As Published in Business 2 Business , September 2005

The World is Flat

Fries and a burger anyone?

Just a few weeks ago, I was working with a client who sits just across the street from a McDonald's in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. As you approach the exit, its trademark golden arches reach high above Interstate 55 in the heart of the Bible Belt. Ironically, I just read about this McDonald's a few days earlier in the book The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman.

I rarely "indulge" in McDonald's but under these circumstances I just couldn't resist. I entered the drive-through lane but didn't notice anything different from the outside. Placing an order here seemed just like every other fast food drive-through I've been to.
I spoke into the large drive-up menu to place my order and then proceeded to pay for the food at the take-out window. Still nothing unusual to this point - so most people think.

What most people don't realize (if you haven't read The World is Flat) is when you order that burger and fries (or fruit and yogurt in my case), the order gets transmitted to a call center located in Colorado Springs, not to an employee just several feet away.

Why is this local franchise owner using a call center over 900 miles away just to receive customers' orders? Because, like many other employers, he can't hire enough qualified workers. Many of those he does hire don't always show up, do their jobs, and demonstrate a positive attitude. Unlike many of his colleagues, he chose not to settle for mediocrity. He connected himself with workers where he could find them and out-sourced these jobs at the Cape location and three of his other franchises.

It works like this: An electronic snapshot of the customer accompanies the order transmitted to the call center. That way, the kitchen matches the order with the customer who picks up his burger and fries who never knows the order traversed two states.

By doing this, the order processing speed increased, with the number of mistakes cut by half. Business flourished because an additional 30 cars passed through the drive-in window each hour. Customer satisfaction increased because orders were filled faster.

The Internet and advanced technology has connected us with people in ways we never thought possible. Technology levels the playing field and the Internet connects the players. And as much as this creates new competition, it creates even more opportunity. The Internet and technology are giving even the small business owner an ability to fight back and conduct business in ways he never imagined. They have also changed the way business will be done for ever more, the ways customers will buy, and the ways workers will work.

Mommyprenuers unite!
Call them work-at-home moms, WHAMs, or mommypreneurs. The number of women using technology to continue a career and earn an income while leaving home grows daily. Today, women have less pressure to choose between remaining in the workforce and staying at home to raise children. Those who are bright, educated, and willing to work but unwilling to leave their children home use the Internet and attendant technology to connect them to the business world. It's a win-win situation because this growing employee pool affords a valuable solution to a business looking to fill positions with qualified workers in a tight labor market.

WAHMs represent just one segment in the latest work-sourcing trend called home-shoring - employing home-based, virtual workers in the U.S. For example, research firm Gartner estimates that by the end of the year, 10 percent of call centers will use home-based customer service agents employed throughout the U.S. This home-based model is also taking hold in the financial services, transportation, government, health-care and educational sectors.

Nighthawks

Rising health care costs isn't the only crisis facing employers and workers. One of the most serious, but under-publicized, health care worker shortages is the lack of radiologists, radiology technicians, radiation therapists, and others. With so few radiologists available, an increasing demand for radiology services, and so many specialties to choose from, new radiologists do not want to perform the routine work of reading the x-rays in the middle of the nights and weekends. This forced hospitals to find a solution.

Welcome to a flattened world! Nighthawks - highly educated and credentialed radiologist, many of whom were trained in the U.S. then returned to their homelands to practice medicine half-way around the world, are now reading and interpreting your X-rays, CAT scans and MRI images when you make a late-night visit to an emergency room or the radiologist is off on vacation.

Bangalore Allures U.S. Accounting Firms

Just a few days after my visit to McDonald's, I was participating in a strategic planning session for a small CPA firm in Bradenton, Fl. In addition to identifying a successor to be their next managing partner, the discussion on the table was, "who do we want to be in the next 5 years?" You see, the Internet has changed the future of accounting too.

Outsourcing professional services is not limited to health care and call centers. Anything that can be digitized will be outsourced, even accounting. Foreign based accountants, primarily in India, are now doing the 'grunt" work for many U.S. accounting offices. With the help of high speed communication, basic Western accounting training, and standardized forms, young, ambitious and educated young Indian professionals are completing tax returns at a fraction of the cost of new grads in the U.S.

It's Becoming A Small World, after all.

A worker recently told me, "that if anyone wanted his job, he could have it." He, of course, was insinuating that his job was safe and secure because "who else would ever want his job." He shouldn't say that too often or too loud because over a billion young people on other continents might just take him up on his offer.

The age of lifetime employment is over and the age of the employability is here.

Side Bar:

Skills and education matter!
While we still read about the thousands of unemployed workers and a 5 percent unemployment rate, consider this breakdown.

Unemployment rate for college graduates is 2.3 percent, not significantly worse than the 2.1 percent unemployment rate for college graduates in April 2000, when the overall rate hit a 40-year low.

By comparison, workers with only a high school education had a 4.7 percent unemployment rate in June, far worse than the 3.3 percent rate in April 2000, while high school dropouts have a 7.0 percent unemployment rate today.

Source: Department of Labor, August 2005

Ira S. Wolfe is founder of Success Performance Solutions (www.super-solutions.com), a consulting firm providing employment and career test. He has also authored two books, Business Values and Motivators and The Perfect Labor Storm.