TQM and Reengineering Teams Need Networking Guru to Succeed The bigwigs in the executive boardroom are waking up and smelling the coffee, realizing it's time to institute total quality management (TQM) and business process reengineering programs. After all, changing the way a company does business today is required if the organization is to regain or retain a competitive edge in the global market. But the executives have not quite seen the light in terms of understanding how to apply networking technology to these strategic TQM and reengineering efforts. Executives at many organizations have lumped business experts together on TQM and reengineering teams that are being encouraged to redefine how the organization operates. In some cases, organizations have complete staffs that focus on nothing but developing TQM and reengineering programs that enhance customer service or customer satisfaction. What's been lacking in all but the truly leading edge firms is a way to bridge the gap between the new organizational models the TQM and reengineering folks come up with and the technology needed to facilitate communications within those models. Let's face it, most TQM and reengineering experts are not technical. These experts have little or no grasp of how to apply technology to attain their goals. That may be one of the reasons why so many TQM and reengineering efforts fail: Those in charge don't know how to apply the right mix of technology to different business applications in order to make a process truly more effective, let alone simply more efficient. Many times, these TQM and reengineering teams force fit new business models into existing networking technology. But, you cannot have a successful TQM and reengineering program and based on obsolete technology. In the case of a large call center, many organizations have adopted some type of quality program for customer service. What they should also review is how new technologies--whether it's new voice processing capabilities, computer- telephone integration applications or something else can better support those levels of service. The technology must keep up with the quality demands and provide a springboard to attain even higher levels of customer service as well as satisfaction. What's there to do? Find a way to get a networking technologist with long-range vision TQM and reengineering teams need networking guru to succeed This technologist will help the TQM and reengineering people uncover some key facts. Chief among these facts is whether networking technology is now or should be a part of the core business. Other key facts the technologist can help uncover include whether the organization is using obsolete, proven or experimental technology to support existing mission-critical applications and which new applications will need to be supported. From there, the team can determine what new technologies will be needed. Without the aid of a technologist on a TQM or reengineering team, an organization might find itself upgrading a lot of old technology that it thought could still do the job adequately, only to realize that the technology is outdated. As I have said for the last 10 years: Leading-edge organizations will not maintain their position using trailing-edge technologies. This statement rings clearer and is truly apparent as we look at TQM and reengineering practices executive managers are using to save organizations that are becoming tired in the intense competitive global arena. Global competition will shake out those organizations that fail to realize that instituting a successful TQM or reengineering program means knowing how to apply the right networking technology. And getting upper management to put a networking technologist on the team is a step to success. Carlini is president of Carlini & Associates, Inc., an international management consulting firm in Hinsdale, IL. He can be reached at (708) 986-1888 or via the Internet at carlini@nwu.edu.