Age is a funny thing on the one side the younger you are generally the better you look, with other aspects of life you have to wait to gain years and so credibility where life is like a fine red wine, such as running a business. I've been in the web design game for quite a long time now, we'll relatively speaking as you have to remember the web is still a rebellious teenager and young in itself. Nothing with the web surprises me anymore, except one thing. I'm always surprised at how badly business in general and businesses in particular handle the web, it's not about the thousands of small business that have frankly appalling sites, we all know about them and the least said the better. But it's surprising how actually the larger the business the more incompetent they seem to be, now that maybe a generalisation of sorts but that's the whole point isn't it? Generally it's true. Definitely in this case life is not a fine wine, the older I get the more I learn about the web and the more it well...annoys the hell out of me how incompetent some people can be, not Joe the white collar slave cubicle but his fat friend in the boardroom, the one who makes all the decisions. It seems like the bigger the salary the more stupid you have to be. It's like an itch that won't go away, it's irritating so I have to scratch at it!
The big problem is as the web continually grows and develops business is getting more and more behind. As a business it's not about getting left behind, if everyone's in the same boat then we all get left behind together, no problems everyone's happy. Unfortunately business and life is not like that, the dinosaur being a good example in life and Netscape in business. In Netscape's case what would we have done without them. Certainly the web wouldn't be the same web without them and from a technical point of view we could hardly rely on Mr Gates technology as has been proved time and again ever since. But where are they now, nowhere is the answer! They're practically dead, in fact they may as well be dead, more realistically they pretty much are. Born, did something great, died. Netscape, KIA by Microsoft, RIP. It's not a normal life for a company to have such a short life span, but that's because since the inception of the net businesses have been happy to join each other in the status quo of being in the lifeboats watching the Titanic sink. One day that will change and someone with the courage and conviction to get out the lifeboat will arise from their slumber and top all their competitors. By top I don't mean get bigger (quite the opposite) or have bigger profits, I mean literally take out, slit their throats so to speak, that day in fact has already been put in motion. The big ( or should I say Big BIG) question is will you be the one to get out the boat or one of those left behind (with the slit throat a.k.a. dead!).
One thing I want to stress you to you is the microchip, if you haven't already found out, has taken over the world. If you arm the microchip with it's little brother the internet then all hell will brake loose. If you liken the microchip to say Mike Tyson in his pomp, then the internet would have to be 10 Ali's put together. If you think I'm talking about Globalisation then that's yesterday's news these two siblings will ultimately revolutionise the way we live our lives, yes everybody destruction is coming. The way we spend our leisure, our home's, the way our governments work, even our jobs. After these two have finished with us what we call our jobs will not exist anymore. Don't mistake the will for a probably, change is inevitable maybe not tomorrow or a week but sooner or latter it will happen whether we like it or not.
Ignorance is bliss or is it? As my good friend General Shineski once said "If you don't like change your going to like irrelevance even less."
Nice quote, but think about it; change v's irrelevance, and think about what it brings. Irrelevance for Joe employee means no job, it means when you wake up you sit in your pj's watching Richard and Judy with your wife nagging you, for Joe Chairman of the board it not only means no board because the whole thing's gone up in smoke but he finds himself in the same position as Joe Employee. Let's just hope when the time comes we don't have shares in the wrong companies, then again there's going to be many many companies that bite the dust so best not have any shares full stop.
So far that's a lot of rhetoric and as I'm a proof of the pudding is in the eating kind of fellow then let's look at some actual real world examples. I recently moved house and one of the many annoying things you have to do is contact a billion companies, whether it be the bank, the telephone company, gas, water or one of a dozen credit card companies that you no longer use, in return they usually write you a letter asking you to ring them about doing something about changing your account details with them. First thing they ask is you prove your new address even though you got their letter in the first place. You have to call every single damn one of them and spend ages answering questions you no longer can remember the answers to... my secret question is so secret that I don't even know it any more! After all it's supposed to be secret now isn't it? Sometimes, if your lucky, from Joe Temp who knows even less than you do because Proper Bob Employee has a hangover from the weekend.
Interesting distraction - did you know computers can't get hangover's they're never sick, don't need holidays and don't even smoke, in fact the problems computer systems make are down to idiots like us who design them; interesting distraction number 2 - computer systems are only as intelligent as the programmers that make them, is that so? Probably. Will that probably always be so - definitely and scarily not! - hey one day maybe we won't need so many programmers because we'll teach computers to program themselves! How ironic.
Anyway onward and upwards where were we? Ah yes...Call centres hey? You know what I'll probably say next. Now I don't believe in Karma, load of old tosh yet if there is proof that Karma does exist those Indians are doing a pretty good job of convincing me. First they gave us Brits our favourite dish and now they go and give us Outsourcing. Why oh why couldn't they have called it quits with the curry, I think you'd call that Karma. Globalisation hey! If you ever move house then doing that change of address thing your pretty much guaranteed to speak to a lot of Indians. Soon we may all start speaking in an Indian accent, after all Charles and Cynthia who sell mortgages are already at it so the rest of us don't have a chance do we? If you ever think you get it bad then thank Karma or whoever your company doesn't have it's entire call centre including all operating systems and logistics in India. Every time one of the dozen or so systems you have a username / password combination lock you out who you gotta call... no not Ghostbusters (you wish).
Side note - why can't companies streamline their systems. I used to work for a company where you used to do have to do this all in the name of cost saving (yet not saving Mr Joe Loyal Employee of 20 years his job!). Trying to interpret a password as they give each letter one by one in a strong Indian accent is an impossible task, I know I've been there! Talk about cost cutting, it would be more cost effective if I fly out their and have it written on a post it note. Ultimately you ask yourself whatever happened to using email?
In Business cost savings are everywhere, so call centres are everywhere us capitalists have boomed other economies in the past with these type of practices, with a growing economy employment and the quality of life increases, eventually the economy gets to big and the reason for starting these off shore offices in the first place is gone. No problem you just relocate to another country, once India is done, Africa is next on the agenda, or is it?
Firstly lets look at why this practice takes place, in my previous employment when I quit I was on about roughly £15 or £16k. Now for every job a company can move to a place like India they can have someone in the same role for a twelfth of the cost, so when I left I wouldn't have been replaced as such but to keep the staff levels in the department at the same level they would have placed another role in India for about a cost of £1.3k per year. If you take that rough cost and imagine generally that everyone in a single department will be on near enough the same, in a small department for a largish company of say 50 employees if they can 'outsource' half of those roles to India then that's a saving for them of well over £300,000 a year. Bear in mind that if your a company and you just want to sack all those employees and take the outsource option, then at worst economically it still makes sense no matter what grief a trade union may give you. If you then take some major employers with much larger businesses and many more departments then it's easy to see how companies can save many millions in just a small fraction of time.
If your Joe Mr Chairman of the board with the smug grin on his face then you can stop that now. Firstly it's conceivable you've lost quite a bit of money doing Call Centres on the cheap because though you like them the rest of us loath them and if that's not a problem for you then pretty soon your chin is going to hit the floor with a thud. And very hard!
Going back to our good friends, the computer chip and the internet, who will revolutionise the way we live our lives, you probably didn't pay too much attention to it but if your a white collar cubicle slave it's not hard to see that in the future it's not just about your job changing, it's about whether you will have a job at all. Somewhere in the near future that's a probable not just a possible. Maybe you can get a similar role in another company but sooner you, Miss or Mr Joe employee, a little round block will soon find there now are no more little round holes in big corporates anymore. Modernisation took us out of the field and into the factory, then out of the factory into the office cubicle. Where will the next big thing takes us? That's probably for another time as that in itself is a whole new discussion. If your now starting to pay attention a bit more, then the future with our little buddies the internet and the chip will be a much more revolutionary change then even field to office cubicle.
Simply the really scary thing is that in the office revolution if big companies were smart they would realise that actually they could save a whole lot more money by not having much of a department at all.
We won't go into the problems speaking to someone in a call centre in India poses for Mr Or Ms Customer as we've all been there plenty of times. Sooner of latter companies will wake up to the fact that rather than having lots of 100 departments half of which are based in India, that actually computers with the brain power of chips and the power of communication that the internet brings can not only do the same job but can do it a whole lot better. The economic argument of moving an employees job to India and saving 11/12ths per year is a convincing argument. However that doesn't do away with the fact that there's still a need for some office cubicle slaves and you still need middle managers to manage those slaves and at the end of the day you have to pay your outsourcers something. Computers however aren't like that you tell them what to do and they not only do it but to 100% of their ability with no quibbling and for nothing. The computer with chip and internet not only does away with those slaves but it sends the role of middle manager to the recycle bin. Why? Simply the day will arise when there's no-one to manage. If companies were smart, which actually your probably thanking God (or Karma) that they're not, then they'd realise that this is not only possible but they can pretty much do it to a vast extent now.
At the moment that's all rather theoretical so let's blow the cobwebs away from that idea and see how that may work in practice. If we go back to my moving situation we can see I have to phone each company and speak to someone, Indian or not, who'll change my address on their system and job done, not entirely the case. With one company who have at least some brains I didn't have to do that, I didn't have to even use a computer, well I did but not a computer as in what we would call a computer. I picked up my mobile phone, my sim is with the 3 network btw (I tip my hat to them for this). I securely connect over the internet using my phone a.k.a. mini computer a.k.a. not really a computer but a phone with a clever and tiny little chip and the internet and voila job done. Not only do I not have to pay the cost of the phone bill, not only do I not have to go through all the zillion options and then get ear ache from listening to the awful music while I actually wait to speak to someone, not only do I not have to get stressed at speaking to someone who seems to know less about their system than I do but actually I've done it all myself, it's quicker and from a customer service perspective I'm as happy as larry. Quick, clever, at no or very little cost to me, no cost to the company except for originally designing the system to do this in the first place, no employees to pay, in fact it's totally fool proof. Let's do a little recap: secure internet connection - press a couple of buttons on my phone - userid - password - enter new details - submit - done!), it really is a case of voila.
How far can we stretch this principle? Well if for all except a tiny minority who resist the evils of modern technology it's a far more pleasure experience dealing with a website connected to a company's database we can apply it to every little inquiry we want to make, businesses should not only revolutionise what we call "customer services" but the way they communicate with their customers full stop. In fact if we as a big corporate company had the morals of say a big corporate company to hell with the tiny minority anyway, were not having a call centre just for their benefit. If the option is moving to another company and having to pay £50 plus just for the privilege of chatting to a real life person on the other end of the phone which would you choose? There's dislike for modern technology, which mostly can be put down to the bad process design and there's being people friendly and then there's just plain being stupid.
Ever seen an advert for insurance, well you probably know you can save something like 10% by phone and 15% online. Take a guess why they can offer these discounts? Reality is they can save quite a bit of money over the phone as it totally simplifies their processes. You just talk to one of their employees, no need for them to send you a form in the post and the cost's of storing those forms when they get posted back and then paying someone to deal with it all, no quibbling from the customer about getting a better deal somewhere else instead they have you signed up there and then. Actually the internet, as we've seen really simplifies the system and they can save a stack more money. Many times more than that lousy extra 5% discount they're offering. Again if companies were intelligent they'd probably wouldn't offer a phone discount at all and make us all use the internet. Why would they give us the option of talking to real people who they have to pay when we can talk to their database who is 100% reliable and works for nothing. Think about it 50 employees on £12k a year or a super server armed with top specs connected to the internet.
Result? company save a whole pile more cash, we're happy because we no longer have to speak to badly trained idiots but instead we can action our queries immediately. Again Voila!
I once worked in a paper less office, in fact I used to work in two, well that's not strictly true, the first place you could not even find a post it note in the office. Yep that's right, no paper documents, no paper whatsoever, in fact none of the usual junk the white collar cubicle slave's of this world seem to either gather, steal or get pushed on them.
I should warn you so let's jump ahead of ourselves as I wouldn't want to give anyone a heart attack. Simple fact but applying the principles of having a paper less office to every process in your business can save you a whole stack of dough. How much? Maybe say a conservative estimate of wait for it...
£10+ million....
And per year.
Yes Dorothy Kansas is just about to go bye bye! So where are we, ah yes... the paper less office, it means no:
Ultimately there was no use for pens so we didn't have a collection of the latest biro's in our draws, you get the picture. Imagine the amount of money you'd save on this alone okay not much maybe £10 per employee per year but when you have offices in 10 countries, 15 departments in each country and 100 employees in each department that then becomes again a whole stack of cash. That means a big multinational company saves £150k per year. Reality is for every £10 your employee uses over a year they probably take the same cost home with them. Think about how many years does it take to save a million, just because there's no stationary, think about it: how much money do you earn, think how much more your bonus could go up because your company's not weighed down (literally) by paper but instead you are.
It doesn't end there. No paper trays, no massive desks to store stacks of paper or stationary, no storage rooms needed for either the stationary or the mass of papers or shelves, no filing cabinets, no stationary job, no middle manager to manage the stationary employee, no time wasted ordering stationary. And do you know what that means? Yes the stationary companies all go bust and amongst many, many other things, think of all the space you'd no longer need. That means smaller offices. And do you know what that means. Cut rent cost, cut lighting, water,heating and air conditioning costs. Because you have smaller offices you cut the cost of cleaning too.
So where are we at now something approaching a million a year probably. I don't know but we've dwarfed our £300k saving because each employee uses £10 worth of stationary a year and takes the same home. It doesn't end there. Now instead of the usual office routine where bits of paper take a forever journey to reach from one desk to another desk all of 20 meters away on the other side of the office, from office to office, from country to country. Now once something is dealt with it's processed down the chain immediately whether that be 20 metres away or 20,000 miles.
Out of interest this company was actually a large corporate bank and the department dealt with mortgage applications, the other company was a finance department that used to deal with outgoing payments. Do you know what the difference was? The former was a paper less office, the latter called itself a paper less office but the reality was there was still at least 80% of the paper there from before. The former streamlined it's process, so for example the post would come at around 8:30pm in both offices. From then on in it's an entirely different story, in one after it's opened all post is sent straight into a scanner. The post is then on the system by about the time everyone comes in so first job of the day was to send the scanned documents to the relevant department's which was always finished within the hour. Once done you sifted through all the document's in your department / job, every document would be checked within the department, once finished it's sent onto the next department to process immediately, if there's a problem with the document it can easily be sorted by being flagged up immediately to the correct person to deal with and, guess what, immediately. Ultimately all it needed was for the company to give the computers arms and a hammer and if we weren't doing our job correctly it could pummel us into submission. Guess how many documents were badly scanned. Zilch! Why? They optimised their process and bought the relevant hardware to do the job properly so it was perfect.
This company actually was a big brand but in terms of mortgages unless you preferred paying an extra half a percent interest more it's not something you'd go for. However you can see how the company was run successfully, now I wasn't there a particularly long time, to be honest I was just a temp for a couple of months but still that's left an indelible impression in my mind, to be honest lousy product but successful because of a great department and the fact that the guys in suits had some common sense, hats of to the Halifax.
In the latter company things were entirely different. We actually used to do everything manually and the final process was faxing of an invoice to be checked for payment. Can you imagine that? I started with that company in 1999 so that wasn't that long ago, soon however a scanner was introduced into the system which would 'revolutionise' the department. Now I, and please don't laugh, spent many years at that company sorting the post out. The call of the postroom most of the time was just too great a pull, particularly as it was rather a push and came from middle managers to which us ordinary Joe's don't have much of a choice, we're lucky if they demand nicely. Basically I'm still years latter very familiar with this process as me and that post were very close for a time. So the post would come in at around 8:30 and we'd manually sort it into different piles before it would get scanned. The aim was it would be sorted by 12 spent the rest of the day getting scanned and was ready for process first thing tomorrow, we also had to date stamp every single invoice, yep the whole lot, that's hundreds per day. Imagine the amount of money you waste in a year as a company by making your postal staff stamp every single invoice. That's a lot of money. Bear in mind in the former process it's all done by the end of the day. If you had a problem in this system with a document that had been scanned badly, which often happened, you'd have to find which batch it was scanned in, find the batch in the relevant shelf and go through the entire batch to find something which probably isn't there because either it's already been dealt with by another employee although there's no system so you wouldn't know that or Mr Bored Employee is so bored he's already dispatched it in a fashion his manager wouldn't approve of.
Have you ever been in a company who use the phrase, "cutting edge technology" too much? The companies who actually make use of cutting edge technology don't talk about it, they just get on with making money, whereas the others, who are they trying to convince? The difference is how the technology is applied. In the 80% paper office, paper used to have a habit of often going missing, when everything is digitised then you can't just put your work in the digital recycling bin as the computer knows about it and it's quite happy to tell your manager, it also doesn't mind being a snitch as it gets no come back of Joe the lazy employee. However keep everything manual and Joe employee can pretty much do whatever he like's, you can't prove someone's done something wrong if there's no evidence right!
I'll not shame this company in public by actually naming them yet warn you if you come near a company with a large office in India beginning with X that's difficult to pronounce, please for your own safety run a mile!
It's not just about surviving in tomorrow's business world but succeeding in today's. Which company do you think would succeed? In today's office environment a fax machine for example should be extinct, with the advent of email, which is free there's no reason to have a machine that costs you money. Right? Well why are offices littered with such dinosaur machines? Even if you work at home your printer can scan documents which you can send by email. On second thought there's really no major use for the postal system either is there? Phones? Maybe phones we keep but when we can plug them into the net at vastly reduced cost why don't we? Again think about it, how big a phone bill can a large office rack up a year. We're creatures of habit. That's just an excuse, it's about time time our department heads sat down and worked out how much our habit's costing them? Big deal if your an employee right? Wrong, not when the savings could largely cover your bonus.
We've covered quite a lot of stuff there. Together however for a large multinational were saving more money then several professional middle sized companies make in a year. Think about it, I'm not just saying that because it seems like the thing to write, 'hey look at me aren't I clever?'. But actually stop now and actually do think about it. Whether your Cyril the office cubicle slave or Burt who sits opposite the chairman at the board meetings and plays Golf with him when he isn't. If you work then the future with our little buddies will change everything. Not most things, no exceptions, were talking everything not most things.
Earlier I gave a figure of £10 million at least. So how do we reach that. When you think about the above and just changing one simple process of business so we have a paper less office then if we overhauled all our systems to a similar result how much do think that would save us. It makes those Indians look pricey. Put it this way, if we do real world not theoretical world, in my postal job we used to joke about the company sorting the post in India. The irony is all you needed was for it to be opened and scanned and that's exactly what they not only could have done but should have done. Think about it, at least three people, sometimes more on about a total of £40k when you have pretty much the whole system done in India for £4k that's a saving of over £30k a year on three jobs. Let's remember it's companies like these that like to pat themselves on the back because they have an office in India. Reality is they're processes are still as much use as a fish with a bike. Remember what I said about your bonus earlier. Now think about this how many employees does a big company have. Conservative estimate let's say you need 1,000 employees to be called a 'Big' Company. Keep the brains of the company and a few consultants who keep it ticking over, which is what the company of the future will look like. The rest of the jobs, get split between Indians and computer systems, that's at least 950 jobs. So if we take my old wage of £14k minus the Indian employee wage and were left with £12.7k. Multiply by 950 and you get and I think you'll find your big company has just saves £12,000,000. The computers mean you don't need to employ anywhere near as many Indians as before and you've saved another million.
That's £13,000,000.
And per year
I would call that a jaw dropping number wouldn't you. However that's a bit of a false economy as realistically your not be paying your Managers £14k and your Managers Managers will want to be on more again. Neither does it end there. Reality is we don't need to move all those jobs to our Outsourcing centre. Reality, as we've seen with the changing address scenario, is you don't need much of a call centre at all if you channel the bulk of your customer service through the internet. Streamline everything and you need less employees, again if we take the paper less office example ultimately there's not much use for many offices again so how much have we saved. Realistically I don't know, I know it's quite a bit of money! Dorothy, Kansas forget it, welcome to the company of tomorrow. There's a great phrase every department head loves, 'Saving Money'. However large businesses still haven't the intelligence to work out that this is exactly what the internet does. If we then get ourselves out of the box of 'saving money' and look at how something like having a paper less office speeds up our lousy processes then if we get into the box of 'making money' this subject takes a whole new twist. One thing we can say for sure is our original estimate of £10 million looks like peanuts doesn't it.
Or maybe it won't. Maybe you as the employee or the employer refuse to bow down to this modern god. Well if your Cyril Loyal Employee prepare to start looking for a new job that doesn't exist and if your Burt the board, well prepare to find a new job probably doing the same thing Cyril's looking for which doesn't exist and together you can maybe be like those two stooges out of that Eddie Murphy film, Coming to America, had it all and lost it! When, what I call, big companies wake up to the fact that they can save over £12m a year what chance have the competition got? If you snooze you loose.
When will this happen. I don't know? The only realistic answer I can give you is when the people that run business finally begin to earn their huge salaries, but then again roles on the board are like peerages aren't they. In fact most peers are board members of one company or another! What I do know is firstly it can happen now and secondly the change is inevitable sometime. I'll leave you with one my favourite quotes (again) and remember it's not about modernising or updating, everything we know and are most sure of must surely go, change is most definitely on the way.
If you don't like change your going to like irrelevance even less
General Eric Shineski
Thanks Eric, says it all!