Scott Cooper has a philosophy: he says a ship can’t sail without a stream of support. Cooper is founder and managing director of INSYNC Consulting Group, Inc. in Sherman Oaks, an information technology firm that offers customers both an automation process practice and a computer forensics practice. “The problem is that, in our industry, there are too many companies doing business that don’t know what they’re doing,” Cooper says. He says part of the reason for what he calls a saturation of incompetent IT consultants is that there is scant uniformity of understanding of what certification makes a consultant competent. In fact, he says, there is little in the way of non-vendor-issued certificates. Between Cooper and his partner and fellow managing director at INSYNC, Robert Green, the company leadership embodies the pinnacle in IT certification today, with certificates that include CPA/CITP (Certified Information Technology Professional) from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants; CMC (Certified Management Consultant) from the Institute of Management Consultant; and others. Although he modestly defers much credit to Green, Cooper founded the company in 1984, and it has grown steadily ever since. “He brings to the process a very focused understanding of the business,” says Cooper. “I really want to emphasize his contribution.” INSYNC’s client list is impressive. It includes such corporate luminaries as Beatrice Foods, Exxon, Ernst & Young, and Bank of America, to name but a few. Recently, the company found electronic evidence that resulted in the largest intellectual rights settlement in history ($1.5 billion). While the privately held INSYNC does not disclose actual earnings, they say they have doubled their revenues during the last five years. But there would have been no INSYNC, and therefore possibly no billion-and-a-half dollar Medtronic v. Michelson settlement, if Cooper had not been a technology buff as a kid growing up in the late sixties and early seventies, watching his dad try to run a hospital with inadequate computer systems. “I was always interested in technology,” Cooper remembers. “At age ten, I was aware of my dad’s frustration that the systems at his hospital didn’t work very well.” Years later, with an undergraduate education that spanned business, engineering, computer-based information systems and physics from UC Berkeley and University of San Francisco, as well as postgraduate work at the University of Colorado, Cooper went to work for an early incarnation of the now legendary accounting firm KPMG. But, it wasn’t long until the entrepreneurial fire in Cooper’s gut ignited. “Our role at Peat Marwick was to provide systems consulting and implementation to our clients,” Cooper said. “But the clients we provided consulting services to were the largest corporations, cities, and municipalities in the country. I began to realize then that the middle market was not being served.” Cooper says that it was in the early 1980s, while working for Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co. that he decided to bring top-quality IT consulting services to mid-sized companies. “At that time, it was difficult for them to afford the fee structure at Pete (Marwick), Cooper explained. “There was no way that any of the ‘Big Eight’ accounting firms could make those resources affordable to smaller entities.” By 1984, Cooper was “in it.” INSYNC was born that year, and according to Cooper, that advent was less exhilarating than it was frightening. “It was a scary, daunting process to go attack a market segment that was not being served well in an industry that was as small as it was when we were starting up our consulting business.” But by 1989, INSYNC had a reputation as a lean and powerful consulting firm with a knack for bringing automation to the most challenging clients. Case-in-point, a hydraulics company that, except for payroll, was completely paper-and-file-cabinet. “The company that had been around for a long time,” Cooper said. “We were engaged to help them decide if computers could help them and, if so, find the ones that would be best. Then, we were to implement the systems, and provide training and support.” Cooper said the entire process took nine months. His response to a question about the difficulty of the job speaks volumes about the golden reputation INSYNC enjoys with its clients. “It was very difficult for them,” he says, thinking the question referred to his client. “But, after we were done, the staff there thanked us, and said that they love coming to work after the system was in place. It really changed the way they felt about their jobs.” Another philosophical point of view Cooper holds is summed up by a statement Cooper is known to make from time to time: “To call us computer experts is like calling an architect a T-square expert.” He says that he and Green are clear to prospective employees that they need more than technical prowess. INSYNC is about to grow from ten employees to 17, and has three offices in the Los Angeles metro area. So, these days Cooper is thinking a lot about what kind of person makes a good candidate. “We had a candidate who wanted a job,” he relates a story about someone that they decided not to hire. “We asked: ‘what are unique skills you can offer a client?’ He said he had spent a lot of time making six floppy drives work in a computer. Although it was a novel, creative and difficult task, there was no need for six floppies in one computer.” The problem, says Cooper, was that the candidate didn’t have the business focus they require, in order to complement INSYNC’s automation practice. “We’re not the pocket-protector wearing geeks that are sometimes associated with IT,” he said. Furthermore, the distinctions between INSYNC’s two disciplines forensics and automation are concrete, according to Cooper. “The distinction is that our automation process is a proactive approach to helping companies to strategize and implement appropriate and effective computer systems,” he explains. “As well as policies, procedures and prudent practices that go with them to allow their computer systems to service and support the business goals and objectives of the company, essentially planning and then implementing what’s necessary.” Forensics, he says, is a reactive process. “Pending litigation matters provide the different perspective on forensics; the objective is slightly different,” Cooper said. “It’s to understand what the case is about and to help the company and their attorneys strategize what data can be found to support their case. Then our role is to get that data documented and testify about it accordingly.” For the attorneys that retain INSYNC’s services, the name of the game is discovery. Cooper and Green are the expert witnesses they rely upon for testimony of the mushrooming field of electronic discovery. It’s defined, legally, as the strategic planning and tactical acquisition of evidentiary data directly related to the issues of a case. One might think with so much on the line in terms of credibility on the stand, INSYNC would have staff lawyers. But, in fact, they rely only on their lawyerly clients’ to advise them in the legal matters pertinent to their participation in each case. “Confidentiality is our primary legal concern, internally,” Cooper said. “And that is sacred to us.” In a recent case that brought INSYNC some notoriety, one byte of data decided a literal $64 million question. “One guy had a copy of a twenty-page document that said the other guy was to get five percent on a marketing contract,” Cooper said. “The other guy’s version said fifteen percent. The difference was sixty-four million dollars. Either the second guy was owed the money, or he wasn’t. One of them was lying and one wasn’t.” In the end, Cooper and company found that the singular numeral “1” had been removed from the first party’s e-mailed document. The plaintiff got his millions. But, the courtroom is not the only place where computer forensics is needed. Some clients are the victims of hacking or a system meltdown, and they just need to recover lost data. “If a company has been ‘hurt,’ our forensics practice can help,” he says. “If they have a crash and they need to do a major recovery if they have a system that has been intruded upon and their operations have been jeopardized by hackers; we can help.” INSYNC serves customers who have been “hurt” with a three-punch rally of services. “Our role as forensics people is to stop the damage from further occurring,” he says. “Repair the damage and prevent reoccurrence.” As for the similar name he shares with the boy band NSYNC, Cooper says it has little or no impact. But, he is always happy to point out that his company’s name goes back to before some of boys in the band were even born. “If it helps people remember the name, all the better,” he said.
