January 25, 2001 The network: Ubiquitous, focused and specialized By Rob Rodin
If we could step back and look at the world from a distance,
we could see the Network of 2010, at least in outline. It’s
out there today, in bits and pieces, waiting to change our competitive
lives. Even if we can’t predict, exactly, how the technology
might work, we can see the forces of change that are driving
its evolution, and picture its shape and scope.
Rob Rodin is CEO of
eConnections
Change isn’t incremental anymore; it’s
exponential. Bandwidth explodes. Wireless replaces copper.
Globalization spreads, as businesses buy, sell and out-source
around the world. Competition gets fiercer as product life
cycles shrink. Customers keep demanding more, relentlessly:
cheaper, faster, better—and made to order. The battle
isn’t just company versus company. It’s supply chain
versus supply chain, with market share and margin going to
organizations that harness the best talents worldwide and
work most efficiently.
A new generation will have come of age by 2010,
the first to grow up in cyberspace. They will live and work
in a landscape where everything and every-one is connected,
constantly, chip to chip, in a network of networks, where
machines with complex instructions and monitoring systems
embedded inside will interface only with each other. No one
will boot up. The con-nections will always be on, controlled
by voice or triggered by body telemetry. E-business will disappear,
like e-everything else. The network will be ubiquitous, no
more remarked upon than the phone.
Time will be the most precious currency. Supply
chain success won’t be measured in connectivity or transactions,
but in the coordinated ability to move, reduce and eliminate
work, to cut steps, shave costs and save time. While the net-work
will include major transactional plumbing capability, and
some hub and spoke connectivity, specialists will add the
value. They’ll work to tailor the network interface to
individual users, and make it run on full power, fueled by
intellectual property, domain expertise, and a toolbox filled
with process solutions.
Managers will turn their mechanical tasks over
to a smart agent, a bot cus-tomized to fit their personal
profile and needs. Their individual representative on the
network, the agent will search out the best routes to the
best connec-tions, based on explicit and implicit commands.
Using the rules it has been given, it will find the best answers
for questions of price and delivery, shopping and shipping,
transactions, hand-offs, steps and processes, value and relationships.
Reporting by exception will give managers freedom
to make exceptions and override decisions. It will boost the
signal to noise ratio, too, improving the quality of the information
available to make those choices. But individual agents will
be able to learn, too, through self-diagnostic features designed
into the com-mand
profile.
Smart agents will talk to a smart network, finding
the specialists with the best solutions, then teaching and
learning together to make them better. Specialists will market
themselves two ways, through high-touch human-to-human contact
with customers and potential customers, and through the network
to customer’s individual agents, offering specific features
and benefits tailored to agents’ profiles.
Challenges of management will be more intense.
The network will create unforeseeable opportunities and risks.
Change will hurtle forward, and com-petition will accelerate.
For all the tech-nological power available in 2010, human
factors will be primary as they are today. There’s no
icon for wisdom, no technology to replace leadership, and
no direct connection to courage or daring.
