My Gartner colleague Art Mesher (now CEO of Descartes) talked about postponement as a supply chain innovation in the 90s. It was interesting to hear him talk to clients about fragmenting steps in distribution and other processes at the peak of the ERP, integrated process hype cycle.
A few years later I was fascinated when I first saw a Hertz attendant with a mobile car check-in device. They had “place-shifted” that task, and moved customers and employees away from the crowded counters to outside check-in islands . Much more efficient, much more pleasant.
This week, it hit me again as I was at a Chick-Fil-A during their busy lunch hour. A rep at the head of the drive –through lane took my order on a mobile device, a few feet away another rep processed my credit card, and the pickup window merely delivered my order. It was impressive how quickly both lanes moved with the place and time shifting of tasks in the process. After lunch, the process reverts to the previous one where the staff at the window process the order, the payment and the delivery.
Technology is allowing tasks in every process to be split, moved, re-sequenced or eliminated. The Delta Airlines Red Coat can now process a number of tasks with his Motorola at the boarding gate that previously required passengers to walk for miles to a ticket counter. The Home Depot associate can turn her Motorola into a scanner or checkout counter anywhere in the store. Cognizant’s annual budgeting process has become way more virtualized and efficient with Tandberg telepresence. HireVue allows candidates to be interviewed around the world, and for those sessions to be reviewed when and where convenient by the recruiter.
Given all this, I am always amazed to hear software vendors and outsourcers continue to pitch integrated, “wall to wall” processes and canned "best practices". All the jokes about “we poured concrete around our feet” comments about early ERP projects have fallen on deaf ears.
We need processes with recombinant tasks we can move, eliminate, re-sequence. We need to continually tinker with place and timing of tasks.That's far more impressive than uber-elaborate solutions that claim to have thought up all the inter-galactic "best practices"
