Przerażony kameleon - eseje o przyszłości zarządzania - E-mentor

The organization of tomorrow as seen today beginning from a yesterday perspective
Thinking of its scale of operations, our company also knew that it needed to reach a large
number of people as directly as possible at the lowest possible cost. Advertising and direct
marketing as well as canvas telemarketing are means of doing this, but still it needed a more
direct approach. For this reason it decided that it would recruit local sales teams in the areas
it was interested in covering to do the selling of its product. Our company does not employ
these people directly but rather outsources the job to local companies that do the selling and
organizing for them. These teams are remunerated on a pay for performance basis, so the motivation
is high and the fixed costs are low in case the service is not sold. This method helps our
company to cover 40 million residents in a very short time, creating a formidable sales force
by any standards.
At this point it would be good to summarize what partners are thus far involved directly:
• media house,
• telemarketing,
• printing house,
• courier companies,
• local sales teams.
Along with these institutions, there are many more subcontractors that work for our company
on a daily basis in insuring that its service is delivered most efficiently to the customer.
These partners in effect take over for our company many tasks involved in running the
operations of the business. If we dissect the process in short, we can see that our company is
involved in the strategy aspect of the operations but the execution is wholly outside their scope
of duties. If we consider who really is the engine of the company, we see that it is everyone but
our company and its employees. True, it is their idea to send voice over IP. However, they do
not have any of their own infrastructure… anywhere. They have routers and computers that
selectively catch their customer’s conversations and reroute them to go over their leased fiber
optic cables or satellite connections (they of course don’t own the satellites). Our company is
the brain of the network. It is the think tank that brought the idea to the table and is realizing it,
financing the operations and harvesting the profits. But in reality, the majority of their success
is based on the close relationships our company has with its aligned partners. We can see this
if we just ask: “how does our company convince the customers to use its service?” and “how
was it able to get the information out to the customers? How did it get in the signed contracts
from its customers?” Below is a flow diagram of who and how is involved in just the operational
side of the endeavor. This does not take into account the service rendered itself. That is a whole
other account not covered here.
The process begins with telemarketing, which sells the idea of the service to the customers.
After this is done, packets of information are sent to the customer. The materials for the packets
were printed by the printing firm and picked up to be assorted by the courier companies. The
same courier company delivers the packets to the interested customers, who are contacted either
directly or via phone by telemarketing. If the customer is “sold”, the courier company comes
to receive the signed contract and answers any outstanding questions. The minute the contract
is picked up, the courier sends a message via the internet to telemarketing that the contract is
ready for processing. At this point the telemarketing can report directly to our company in real
time as to the success of the sales campaign. At the end of the day the contracts are delivered
to the telemarketing partners in order to begin data entry. Within a few days the customer is
signed up and using our company’s services. In the background during this time are the local
sales teams that sell directly to the customers. The completed contracts are also picked up by
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