New Kid in the BLOC..

2010 marks the beginning of a new decade; and here we have the latest jargon—SEP, which is an acronym for Smart Enterprise Process. When I first read about it in the Economic Times a few days back, I was taken aback. After all if  the last decade was jargon- filled this decade promises  to be no different. We had all kinds of outsourcing in the last decade – BPO (Business Process Outsourcing), KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing), LPO (Legal Process Outsourcing) and what not. So all of us should be ready for a new wave of outsourcing which has to do with SEP and God-knows-what other smart processes, which would extract even more from the revenues as profits to be reflected on the Profit and Loss statement of the organizations.

What exactly is SEP? Well as the name suggests, it is about making a process smart. By smart I mean more lean, in terms of cost, in terms of use of technology, in terms of manpower. SEP actually applies a framework of analytics, technology and reengineering to the key processes that a company uses to manage its business. Let me explain it in simpler terms. Lets assume that you need a credit card and you walk in to a bank. What would you expect to happen? Needless to say, all of us would expect the credit card to be delivered in the shortest possible time (if we are eligible for the card). But invariably it takes around a good 20-25 days before the card is delivered to you. Have we ever wondered what makes the bank take so long to process a card? Yes, you got it right, they do a round of background checks and other verifications, which at present takes a lot of time.

This is where companies like Bloomingdales are different. Being a retail chain it can set benchmark for many world famous banks. If a bank takes around 20-25 days to issue a credit card then Bloomingdales can issue  a credit card in ten minutes flat. Isn’t it smart? If this is not a smart process then what exactly is a smart process? This is what any organization can achieve by integrating processes. This will not only usher in a new meaning to the word customer satisfaction but will help organizations achieve more profits. Today, it is very difficult to suggest a method which can improve the revenues; such immense is the competition that customer migration is a norm today. Smart enterprise processes will not only take care of the profits; but will give the organization scores of satisfied customers. This will in turn reduce the advertisement expenditure, which otherwise would have been required to woo new customers and also to retain existing customers. I think the organizations of the future will be the ones which embrace SEP and work on it.

N.B Genpact is already working big-time on SEP. My question is why GE (Genpact was hived from its mother GE) always has the upper hand? Six Sigma was developed in Motorola in 1981, but it was the legendary Jack Welch(ex-CEO, GE)  who implemented Six-sigma in GE in 1995, and today it is followed in almost every organization. Are the other organizations listening?