The Profits Are at the Perimeter
Technologies such as 3D printing
and smart phones are allowing companies to push manufacturing and service
delivery right to their customers' doorstep. It's a shift that encompasses
everything from auto parts to family medicine.
CEO, 1871@tullman
In today's "right
now" economy where no one wants to wait for anything, we're seeing more
instances of businesses pushing the delivery of their products and services to
the perimeter-- to the edge, or what might be called the closest boundary to
the customer. This becomes infinitely easier as digitally-enabled consumers are
increasingly seeking virtual products and services rather than physical
objects. But it's an equally valuable and important idea for nearly every kind
of business as well. Delivering what I want, when I want it, and wherever I am
has always been the end game and as we continue to be more connected, our
desires in this regard and the competition to respond to them continue to
accelerate.
For consumers like you
and me, books, games and music are just the beginning. Why travel to see your
physician when your phone can bring the doctor to your digital door?
Telemedicine is on the way and it's becoming clearer and clearer that
time-wasting visits to the doc don't enhance the efficacy of the treatment in
the vast majority (more than 70%) of cases. Let your fingers and your phone do
the walking. You save time, avoid the costs of getting to and fro, and, in most
instances, get a better, faster and more satisfactory result. And, if you still
crave that human touch, (or you just sliced your finger open) urgent care
facilities with better hours, shorter lines, and customer-centric practitioners
are popping up right next to the nail salons and bank branches in your
neighborhood.
For businesses, the
potential savings in time and money are even greater because the embedded
transportation costs imposed by multiple parties throughout the supply chain
are a significant expense contributor to many products and services. My
favorite example is the cost of hundreds of different plastic and composite
parts at any car dealership or repair shop. The math is simply amazing; the
cost to ship and deliver these myriad parts is substantially more than the cost
of the parts themselves. If ever there was a clear and compelling use case for
distributed 3D printing-- on site and on demand-- with basically NO
transportation cost, this is it. And again, 3D printing is just the beginning
of the analysis. Inventory costs are also dramatically reduced, waiting times
for critical parts, which often delay the completion of many repairs, are
largely eliminated. Any mistakes in the parts specified and required can be
remedied in the moment rather than after delivery of the wrong pieces.
The compelling
combination of constant connectivity and complete mobility is also freeing up
large portions of the workforce previously constrained and/or tethered to
offices, desktops, and proprietary environments. Not only can examinations,
inspections, evaluations and even transactions now be done almost anywhere--in
the field, in the home, in the factory--but they can be supported, supplemented
and improved with resources, decision-support tools, and even visual
supervision from afar. Forms of augmented intelligence like these will change
our businesses far more quickly than artificial intelligence. Just as our
phones let us be better and smarter shoppers, they will increasingly help
almost every enabled worker perform tasks faster and more accurately.
Even more significantly, many businesses will push the process
and the "work" out to their customers at the edge and let them take
advantage of the same tools and systems to do a better job of serving their own
needs. We can expect to see increasing instances of streamlined self-service,
like JPMorgan Chase's mobile check deposit service, coming down the pipe. Every
major automobile insurer in the U.S. will quickly copy Allstate's example and
encourage insurance claimants to use their own phones to document and report
vehicle damage using variants of the technology developed years ago by a
Chicago-based startup--SnapSheet-- which is already working with a number of
the major insurers. (See Put Your New Business Idea to
the Three Questions Test.)
And so the question
for your business is pretty simple. How easy is it to do business with you? How
can you simplify the process-- push the tools out to the end user, speed up the
transactions-- and ultimately end up with far more happy campers as customers.
If you don't do it and do it now, you can be sure that someone else will.
