This continues a category of posts focused on Innovative Uses of Technology for Business Benefit. As I wrote in The Giant Crunching Sound, CIOs are crunching incumbent, utility technology spend and freeing up dollars for innovations.
While it modestly describes itself as "..a company dedicated to helping people work more effectively while helping organizations use space more efficiently", as you walk through Steelcase's campus in Grand Rapids, Michigan or any of its "work-life" centers around the world, you see innovation and creativity everywhere. Steelcase is a global leader around ergonomic and great looking office furniture (its LEAP chair won a number of design awards when introduced in 1999). It also owns a stake in IDEO, an innovation "machine" I have written about here. Even its trucks are considered innovative and show up in photo collections like this one
So, it is fitting that Steelcase's CIO, John Dean is passionate about innovative IT projects. I recently asked him about projects over the last couple of years he is most proud of. He identified four:
a) WI-FI everywhere. All of Steelcase's major buildings and plants have coverage. Has had a huge impact on knowledge worker productivity - employees can carry network based and local content and tools
to every place, including the cafe, through their laptop or tablet (John has been using a tablet for several years now).
Discussions are enriched with the content, decisions are accelerated.
b) Generating marketing graphics and manufacturing instructions from PRO/E. Steelcase wrote the modules using the integration APIs provided by PTC. Impact? Removal of manual replication of graphics and Numerical Control (NC) programs dramatically improving speed and quality
c) An early implementation of SAP's Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) functionality. The payback due to standardized processes, self-service and negotiated deals enabled by the technology has been impressive.
d) Putting GPS technology on the company's fleet of trucks (yes the ones popular with kids and photographers) to speed customs clearance, improve traffic planning and tracking of delivery metrics
John's team has to support a business which offers its customers a huge amount of choice - Steelcase processes 40,000 order lines per week across its 60,000 product codes each of which has unique BOMs.
That much complexity could easily result in bloated processes and technology. A big believer in "lean" techniques, John manages to find money for innovations by "crunching" his utility IT spend. Other than the SRM project, the other three projects above were small investments with huge payback. And SRM leveraged a previous investment in an SAP backbone implementation.
Crunching utility IT spend? It is fitting that Steelcase offers its customers a product called a "Crushed Can"....
