pause in appescript or automator

I am trying to set up either an apple script or automator work flow to launch two programs that must be running at the same time. One program must be up and running before the other one is launched for everything to work properly. I tried to set up an apple script to do this but it doesn't quite work right. The script launches both programs one right after the other without waiting for the first one to finish starting up. Is there any way to put a pause in the script somewhere so that the first program has time to finish starting before the second one launches? I would appreciate any help that can be provided.