To start the New Year, I thought I would "dust-off" this un-published article I wrote a while back and bring it up to date.
In 2003, Tom Peters (management guru) released a book titled "Re-Imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age". Being a huge fan of Tom's I grabbed the book right away. Since then, I have read it cover-to-cover twice, and listened to it on audio-book several times. It passes the time quite well during a long drive. As an operations manager, and a tech savvy guy...I really enjoy Tom's enthusiasm for changing the world.
I find myself agreeing with several points in his book. "most innovation comes from pissed-off people" he writes. Six-Sigma/TQM/Kaizen had its run...and now its time to abandon Evolution, time to start a Revolution. This article is written as a bit of a rant, intentionally, to pay homage to Tom.
The technologies available today for enabling business process automation are nothing short of awesome. We now have the computing horsepower to remove most of the "grunge" of doing business. Moore's Law (named after Intel co-founder, Gordon moore) has delivered on its promise of doubling processor performance every 18 months since the late 1960s. And the pace of innovation in software has increased on an equally impressive curve. Any company that isn't actively searching for high-tech solutions to business problems will soon find themselves on the wrong side of the "haves vs. have-nots" track.
The call-to-action applies to employees. Tom Peters predicts that within 15 years, 80% of the white-collar jobs in America will either disappear or be reconfigured beyond recognition. Ask yourself...If you were a brand...how would you feel about yourself? Today's employee should be looking at themselves as a one-person Professional Service Firm (PSF). Why shouldn't we look at our employers as if they were customers? Does your company have an environment that fosters innovation? How long do you think you can stand still (even in the Door Industry) before someone, or some company comes along and changes the rules...completely?
I have spent 20 years in this industry. I have been an order-writer, a salesman, project-manager and on and on it goes. We all wear many hats. But over the past several years I noticed that the world was spinning faster than it was before (or so it seems). I taught myself how to program PCs because I wanted to automate the mundane tasks I was faced with everyday. My commitment to keeping a cutting edge skill set has paid off over the years. I now work primarily in an IS/IT role. But - I still see my ambitions as being mostly driven by business operations. It has become my mission to achieve the Holy Grail..."Business at the Speed of light" (another great book, by Bill Gates).
At times it can be difficult to rally troops to the cause. It is very unsettling to many, to enter the unknown. To me it is the very essence of what it means to be American. My family first planted their
feet on American soil in the 1630s. And I like to think that some of that pioneering spirit has been passed on through the generations. The way I see it, this automation simply allows us to do more of what we used to do, back when things moved slower. For example, if you spent less time on processing orders, you could dedicate that extra time to getting more orders (i.e. face-time with the customer). In this age of online plan services, and web-based project leads...who needs to leave the office anymore ;-)? Out of the 40 or 60 or 80 hours a week that you are working, how much of that time is spent on developing new business? For those of you with AHC or CDC credentials, how much consulting do you really do? You get my point.
I spend a fairly equal amount of my time working on both sides of our Industry (distribution and manufacturing). What really excites me these days is the real possibility of bridging the gap between those 2 sides. As a distributor, I have collaborated with Curries to integrate our line-of-business app called T.O.P. (Total Openings pro) with their COW program (Curries Order Writing). And by collaborating, I don't mean a long drawn-out process. I am talking about requesting a mechanism to import our data, and spending several hours to program the "plumbing" to make this happen. Curries did all the rest. After all, the benefit was mostly theirs (by cutting out the need for data-entry). The result was an end-to-end solution where our approved submittal is directly pushed thru into Curries' order process over the Internet. We have taken a similar approach with Wood Doors, but lacking an order-entry portal...the automation stops short with paper machining sheets that are faxed or emailed. We have already begun work on projects to connect this to VT-Online & Algoma as well. The point being that we take each task as far as we can take it, utilizing the best tools and the best known practices of the day. I have begun a similar process with Steelcraft, and look forward to bringing that solution online.
Several years ago, I started a project called a Hardware Configurator. I wanted to build something that asked all the right questions and provided list pricing, ordering-nomenclature and cut-sheets. I
wanted to go beyond what was currently being offered in our Industry. After I prototyped my idea, I shared it with a long time industry friend John Petersen (developer of Software-for-Hardware). A few years earlier we worked together to integrate John's AutoCAD solution into our T.O.P. program. my software efforts to-date had been mostly internal systems or web-based. And I knew John could help me "product-ize" this. Also, it helped that John was in need of an electronic hardware catalog solution for his product as well. So we embarked on a joint-venture to co-develop a complete offering. We released the product with a handful of catalogs in February 2005. In 2008, with 34 catalogs to offer I decided to take our offering to the next level. The time had come to provide a stand-alone software "client" that any company in our Industry could draw value from (distributors, reps & manufacturers). This was not to compete with T.O.P. or SFH in functionality...just a slim software tool with a specific purpose.
At the DHI-2008 show in Boston we introduced our new offering, called "TOAD-CRT" (Catalog Replacement Tool). In September, I had also given an early introduction at Access-IT's first customer conference for their contractERP product. CRT is a tool that a distributor can use to work with all the major product lines. They can build a quote on-the-fly that spans across all manufacturers. The tool provides a simple estimating interface to handle multipliers or multi-level discounts that we use in our industry. After creating a "laundry list"..."CRT" offers you a packaged PDF of all the cut-sheets you need. CRT also provides other "Quick Docs" such as Sales Proposal, Sales Order, PO and Quote Request. The tool itself is free...we simply charge for a team-based subscription to the "catalogs" ala-carte. Every time you open the software it checks for program & data updates. Each spreadsheet-style list can be saved to a file on disk (much like MS Excel).
The benefit to this electronic medium is that you can not only transmit the document, but all the related data. This data can be "mapped" directly into the software at the plant. The orders would be held in a queue, and pulled in by customer service. It would still receive some human attention...but the data-entry lag is eliminated. This is just one step on the way to frictionless business.
We are offering free 30-day test-drives and we invite everyone to check it out. We welcome the dialog about where we can take this, and how we call all work together for the greater good. We are looking for manufacturers that would like to help re-define how business is done in our Industry. We are also looking for distributors that share our vision. And see the benefit in creating this community of collaboration. If you have your own in-house software we would like the opportunity to discuss integrating our offering.
Here's to a healthy and prosperous New Year!
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