All home, office and computer – a Neapolitan of reciprocation – virtual warehouses …
Telecommuting? The magical word perhaps is already outdated before it's even born. And while a lot is being said about the experimentation of working from home for 7,000 British Telecom employees or for some thousand Italians, experts are questioning themselves about the true revolution of the next few years: e-work, electronic work, that is, working via the Internet. "Because", explains Angel Failla, 42, head of the Studies and Research department of the IBM Foundation, "it's just as true as what economist Alfred Marshall said 80 years ago". What did Keynes' teachings delight in? "He supported the idea that the importance of a new idea destined to provoke epochal changes is never fully understood by the generation that produced it". According to the guru, it's taking time to understand the potential of new technologies. Failla says: "There are too many optical illusions; we're stuck on journalistic suggestions. The truth is that work, everything that is work, will change in substance. And the advent of the Internet will revolutionize work: professional categories will disappear; others will be born; rhythms and ways of life will change, even in the smallest details; and people's mentality, their conscience, will be placed in new territories. E-commerce and e-business are just two aspects of this story. And telecommuting, which is being talked about a lot, will perhaps occupy just a footnote". The outline of a widespread conviction. Marco Maiocchi is 53 years old. In 1978, he founded Etnoteam with two colleagues from the Polytechnic of Milan (Roberto Polillo and Alberto Cazziol), a company that solves business problems through computer science technologies. Today, Etnoteam, chaired by Roberto Galimberti, has 550 employees and a turnover of over 90 billion, with plans to go public within the year. Just like I.net (founded in '94 and backed by American financier George Soros), which forecasts a turnover of 80 billion for the next year. Maiocchi illustrates the state of the art with an example.
The gift of ubiquity
"This morning", he says, "I had a coffee at the bar. Then I went to the office. I read my mail and the reports on my desk. I wrote answers and met with colleagues. Later, with my assistant, I organized my schedule for tomorrow. Then I went to the archives to do some research, for which I also consulted three experts. I bought some books and reserved a flight, hotel, and car for the weekend". A normal day? Not quite. "The innovation", says Maiocchi, "is that the only physical place that still exists is the bar. Everything else no longer corresponds to a physical place or a specific time. Man has acquired the gift of ubiquity, has achieved the disintermediation of space and time. And the meaning of metaphors has changed. If I tell a colleague to leave something on my desk, they know I'm talking about my portable computer. If there's a meeting, it's a computer conference. The archives are everything that's accessible to the world through the net. "To call someone" means to chat via email, which is more effective and less intrusive than the phone". The shape is changing, but above all, the substance of work is being turned upside down. "Talking about working hours, an office, traditional productivity control systems, or master-servant relationships is not only inadequate but completely meaningless", says Maiocchi. "The traditional control of productivity is over. We only work for objectives. The future is in Total Quality Management. All this leads to an increase in the concept of participation. The cultural change introduced by the net is total, to the point of changing the very roots of labor law".
Always and everywhere working
It may seem paradoxical, but e-work seems to be going in the opposite direction of telecommuting. Other than the word "work". The perspective is exactly the opposite: being able to work always and everywhere, with total connection and interaction capabilities and a level of involvement (which also means motivation) that's skyrocketing. "Also because", says Giovanni Pedde, general manager for Italy of Paramount, "the true moment of learning and challenge is in human contact. And modern organizations, especially those with a matrix structure, consider face-to-face work and the charismatic function of the leader to be essential elements". The net, in short, will evolve in the opposite direction: to fully immerse the activity, free from spatial and temporal constraints, in the vast magma of everything that's able to converse and interact, in a continuous and truly total impulse. "Just for this reason", Failla says again, "economic truths that are not on the net will not only fail to expand but will soon no longer have the conditions to survive. Everything, from information to resources, is already on the net. And it's here that the organization passes, not just in terms of information, but also in terms of how it's used, on the condition that it's used consciously, effectively, and intelligently", beyond those who often see the web as just a showcase or Internet as a mailbox. Someone is already trying to navigate these new dimensions, and Capital has selected three exemplary stories, without borders, and all Italian.
A Neapolitan of reciprocation
You take a Neapolitan who decides not to be in Naples "because, in order to work, at least for a few years, you have to make compromises with politicians or pacts with the Camorra". You transport him to a beautiful city near Munich; you make him work for a dozen years in the field of robotics. Finally, you give him a solid knowledge of the computer science world and make him return to Naples, at least from a creative point of view. The result of this cocktail is Vincenzo Marino, 42, the inventor of the first total telematic service for managing industrial spare parts. Simple story, but the result promises to be even more shattering for companies than what Amazon has been for book lovers (Capital, March 1999). "Any company, anywhere in the world", says Marino, "can now order the industrial parts they need for production or maintenance through us, and receive them in a variable time frame, from a few hours to a maximum of two days". In practice, the Unitec system (this is the name of Marino's company) allows companies to get in touch with thousands of warehouses from various companies, select the parts they need with a single procedure, and authorize the purchase order. From that moment on, Unitec takes care of finding the goods from various sources and delivering them. The advantage for the buyer is to place a single order, operate in their national language, and receive a single invoice. "Every single purchase order", explains Marino, "costs a company from a few hundred thousand liras to a couple of million. It doesn't matter if it's a single screw or an entire container. There are internal procedures, purchase forms, possible mishaps that make the costs so high". And Marino guarantees a result: a saving for the company of at least 50%. "In the industrial field", he says, "the real savings can now be made more in the offices than in the production processes, which are already optimized". For this reason, the number of companies (including Ilte, Piaggio, Iveco, Michelin, Bridgestone, Teksid) that are turning to Unitec not only for purchasing spare parts but also for managing their supplies is increasing.
Virtual Warehouses
So, the savings are also on other depositors. Marino is, in fact, creating the first virtual warehouses in the area. "Every company", he explains, "invests huge amounts in warehouses for spare parts. And often, in the same industrial district, similar companies have similar supplies. We put the individual availability on the net, making them intersectable in case of need. Our job is also to find the part that's needed from whoever has it in stock and isn't using it, and to replace it immediately with whoever needs it, and to refill the empty space created in the original warehouse. In this way, investments decrease and everyone's guarantee of being able to get what they need in an emergency improves". With the same philosophy, a virtual purchasing consortium will also be born. Unitec can, in fact, aggregate homogeneous orders from various sources, obtaining better prices. So, in the heart of Gersthafen, between rows of computers that animate an independent logical system, a team of specialists (mostly Italian and set to double within the year) will bring the turnover (which