krishino - 2003/3/15 0:47:00
IBM makes the most of mobility
Transforming traditional offices saved IBM $100 million in real estate costs.
By Linda Leung
Net.Worker, 03/25/02
Bob Egan, a 30-year IBM veteran, is a manager in IBM Global Services. He drives from his home in the mountain suburbs to IBM's Salt Lake City office with his ThinkPad in tow. Nothing unusual in that. But when he arrives, he won't know where he'll work, and the office, which a few years ago spanned four floors of a five-story building, now occupies just half of one.
Egan is an IBM mobile employee, one of the 30% of IBM's nearly 315,300 worker's worldwide without dedicated office space, working either from home, an IBM mobility center or a customer site.
Today, there are 252 mobility and "touch down" centers in 170 countries serving the IBM mobile community. Mobility centers are offices to which mobile workers are assigned and are concentrated in the U.S., Europe and Latin America. By contrast, touch down centers, concentrated in Asia Pacific and Europe, are used on a drop-in basis. Both types have between 20 and 200 desks and are open to IBM employees or visitors.
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IBM introduced its global mobility program in 1994 as part of a corporate cost-cutting effort that also included layoffs. "We were going through a huge change. We had just brought in Lou Gerstner [as CEO], and he was dead set on us getting closer to the customer, saving costs and being more productive," Egan says.
Initially the program targeted sales and marketing executives to encourage them to spend more time in the field with customers. But IBM extended it in 1996 to product, project and program managers, providing workers ThinkPads, cell phones, pagers and training, says Jim Holden, program manager of IBM's global mobility, wireless and unified messaging initiative.
The biggest cost savings has been in real estate expenses, which IBM has cut by $100 million. Between 1996 and 2001, Big Blue downsized its facilities by 19% (including manufacturing plants), while increasing the number of workers in its facilities (including non-IBM workers such as security personnel) by 35%.
When Egan arrives at the Salt Lake City mobility center, he inputs his employee information, length of stay and office preferences into FlexiMove, an IBM-developed stand-alone reservation system. Settling in, Egan plugs his ThinkPad laptop into the office's Token Ring network or an analog dial-up line to access the corporate network, and programs the telephone system to forward all his incoming calls to the phone on his new desk.
In the early days, IBM modified the reservation system to prohibit "desk hugging," reserving the same desk for weeks on end. "We had to enforce a policy that you couldn't make advanced reservations, and there would be automatic sign out after the time you had reserved," he says.
But eight years into the program, Egan says desk-huggers are dated as increasing numbers choose instead to work from home, accessing the IBM network over a secure broadband connection. Egan himself commutes to the Salt Lake City office only about two or three days per month, and Holden says mobility center capacities have dipped to 40% in the U.S.
Even so, IBM plans to increase the number of centers overseas, in part to address the lack of broadband access, cultural issues and space constrictions in the home. But the company plans to re-evaluate the space dedicated to some existing U.S. centers when the buildings' leases are up for renewal, and will likely adjust the ratio of workspaces per mobile employee from 1-to-5 to 1-to-8.
IBM also plans to upgrade the reservation system next year and bring it online so that people can prereserve space through the company's intranet.
"We would like to manage multiple physical locations from a network-based server to simplify administration and support, and integrate other functions in a new system, such as the ability to schedule conference rooms, reserve audio/visual equipment, and even order food/beverage items from on-site providers," Holden says. "We also want to dynamically update the [reservation system's] database, and integrate it with our [intranet-based] employee directory."
Holden advises firms evaluating mobility programs to invest in laptops, a follow-me phone system and training. Today, employees are given mobility training manuals on disks, but IBM plans to develop a Web-based training program.
Egan says IBM could have done a better job training remote managers. "The management style of the 1990s was to manage by wandering around looking over people's shoulders. All of a sudden, you wandered out of your office and no one's there," he says.
New World Order
IBM’s mobility program spans four continents, letting 315,300 worldwide employees work in mobility centers, at home and in customer sites.
The story in 2002:
14,000 work at home.
23,000 work at customer locations.
35,000 U.S. employees are mobile, served by 114 mobility centers.
87,000 European employees; 22% are mobile or work from home.
46,000 employees in Asia Pacific; 20% are mobile.
18,000 employees in Canada; 18% are mobile.
9,300 employees in Latin America; 15% are mobile.
7 out of 10 managers at IBM manage at least one remote employee.
Statistics are based on results of an employee survey conducted in summer 2001.
Transforming traditional offices saved IBM $100 million in real estate costs.
By Linda Leung
Net.Worker, 03/25/02
Bob Egan, a 30-year IBM veteran, is a manager in IBM Global Services. He drives from his home in the mountain suburbs to IBM's Salt Lake City office with his ThinkPad in tow. Nothing unusual in that. But when he arrives, he won't know where he'll work, and the office, which a few years ago spanned four floors of a five-story building, now occupies just half of one.
Egan is an IBM mobile employee, one of the 30% of IBM's nearly 315,300 worker's worldwide without dedicated office space, working either from home, an IBM mobility center or a customer site.
Today, there are 252 mobility and "touch down" centers in 170 countries serving the IBM mobile community. Mobility centers are offices to which mobile workers are assigned and are concentrated in the U.S., Europe and Latin America. By contrast, touch down centers, concentrated in Asia Pacific and Europe, are used on a drop-in basis. Both types have between 20 and 200 desks and are open to IBM employees or visitors.
Advertisement:
IBM introduced its global mobility program in 1994 as part of a corporate cost-cutting effort that also included layoffs. "We were going through a huge change. We had just brought in Lou Gerstner [as CEO], and he was dead set on us getting closer to the customer, saving costs and being more productive," Egan says.
Initially the program targeted sales and marketing executives to encourage them to spend more time in the field with customers. But IBM extended it in 1996 to product, project and program managers, providing workers ThinkPads, cell phones, pagers and training, says Jim Holden, program manager of IBM's global mobility, wireless and unified messaging initiative.
The biggest cost savings has been in real estate expenses, which IBM has cut by $100 million. Between 1996 and 2001, Big Blue downsized its facilities by 19% (including manufacturing plants), while increasing the number of workers in its facilities (including non-IBM workers such as security personnel) by 35%.
When Egan arrives at the Salt Lake City mobility center, he inputs his employee information, length of stay and office preferences into FlexiMove, an IBM-developed stand-alone reservation system. Settling in, Egan plugs his ThinkPad laptop into the office's Token Ring network or an analog dial-up line to access the corporate network, and programs the telephone system to forward all his incoming calls to the phone on his new desk.
In the early days, IBM modified the reservation system to prohibit "desk hugging," reserving the same desk for weeks on end. "We had to enforce a policy that you couldn't make advanced reservations, and there would be automatic sign out after the time you had reserved," he says.
But eight years into the program, Egan says desk-huggers are dated as increasing numbers choose instead to work from home, accessing the IBM network over a secure broadband connection. Egan himself commutes to the Salt Lake City office only about two or three days per month, and Holden says mobility center capacities have dipped to 40% in the U.S.
Even so, IBM plans to increase the number of centers overseas, in part to address the lack of broadband access, cultural issues and space constrictions in the home. But the company plans to re-evaluate the space dedicated to some existing U.S. centers when the buildings' leases are up for renewal, and will likely adjust the ratio of workspaces per mobile employee from 1-to-5 to 1-to-8.
IBM also plans to upgrade the reservation system next year and bring it online so that people can prereserve space through the company's intranet.
"We would like to manage multiple physical locations from a network-based server to simplify administration and support, and integrate other functions in a new system, such as the ability to schedule conference rooms, reserve audio/visual equipment, and even order food/beverage items from on-site providers," Holden says. "We also want to dynamically update the [reservation system's] database, and integrate it with our [intranet-based] employee directory."
Holden advises firms evaluating mobility programs to invest in laptops, a follow-me phone system and training. Today, employees are given mobility training manuals on disks, but IBM plans to develop a Web-based training program.
Egan says IBM could have done a better job training remote managers. "The management style of the 1990s was to manage by wandering around looking over people's shoulders. All of a sudden, you wandered out of your office and no one's there," he says.
New World Order
IBM’s mobility program spans four continents, letting 315,300 worldwide employees work in mobility centers, at home and in customer sites.
The story in 2002:
14,000 work at home.
23,000 work at customer locations.
35,000 U.S. employees are mobile, served by 114 mobility centers.
87,000 European employees; 22% are mobile or work from home.
46,000 employees in Asia Pacific; 20% are mobile.
18,000 employees in Canada; 18% are mobile.
9,300 employees in Latin America; 15% are mobile.
7 out of 10 managers at IBM manage at least one remote employee.
Statistics are based on results of an employee survey conducted in summer 2001.