deal architect

New Normal: A conversation with Charles Phillips of RECOGNIZE

I have been doing video interviews with a number of C-level execs and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to the growing list of interviews. 

This time, it is Charles Phillips. He has had an amazing career in the Marines, on Wall Street, then as President of Oracle, as Chairman of Infor (which was sold to Koch Industries earlier this year), now as an investor, philanthropist and as board member of several public and private sector institutions.

He has been spending a lot of time thinking about next-gen business processes. He sees a breakdown of jobs into tasks and a lot more automation at that component level. He sees the process re-think as both an opportunity and a threat to today's enterprise vendors.  We also discuss the likely impact on the job market. He discusses a Business Council project he in involved with which is looking at next-generation jobs in construction, advanced manufacturing, healthcare and tech. They are looking at "mid-skill" jobs that don't need 4 year college degrees. We have 'over-credentialed" too many jobs requiring such degrees in the recent past.

I have always been impressed with how Charles, as a person of color, has navigated his way around so many organizations. He humbly credits his upbringing in a military family and moving around every couple of years. That taught him to get along with people of every stripe. I particularly liked his views and advice to younger folks and civic leaders starting around 8:25. He is optimistic the conversation around diversity in business and society this time "has legs".

We also discuss Wall Street, its highs when Main Street is hurting, the coming market for vertical applications, the Fed's performance in the last few months, revving up the New York City economy post-pandemic and making it safer and more attractive to visitors. (BTW, he talks about the Fed's acrobatics - you can hear more of their policies in this unprecedented live webcast today at 9 am from Kansas City)

He is also very involved in party politics, but we stayed away from that. I liked the positive end when he talks about his son returning from a deployment in Okinawa. Having been "outside the bubble" for 4 years, he comments positively and optimistically about the state of the country. Charles says "someone that age saying that, I hope they are all saying that"   

An uplifting conversation at many levels.

Where have all the process visionaries gone?

A recent visit to an Amazon Fulfillment Center was eye-opening. They have completely redefined the old warehouse pick, pack, ship mindset. It's now stow, pick, pack, verify, and in their lingo, SLAM and "chaotic storage". Kiva robots and miles of conveyor belts bring work to employees not the other way round. Scanners, scales, sensors monitor and facilitate the worker - what size box to assemble, cut right length of packing tape, apply shipping labels etc. Read more about my visit here. 

I was recounting the visit to a software CEO. He said "Amazon is amazing". And I responded - "it's not just Amazon". I told him about companies I have worked with and written about that have dramatically rethought their processes with all kinds of modern technology - shop floors, cashierless stores, return logistics, transportation routing, payment processing and on and on. He asked me which vendors they work with. And I named a few then stopped and said "In the end, these customers are themselves driving the vision about the new process with a wide range of technologies. Rarely is there a single vendor or product".

The realization sunk in that true process innovation is not really being bought "shrink wrapped". Companies which are taking a "systems approach" - adding sensors, robots, flexible workflow, RPA at front, center, back of any process - are getting stunningly better results.

Of course, plenty of SIs will continue to talk about "best practices" embodied in packaged software, and many customers will say they are satisfied with "good enough" processes.

Most software vendors have in the move to cloud computing hired good architects who have helped them think about multi-tenancy and platform technology. They have not invested similarly in business process experts, especially those unique to individual industries or geographies. And even with the underlying technology they have waited for consumer tech to innovate with UX, AI etc. A few of their "good enough processes" added together could translate to several basis points of margin lost every year.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon has been known to say "your margin is my opportunity". I used to think it was his way of targeting fat, dumb, high-margin competitors. After visiting his warehouse, I think he also means to target companies which are not focused enough on margins and instead waste them in process inefficiencies.   

Digital Transformation–India Visa Process

Last February, I described the nightmare applying for visas to India. In the end the trip got cancelled before my wife and I got the ten year visa on our passports.

For these holidays we were looking at a family trip to India and I applied for the kids with a sense of dread.

The good news this time. Several improvements:

• India uses a new outsourcer, Cox and Kings and as the tracking shows, the processing time was a reasonable 7 days
• The website was much more stable – though it is mostly optimized for IE
• I did not have to make a single call or send a single email to check on the status. They emailed us periodic updates.

All good stuff, but the process is still very analog. The package we sent in had 9 pages (for each) of documentation in addition to the passport, photo and money order.

We had to go to the post office to get money orders, Walgreens to get photos, UPS for the shipping documents. All those steps can be digitized. The site says you can pay online, but I could not find where. The application allows you to upload a digital photo, but also requires a printed photo, and a copy of your driver’s license.

The application asks redundant questions, and then the site has you fill out other forms which ask more redundant questions. There are other land mines – multiple signatures required, and one in particular can cause rejections if it is not in a specific block.  Also, try jamming in the space provided "countries visited in last 10 years"

The site should have a configurator which tells you what your total fee is. Instead they make you navigate this confusing schedule

The 7 day processing is a bit misleading. We shipped the application by UPS on October 12 and got it back October 30.

These days you can get a visa upon arrival in India. That's a for one time visit, but should the multi-year visa process not be similarly streamlined? For a country so adept at software development, the process should be a much more pleasant digital experience.

Everything that glitters….is not digital

OK, so I admit. I write books about Digital Enterprises, I prefer digital banking, mobile travel sites, GPS navigation over paper maps, self service airline check-in and grocery store check-out.

I will take a digital route way before a paper/people/process heavy route. That conviction just got shattered in a big way.  No one to blame but myself.

I do not have to deal with the Indian consulate too often because they issue 10 year visas. But past experiences with the Houston branch have been miserable. It used to be  a black hole – send your passport in and weeks of checking, groveling later the visa arrives. Once I was on call to the State Department to try and get a replacement passport because the Indian consulate was so unresponsive.

So, I told my wife in early January I would fly to Houston and get the visas done in person this time. I had a trip coming up in March and that seemed sufficient time to get our visas. I could have used an outside agency to process the visa but past experience has not been consistent so I prefer to deal with consulates myself, unpleasant as that experience often is.

Glad I did not fly to Houston. Turns out our jurisdiction has been moved to a new Atlanta Indian consulate. I actually cheered – maybe the newer consulate is more efficient and besides, it is a shorter flight. Then someone told me the visa process had also been outsourced. I presumed that would be even better, and checked their site and found on-line applications and a passport/visa tracking workflow. My digital brain was sold!

Wish I had done some research on the outsourcer, BLS – I would have found horror stories as in this Change.Org petition.

Instead I merrily started filling out the on line application for both my wife and me. The on-line application was a UX misery. 3 pages of data which the consulate should already have had. Truncated fields for questions like all countries travelled to in last 10 years.  Multiple captchas. Took me 2 hours to do mine. Having made mistakes on mine, my wife’s took a bit more reasonable 30 minutes.

I should have also gathered by now the process is barely digital because I needed to go to my bank to get money orders (BLS has not heard of PayPal), AAA for photos (in fairness the BLS site does allow digital photo uploads, but knowing how fussy consulates can be I was afraid to send in selfies) and 3 trips to my local UPS store. 3 trips to UPS? Yes, once to get them to interpret  the 3 pages of shipping instructions (not kidding), second when the online application required the shipping bill info (so glad my friend Scott Galloway runs the local franchise and did me that favor and pre generated that for me) and third to actually ship the documents. Separate package for each of us with tracking info taped on front of package (hello privacy concerns : the label the BLS site generates has your passport number for every UPS employee to see).

Anyways, the applications were done. UPS tracking showed the packages delivered. BLS’s tracking site below showed applications received January 16. My digital brain relaxed.

On Sunday, January 19 I received an email from BLS saying they needed proof of residence. I was impressed more than annoyed. An email communication on a Sunday? Yes, things were surely moving. So I went to post office and mailed them a copy of my driver’s license.

This is where a parallel analog process started. While our license copies were in transit to them,  they physically returned our passports with the same request they had emailed. Why, oh why? So we basically started again and out of abundant caution I included a second set of money orders. I included a note asking for the second one to be refunded.  The costs were piling up - $ 600 in fees, $150 in shipping charges, time at bank and UPS. Still, we had only lost a week so far and the process appeared to be somewhat digital.

No updates for next couple of weeks. The Atlanta BLS office has a phone number of its site. 4 phone calls to it have always resulted ending in an unnamed, and always full, voice mail box. However, my wife’s visa arrived digitally unannounced on February 6. Mine did not. That started a flurry of phone calls and attempts by friends in New York and elsewhere to track status of my passport.

On February 10, I finally talked to a BLS employee. He asked me for a copy of a revoked passport and fortunately agreed to accept a scanned copy. He emailed me back that the visa would be done by end of week. If I had not managed to talk to him I had a reservation to fly that week to Atlanta to get some personal attention at the BLS office. That would have added another $ 500 in costs.

End of week came and went. No passport. My client who wanted the trip to India told me they could only wait couple of days more. So now with even more urgency I tried to call BLS. I emailed multiple times the employee I had talked to week before. No response. Call center calls kept disconnecting due to volume of calls. My troops in New York and elsewhere also jumped into action by going to local BLS offices to see if they had better luck reaching the Atlanta center.

On Thursday I finally managed to get someone live in the BLS call center. Passport should be with you Friday they say. An escalation ticket I had opened on BLS site results in email with same info. Neither told me if visa had been issued. More suspense till the UPS package arrived.

I now have the visa but the client has cancelled the trip to India. At least I have the passport for a trip to Germany in early March.

BTW, the UPS tracking site shows my passport delivered. The BLS tracking site still shows no updates since January 16! And just to highlight the random nature of the process - my second fee came back uncashed. My wife's did not.

My faith in digital processes has become a bit more cautious.  I will keep the bar code sticker from the consulate on my passport as reminder just because a process uses scanners and other technology does not mean it cannot be polluted by useless analog steps.

Update: The Indian government has terminated the BLS contract and called for new bids

 

The History of the Office …and the Future of Work

Excerpts from my guest column for Unevenly Distributed, a publication from Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work.

“Through the last couple of decades, the TV show “The Office” (the US and the predecessor British show) has been surreal. You see cubicles, water coolers and fax machines and you wonder which real-life office remains so frozen in time. The reality, of course, is the workplace – where, when, how we work – has seen dramatic shifts. We outline below 10 ways the “office” has morphed.”

I then go into the 10 office “mutations” which are influencing how we are and will be working in the future:

• The time elastic office
• The place elastic office
• The office of “Things”
• The home as office
• The truck as office
• The commute as office
• The airport hotel as office
• The Green office
• The Toystore as office
• The great outdoors as office

Enjoy the full version of my column, and many other thought provoking perspectives on the Future of Work on the Unevenly Distributed site.

Recombinant business processes

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"

Breaking up is hard to do

Why do smart companies, those that make it easy to start relationships on-line force you to go through all kinds of manual processes to end the relationship?

a) I call Amex to cancel a card I do not use as much. The rep says their process calls for me to speak to a specialist who focuses on account closings - likely one who tries to save the account. I repeatedly insist I do not want to be "salvaged" but he tries to get the specialist on the line and next thing the cell phone line drops. He does not call back - I presume he has closed the account. Few days later, I decide to check. The account is still open. Go through the 2 step process again. The specialist wants to ask all kinds of questions. I have to be rude and say I do not want to be part of his survey. Still tries to get one question in before he gives up.

b) I try to cancel my Boingo account. They say cannot do it by email on-line because of "security restrictions". Come on you can check on security with a series of on-line questions. So I call customer service and am on hold for too long and give up.

I will dispute the Boingo charges on my Amex statement. Let their reps save each others souls :)

Business Process Angioplasty: Banking technology

May be I was too generous too soon writing about them on the New Florence innovation blog, but the last 5 out of 6 times the Bank of America ATMs have either not recognized the checks being deposited and just spit them back or they have not recognized the amount of the check and I have had to punch in the amount. And this is across 4 ATM machines in 3 branches – so not just an isolated machine. BTW – all the machines appear less than a year old.  When I went in to the teller inside to deposit the checks that the machine would not take, I zipped my ATM card in the pin pad opposite her, so she should have had all the account information on her screen – and she still had me fill out a manual deposit slip. One of BofA bragging points about the new ATMs – when they work – is they make deposit slips redundant.

Talking about adding labor to a process which should be way automated, my Chase credit card security group loves to call me every few weeks. After years and thousands of transactions most of which are with repeat vendors, their pattern recognition algorithms are either not tuned (recently they asked me to verify  4 transactions, the total of which was under $ 20 – can we talk materiality?)or their security is trigger happy.  Of course, the usual comment is “Sir, it’s for your security” Yeah, then how come Amex which we do even more business with has called us may be once in the last 5 years to check on something – and I tend to use that on my international trips which should trigger more alerts.

PS – I should have mentioned most of the checks I have tried to deposit were written on other BofA branches. Maybe the ATMs are actually pretty smart and trying to tell me something about BofA. I should try a Chase check next :)

Absolutely Mind-Boggling!

This will shine as an extreme example of  a “process needing angioplasty”

Four years ago, we canceled our account with Blizzard for World of Warcraft as I described here – we could not make it work even with a new computer, new modem and hundreds of dollars in network diagnostics. Every quarter since they have billed my credit card and the card company has disputed it with them and credited my account.

For four years!!

I sarcastically blogged about it again a year later hoping a marketing person would notice. No action.

I even sent a snail-mail letter to President Mike Morhaime begging for some executive attention.  Check – there has been no activity on the account. Stop the insane cycle. No response from him or his staff.

I finally get an email:

“Access to the World of Warcraft account XXXXXXXXX, has been temporarily disabled due to a dispute filed against the account's past payments. This dispute was filed by the bank, credit card company, or financial institution associated with the payment on the account.

As a result of this dispute, funds paid on the account were withdrawn from Blizzard Entertainment in direct violation of the account's terms. This is known as a "chargeback."

The total withdrawn by this chargeback(s) was: $XXX.XX

If your charge is returned to Blizzard Entertainment for any reason, Blizzard Entertainment reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to suspend or terminate your access and your Account, as well as terminating this Agreement and all of Blizzard Entertainment's obligations hereunder.

The account is now considered by Blizzard to have a negative balance, and will be unavailable for play until any and ALL outstanding balances have been repaid to Blizzard. These funds can only be repaid via a United States money order for the full and EXACT amount of the disputed funds: $XXX.XX

This money order must be made out to "Blizzard Entertainment" and MUST clearly list the World of Warcraft account name in question:

XXXXXXXX

It should be mailed to this address:

ATTN: Billing & Account Services
Blizzard Entertainment
P. O. Box 18979
Irvine, CA 92623

We strongly suggest you use some form of tracking to make sure your mail gets to Blizzard Entertainment; we are not able to assist with lost inquiries. If we do not receive your package, we will not be able process your request. Once the money order is received and processed, Blizzard will unlock the account for play again, provided these instructions have been followed. Upon payment, Blizzard will also credit the account with play time equivalent to any paid subscription time that the account was locked out for (up to a maximum of 180 days).

This process to unlock the account is offered with this email is considered as a final warning: ***ANY subsequent payment disputes will result in a permanent closure of the account for repeated breach of the Terms of Use.***

Unless the above process is followed to get the money order to Blizzard, the World of Warcraft account in question will remain unplayable until said funds are received. Please do not reply to this email, as you will receive no further response. Be aware that Blizzard Billing representatives will NOT be able to provide any alternatives or expedite this process in any way.

Regards,

Billing & Account Services
www.blizzard.com”

All I can say is hooray – some body there finally noticed!

RIP: Dr. Michael Hammer

I have been remiss to not blog about the passing of "Mr. Reengineering" two weeks ago.

My vivid memory is him presenting in a large auditorium and his booming voice reminded me of Neil Diamond's Brother Love "And when he lets go half the valley shakes".

The next time I saw him was in a much smaller room, he was much more subdued and seemed very aware that many mass layoffs in the 90s had been justified using his book. As he told the WSJ, "I was reflecting my engineering background and was insufficiently appreciative of the human dimension"

There is one nugget I picked up from his writings and speeches. Look at any business process from a customer POV. If the customer does not see value in a process step, obliterate the step. Screw what the accountants or attorneys or engineers say about the step being critical. Look at the process coldly from the customer's eyes. That nugget inspired me to have a category on this blog "Business Process Angioplasty" .

I rededicate that portion of the blog, to you, Dr. Hammer.