are 50 to 60 active customers, including the American Institute of CPAs and the Drug Information Association, a pharmaceutical trade group. University 360 is really a virtual extension of the way RWD got started. It's not just software-in fact, RWD doesn't write software, just integrates it-but a suite of software applications that can be used to train employees on policies, procedures, techniques and on other kinds of software. It can be used by single users, at any time of the day, online or offline, interactively in a classroom setting, or at remote locations. It can also be used for teamwork and group collaboration, for conferencing, for examinations, assessments and certifications. "There's not one solution for any one group," said Yager. Online learning is still "a very immature environment." Many companies and schools are competing for the online learning market, and studies have shown wide ranges in the effectiveness of various approaches to communicating content. "We believe in the blended models," Yager said. This means combining computer-based instruction with interactive communication , face-to-face teaching, and individualized tutoring. Recognizing that people learn in different ways at different speeds, University 360 offers options to customize the learning process with video, audio and other methods. "We're focusing on creating an environment," he said. "It's bigger than just delivering courseware." He believes the suite of applications, which Latitude 360 supplies from remote servers, can be used to capture a company's "tacit knowledge," the expertise its workers carry around in their heads, which is often lost as employees retire or leave. Like its earlier business models, RWD is not just providing learning and business applications, but working with the current employees and managers to find out "what needs to be transferred" to other employees, Yager said. With its new building, new suite of applications and the apparent uptick in the national economy, Yager thinks, "we're looking for a very exciting next 24 months."
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