New Florence. New Renaissance.

Technology Innovation and the Salvage business

Salvage to me always brings images from the Jim Croce hit "Leroy Brown ...meaner than a junkyard dog". So, when I sat next to Jim Reilly on a flight recently and he said he was in the salvage business the conversation almost ended. Then he told me he ran a B2B site. And I figured it was near death like most marketplaces. But when he told me they held the record for the largest single biggest auctioned on-line item (over $ 25 m for 4 turbines) - bigger then anything ebay has ever sold, I started to show some more interest.

Jim is COO of a Houston based company called SalvageSale. They work with insurance companies, risk and asset managers. He has been spending considerable time in Florida recently with hurricane affected asset business owners.

2 stories he told were fascinating. One was about frozen shrimp which was rejected by a large retail chain because the batch had gone over its stringent temperature specifications. But only marginally so. In the past, the supplier would have sold it to a local salvage shop for may be 5% of sale price. But with the reach of an electronic marketplace - both in thousands of potential buyers around the world and "re-furbish" service providers - the merchandise was checked and certified free of e coli and other flaws, re-packaged and sold for almost 40c on the dollar.

The other was around an expensive server damaged in transit. Instead of going through the reverse logistics of sending it back to manufacturer, local "re-furbishers" re-certified the box and re-packaged it. While the original warranty was void, the asset sold for a lot more than it would have  - not to mention the reverse shipping and insurance costs were avoided. Again recovery was many times what it would have been a few years ago.

His site is filled with other case studies similar to this. What he was describing was the emergence of a "good enough" marketplace - where bargain hunters, but not real bottom fishers, can now get access to less than perfect assets. His site has stringent rules on deposits in to escrow accounts and dispute resolution - controls to satisfy wiring $ 25 million to someone you only know from the Internet.

The quality of the assets and the trust factor are bringing more professional buyers and sellers in to the salvage market. Leroy Brown would not begin to understand the word "dis-intermediation" - but he has to behave and pay a fairer price to win in this marketplace.

Salvage to me always brings images from the Jim Croce hit "Leroy Brown ...meaner than a junkyard dog". So, when I sat next to Jim Reilly on a flight recently and he said he was in the salvage business the conversation almost ended. Then he told me he ran a B2B site. And I figured it was near death like most marketplaces. But when he told me they held the record for the largest single biggest auctioned on-line item (over $ 25 m for 4 turbines) - bigger then anything ebay has ever sold, I started to show some more interest.

Jim is COO of a Houston based company called SalvageSale. They work with insurance companies, risk and asset managers. He has been spending considerable time in Florida recently with hurricane affected asset business owners.

2 stories he told were fascinating. One was about frozen shrimp which was rejected by a large retail chain because the batch had gone over its stringent temperature specifications. But only marginally so. In the past, the supplier would have sold it to a local salvage shop for may be 5% of sale price. But with the reach of an electronic marketplace - both in thousands of potential buyers around the world and "re-furbish" service providers - the merchandise was checked and certified free of e coli and other flaws, re-packaged and sold for almost 40c on the dollar.

The other was around an expensive server damaged in transit. Instead of going through the reverse logistics of sending it back to manufacturer, local "re-furbishers" re-certified the box and re-packaged it. While the original warranty was void, the asset sold for a lot more than it would have  - not to mention the reverse shipping and insurance costs were avoided. Again recovery was many times what it would have been a few years ago.

His site is filled with other case studies similar to this. What he was describing was the emergence of a "good enough" marketplace - where bargain hunters, but not real bottom fishers, can now get access to less than perfect assets. His site has stringent rules on deposits in to escrow accounts and dispute resolution - controls to satisfy wiring $ 25 million to someone you only know from the Internet.

The quality of the assets and the trust factor are bringing more professional buyers and sellers in to the salvage market. Leroy Brown would not begin to understand the word "dis-intermediation" - but he has to behave and pay a fairer price to win in this marketplace.

Gartner Survey of CIO Priorities

Gartner's annual survey of CIOs (1,400 surveyed with average IT budget of $ 71 million and staff of 300 IT employees) shows Business Process Improvement as the highest priority for 2006. Not surprising based on comments I got back from a few of them as they read my "process angioplasty" post.

Many of the innovative CIOs I have written about in the last year - Steelcase, Starbucks, others have focused on mobility, telemetry, predictive analytics, biometrics and collaboration applications. They have found huge paybacks from relatively small investments in those areas. Not surprisingly, those technologies get high priority. While the software industry keeps hyping up SOA as the silver bullet, CIOs rated that 6th in importance on technology priority. Another buzzword "virtualization" shows up 9th.

Gartner's annual survey of CIOs (1,400 surveyed with average IT budget of $ 71 million and staff of 300 IT employees) shows Business Process Improvement as the highest priority for 2006. Not surprising based on comments I got back from a few of them as they read my "process angioplasty" post.

Many of the innovative CIOs I have written about in the last year - Steelcase, Starbucks, others have focused on mobility, telemetry, predictive analytics, biometrics and collaboration applications. They have found huge paybacks from relatively small investments in those areas. Not surprisingly, those technologies get high priority. While the software industry keeps hyping up SOA as the silver bullet, CIOs rated that 6th in importance on technology priority. Another buzzword "virtualization" shows up 9th.

Web, Schweb - Enterprise Predictions for 2006

Whatever we remember 2005 for, we can all agree it was the year blogs exploded in numbers. And bloggers, shy as we are, are not hesitant to look ahead. But scanning the many blog projections for technology in 2006 we see a majority focused on Web 2.0 - Google this, Flickr that. Of course, with Apple and amazon.com enjoying a bumper holiday season, the focus on consumer technologies is only accented.

Much as I love Google, it cannot process BOMs for the average manufacturing company. Much as my daughter loves her iPod, it will not process insurance claims. Whoever does whatever with AOL will not improve supply chain logistics at UPS.

As we did in the last Internet Bubble, we risk making the Web and consumer technologies the center of the technology world. It's the Gates/Plattner scenario again I wrote about earlier. As I wrote in Florence during the Renaissance, innovation is happening in a number of other areas which CIOs are actually much more excited about - especially at amazing new price points. But as I have written in several columns this year, many elements of enterprise technology spend are also grossly overpriced.

So, here's my forecast for next year - good and bad - with more of an enterprise focus, unsexy as that may be relative to Web 2.0:

1) SAP, Oracle and Microsoft (around enterprise software) will have tough years as pricing pressure intensifies on core products, particularly on maintenance revenue streams. SAP will de-emphasize its web services talk and go back to focusing on applications and business payback. Oracle will go the other way and talk more about architectures as it masks the enormity of rationalizing its various application acquisitions. CIOs will increasingly question if all they are doing is subsidizing Microsoft's intense focus on Google. It is behind its own schedule or its competition in so many areas CIOs want to hear about - from Vista to Business Solutions (Dynamics)

2) We will see version 2.0 definitions of CRM, SCM, HRM etc - almost every software category - emerge which will a) redefine process coverage (e.g. CRM is more than SFA and call centers, SCM is much more than planning and optimization) that the market leaders have chosen to define the categories as and b) utilize appropriate, newer technology building blocks - GPS, RFID, RSS, predictive analytics in the category re-definition process.

3) CIOs in many non-manufacturing verticals will tire of waiting for robust software solutions for their major engines (claims processing, trading systems) and more aggressively look at BPO options to support these processes. These CIOs, especially in financial services verticals, will also pioneer attempts to leverage web 2.0 driven discovery and social networking tools with their enterprise applications.

4) An infrastructure vendor - likely Dell (or Sun as it tries to redefine itself and if it can get over its allergy of labor intensive products) - will introduce infrastructure outsourcing at aggressive, "utility" price points to cover a wide range of network, database, desktop and other services. In its hype cycle for outsourcing Gartner defines infrastructure outsourcing as one of the most mature. As systems management automation and offsite, shared labor models mature, an efficient services "supply chain" becomes much more viable.

5) A generation of "appligators" will emerge - small systems integrators which specialize in innovation areas like web services or telemetry and willing to work with clients in small, intense teams. We will not be able to tell till 2007 if they are of a more modest breed than their predecessors, the Scients, Viants around the ebiz boom in late 90s.

6) Large US and European outsourcers (EDS, Accenture and by extension IBM, HP etc) will find themselves squeezed between a) private equity firms who want to take their valuations from 1 or 2X revenues to close to 10X many of the Indian vendors enjoy and b) CIOs who want price points much closer to what Indian vendors can quote. This will force these outsourcers to finally get serious about becoming much more efficient with automation, shared services, global delivery models etc. They will find Indian vendors expanding into horizontal process consulting and BPO (finance, HR) beyond their traditional IT competencies.

7) An emerging truism in global sourcing circles is to look to China for low cost manufactured products, but to India for services. We will see China start this year to challenge this assumption and also flex its muscle around software and services. The Chinese GDP was recently "updated" by another $ 300 billion. Apparently they had "forgotten" to count their growing services sector.

8) SaaS models will come under increased scrutiny from buyers about stringent SLAs and business continuity plans. In 2001, after the India/Pakistan nuclear war threat, Indian vendors went through a similar spike in scrutiny. After last week's well publicized outage at salesforce.com, this will become a required due diligence step in evaluating SaaS options. The scrutiny helped Indian vendors mature - it will similarly increase corporate confidence in SaaS.

9) CIOs will do serious "spend management" around storage (due to proliferation of volume demand) and telecommunications (due to proliferation of mobile, broadband and other products) investments. For all the promise of VoIP and free municipal WI-FI, the reality is telecomm services are still the single largest category in IT budgets. Most CIOs would also love to avail of Google Mail's 2.7 gigabytes of storage for free!

10) Finally, one more of a prayer for the US economy than a prediction. Realize 2006 is an election year and Enron's Ken Lay will finally go on trial - but Gartner predicts 15% of 2006 IT budgets will be related to compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley. And as we know in different industries we have other compliance expenses related to FDA Validation, HIPAA etc. This is a tax American corporations have to pay that most of our global competitors do not. So, I predict CEOs will start lobbying Congress to back off on the compliance burden. It has been 4 years since the Enron scandal. Today global competitiveness in a "flat" world is a far more compelling issue than compliance.. So I predict the SOX gravy train for many software vendors and auditors will slow down in 2006.

This plus 6 quarters may buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks! Today plus 4 fiscal quarters out, a version customized by Zodiac signs is planned if a fraction of these predictions come true...

Technology Innovation and Santa

Over the holidays I got from a couple of different sources a cartoon which showed kids in line to make a phone call to a Santa "outsourced" to Bangalore. Cute, but Santa knows better. All he has done is outsourced his sleigh to UPS and his elves to amazon.com

Amazing the logistics and technologies going in to the gift order taking and delivery business.

The core technology infrastructure at UPS is massive  - 14 mainframes representing over 30,000 MIPS, over 125,000 PCs, and over 80,000 DIADs (Delivery Information Acquisition Device the drivers carry). The UPS.com site gets over 145 million hits a day.  The infrastructure processes 20 million packages a day between Thanksgiving and Christmas - most of them gifts. As this interview with CIO David Barnes shows, UPS is big on package flow process improvement and relevant technology like finger scanners to make their drivers ever so efficient. As this interview shows the payback is impressive - reduction of 100 million miles just in the US (they could use hybrids!), or 14 million gallons of fuel, not to mention labor and overtime.

amazon.com has moved ways past books (it sold a $ 94,000 set of diamond earrings this year!) This BusinessWeek story and photo gallery shows the order tracking and fulfillment process.  Scanners, sorting machines - pretty efficient. Interesting that gift wrapping and shipping is still fairly manual.   But the company's Delight-O-Meter - a metric tracking holiday sales shows pretty lofty numbers- 108 million orders this year.

Of course, it is not just UPS - Santa also uses Fedex, DHL, USPS. And it's not just amazon - it's L.L. Bean and so many other e-tailers. And Santa is even becoming good about taking "lumps of coal" back. Returns and reverse logistics are starting to get quite a bit of attention.

UPS has been running commercials where this guy enters a room titled "Oracle" and tells the goddess she is no longer needed for logistics and has been re-assigned to accounting. Not sure if it is a swipe at our friends in Redwood Shores, but UPS can afford to feel pretty good about its technological prowess. Santa agrees.

Technology Innovation and Steelcase

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"....

Fortune Innovation Summit

In keeping with the spirt of Florence during the Renaissance I have recently written about, I just received an invitation to the Fortune Innovation Summit

As I read the agenda, I felt pretty good that I have already written about many of the companies/individuals being discussed (see links I have embedded in the  text below) and more - like  Hertz, Jetblue, NFL, US-Mexico Border and others.

So, dear reader just read about them here and send me the check instead! No, seriously this should be a neat conference:

"A practical look at the strategies, tactics, models, and mindsets top brands in a variety of companies—Adobe, FedEx, Genentech, HBO, IBM, Target, and more—are using to innovate their way to profitability, growth, and value.

Innovation case studies focused on categories of excellence: Products-Scott Cook, Intuit; Partnerships-Ken Lombard, Starbucks Entertainment; Branding-Horst Schulze, Ritz-Carlton, West Paces; Talent-Billy Beane, Oakland A's.

Remarkable insights into how visionaries from outside the business world—including LAPD chief William Bratton, philanthropist Mike Milken and SpaceShipOne's Burt Rutan—have found new ways to solve old problems.

Strategies from business transformation experts such as Blue Ocean Strategy co-author Chan Kim, MIT's Eric von Hippel, and Stone Yamashita's Keith Yamashita"

In keeping with the spirt of Florence during the Renaissance I have recently written about, I just received an invitation to the Fortune Innovation Summit

As I read the agenda, I felt pretty good that I have already written about many of the companies/individuals being discussed (see links I have embedded in the  text below) and more - like  Hertz, Jetblue, NFL, US-Mexico Border and others.

So, dear reader just read about them here and send me the check instead! No, seriously this should be a neat conference:

"A practical look at the strategies, tactics, models, and mindsets top brands in a variety of companies—Adobe, FedEx, Genentech, HBO, IBM, Target, and more—are using to innovate their way to profitability, growth, and value.

Innovation case studies focused on categories of excellence: Products-Scott Cook, Intuit; Partnerships-Ken Lombard, Starbucks Entertainment; Branding-Horst Schulze, Ritz-Carlton, West Paces; Talent-Billy Beane, Oakland A's.

Remarkable insights into how visionaries from outside the business world—including LAPD chief William Bratton, philanthropist Mike Milken and SpaceShipOne's Burt Rutan—have found new ways to solve old problems.

Strategies from business transformation experts such as Blue Ocean Strategy co-author Chan Kim, MIT's Eric von Hippel, and Stone Yamashita's Keith Yamashita"

Ray Lane: "New Florence" Tour Guide

I have written before comparing the innovation and creativity happening in the tech world to Florence  during the Renaissance.

Ray Lane, Kleiner partner and ex Oracle President (and before that EDS, Booz Allen) is one of the few people I know equally comfortable with CIOs and venture capitalists. In the attached podcast he talks about a wide range of topics from Web 2.0 and social networking to open source and how CIOs react to some of this innovation.

He is a pretty credible tour guide to the " New Florence"...

I have written before comparing the innovation and creativity happening in the tech world to Florence  during the Renaissance.

Ray Lane, Kleiner partner and ex Oracle President (and before that EDS, Booz Allen) is one of the few people I know equally comfortable with CIOs and venture capitalists. In the attached podcast he talks about a wide range of topics from Web 2.0 and social networking to open source and how CIOs react to some of this innovation.

He is a pretty credible tour guide to the " New Florence"...

Technology Innovation and Xcel Energy

I am fascinated by how different companies are using technology to solve their "last mile" issues - laying cables, delivering boxes, scheduling field engineers etc. so I enjoyed this article about how Xcel Energy is using technology for its dispatch function ...but there is more.

What is interesting here is how the company pushed 5 of its vendors - IBM, Indus, SPL, Mercury and Itron - to more than deliver their packaged solutions but instead to work with each other and innovate.

This is encouraging because as I have been writing my innovation series and talking to a number of CIOs,  the feedback has mostly been the innovation teams have been internal and those teams have taken off the shelf (though early) technology like WI-FI or RFID and run with it. When I asked one executive what role a certain systems integrator played on his innovation project, his answer was very direct - "We are the brains, they are the hands".

If vendors expect innovation v/s utility pricing, they will have to step up like these vendors did for Xcel.

I am fascinated by how different companies are using technology to solve their "last mile" issues - laying cables, delivering boxes, scheduling field engineers etc. so I enjoyed this article about how Xcel Energy is using technology for its dispatch function ...but there is more.

What is interesting here is how the company pushed 5 of its vendors - IBM, Indus, SPL, Mercury and Itron - to more than deliver their packaged solutions but instead to work with each other and innovate.

This is encouraging because as I have been writing my innovation series and talking to a number of CIOs,  the feedback has mostly been the innovation teams have been internal and those teams have taken off the shelf (though early) technology like WI-FI or RFID and run with it. When I asked one executive what role a certain systems integrator played on his innovation project, his answer was very direct - "We are the brains, they are the hands".

If vendors expect innovation v/s utility pricing, they will have to step up like these vendors did for Xcel.

Technology at US/Mexico Border

Naysayers see the US/Mexico border as nothing but trouble, but the reality is the truck and rail traffic both ways represents over $ 200 b in a year in merchandise. BusinsessWeek has a story - A Border Transformed on how the border is using technology to keep the bad guys out, yet not stifle the vibrant trade.  It must be the most high-tech border crossing in the world, far more sophisticated than the US-Canada one.

The article talks about usage of a number of new and established technologies:

a) Use of transponders to allow use of high speed lanes for those who qualify for the INS's   SENTRI program
b) Electronic Pre-notification an hour before crossing - using supply chain concepts behind Advance Ship Notice (ASN) EDI transaction
c) The Free and Secure Trade (FAST) program to pre-certify manufacturers, importers, carriers
d) X-Ray, Gamma Ray detectors to scan trucks and rail cars and portable radiation detectors

What the article  does not describe is the technology investments going into the trucks and the railways - the RFID, GPS Tracking, Route Planning and a whole bunch more.  Not to mention all the INS, customs and other databases and analytical technologies.

As the Taco Bell commercial says - some one is Thinking outside the Bun here.

Naysayers see the US/Mexico border as nothing but trouble, but the reality is the truck and rail traffic both ways represents over $ 200 b in a year in merchandise. BusinsessWeek has a story - A Border Transformed on how the border is using technology to keep the bad guys out, yet not stifle the vibrant trade.  It must be the most high-tech border crossing in the world, far more sophisticated than the US-Canada one.

The article talks about usage of a number of new and established technologies:

a) Use of transponders to allow use of high speed lanes for those who qualify for the INS's   SENTRI program
b) Electronic Pre-notification an hour before crossing - using supply chain concepts behind Advance Ship Notice (ASN) EDI transaction
c) The Free and Secure Trade (FAST) program to pre-certify manufacturers, importers, carriers
d) X-Ray, Gamma Ray detectors to scan trucks and rail cars and portable radiation detectors

What the article  does not describe is the technology investments going into the trucks and the railways - the RFID, GPS Tracking, Route Planning and a whole bunch more.  Not to mention all the INS, customs and other databases and analytical technologies.

As the Taco Bell commercial says - some one is Thinking outside the Bun here.

Hertz and Customer Service Innovations

Ask most travelers what the least hassling aspect of a business trip is, and the likely answer is that related to their rental car.  That may seem like a left handed compliment but given the joys of travel these days, it is a compliment. Hertz Rent-a-Car, now part of Ford, but soon to go IPO, is one major reason for driving customer service that the rest of the industry has to emulate. And a lot of that service comes from leveraging one technology innovation after another.

While most Hertz employees are pleasant, I love the fact that on most rentals, I can get away with a total of 4 interactions each averaging a minute or two with them.  I get on their courtesy bus and tell them my name. I show my driver's license when I exit the garage. I tell the attendant the mileage and fuel level when I return the car. I tell the shuttle driver the airline I am flying. Every thing else is automated or uses self-service technology.

Start with the web-site for reservations.  First introduced in 1996,  the site has evolved to support multi-lingual customers in over 7.000 locations around the world.  Given one way drop-offs, weekend rates, corporate discounts and an amazing range of cars and options, the site is pretty easy to navigate. You can print driving directions from the site (uses Microsoft Mappoint) or from a kiosk when you land. The kiosk computerized directions were introduced way back in 1984. Most competitors still only hand out paper maps, so I must admit I have cheated and availed of the Hertz kiosk if I happen to be renting from a competitor.   Of course, with the on-board option on many of their cars called NeverLost you can get GPS navigation, first introduced in 1995.

When you get on their courtesy bus, the driver has an Intermec handheld computer which allows him to relay on an AT&T wireless network to the garage which customers are en-route. That way, you could be coming in at an unplanned time and they still make sure the car is assigned and ready to go.  At the garage canopy, there are electronic boards pointing the customer to the assigned parking space - handy given the bigger locations have hundreds of such parking slots. They have the contract printed out and in the car. The garage attendant at the exit verifies your license, asks if you want to prepay for gas and lets you on your way. Many of the competitors still make even their frequent fliers sign contracts at 5 places in triplicates. Of course, they also try to sell you more insurance and upgrades you do not want.  From entering their bus to out of their garage averages 15 minutes, compared to twice or three times with many competitors. Of course, with WI-FI at Hertz garages, you can choose to stay and work on your laptop as long as you want - but it's your choice.

The cars themselves are loaded with technology (if you choose the options). In addition to the GPS mentioned above, Hertz has Sirius satellite radio (and likely soon satellite TV - Avis already has an arrangement with DirecTV), and DVD players handy for family trips.  (Caveat:  see growing privacy and law-enforcement concerns with tracking devices).

It is the streamlined return process which has always impressed me, and allowed me to catch a few flights I should have missed.  Attendants with their wireless devices and printers can process returns in the parking lot in seconds and allow you to jump on the courtesy bus. While most of the competition now offers something similar, Hertz pioneered this in 1987. The bus in turn is wired to tell you what gate your flight is scheduled for take-off.

Back to the web site.  Each rental receipt is available on-line for 6 months. Frequent flier mile requests can be processed on-line. Try getting retroactive credits with other travel companies  without calls and paperwork!

This is all the technology a customer interacts with. Behind the scenes is a sophisticated reservation and inventory management system, scheduling technology to optimize the pick up routes across various terminals at airports, maintenance record keeping for over 500,000 cars and so on - a pretty complex network.

Post 9/11, a number of airports have moved car rental garages away from terminals and also mandated shared shuttle service. Some of Hertz's innovations have been negated with this supposedly "equitable" treatment of all rental companies.  But given its track record of "firsts" in the industry, Hertz still is a shining example of how technology can dramatically improve customer service - in this case. by dramatically reducing the "face time" your employees need to have with your customer.