The superefficient company

Most companies do a great job promoting efficiency within their own walls, streamlining internal processes wherever possible. But they have less succe ss coordinating cross-company business interactions. When data pass between companies, inconsistencies, errors, and misunderstan dings routinely arise, leading to wasted work-for instance, the same sales, order entry, and customer data may be entered repeatedly into different sy stems. Typically, scores of employees at each company manage these cumberso me interactions. The costs of such inefficiencies are very real and very la rge. In this article, Michael Hammer outlines the activities and goals used in s treamlining cross-company processes. He breaks down the approach into four stages: scoping-identifying the business process for redesign and selecting a partner; organizing-establishing a joint committee to oversee the redesi gn and convening a design team to implement it; redesigning - taking apart and reassembling the process, with performance goals in mind; and implement ing - rolling out the new process and communicating it across the collabora ting companies. The author describes how several companies have streamlined their supply-ch ain and product development processes. Plastics compounder Geon integrated its forecasting and fulfillment processes with those of its main supplier a fter watching inventories, working capital, and shipping times creep up. Ge neral Mills coordinated the delivery of its yogurt with Land O'Lakes; butte r and yogurt travel cost effectively in the same trucks to the same stores. Hammer says this new kind of collaboration promises to change the tradition al vocabulary of corporate relationships. What if you and I sell different products to the same customer? We're not competitors, but what are we? In t he past, we didn't care. Now, we should, the author says.