cheaper better faster

6 things to consider

CHOOSING a

VAN LINEPARTNER

August 2016

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CHEAPER, BETTER, FASTER:

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6 things to consider

CHOOSING a

VAN LINEPARTNERCHOOSING a

VAN LINEPARTNER6 things to consider

CHEAPER,BETTER,FASTER …

PICK

3!O

n a recent trip to Atlanta, I had two “stop-in-your-tracks” experiences. I flew into Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport from Chicago,

arriving at 7:15 p.m. It was a quick trip to attend the Metro Atlanta Relocation Council Educational Forum, and so I grabbed my overnight bag and disembarked. When I saw the long line at the taxi stand, I let out a loud, public groan.

After 15 minutes of shuffling forward with a crowd growing in anxiety, my musings began. Who was this driver? Will I have to argue with him to take me the most direct route? Will he have one foot on the gas and the other on the brake? All went well, but after pulling up to the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly Hotel, I looked up at the meter and felt the pain coming.

$60, including tip. Ouch.

COMPETITIVENESS, PRINCIPLES, AND GLOBAL MOBILITYBy Kendra Mirasol, GMS-T

64 Mobility | August 2016

Now for the stark contrast. The next day, on the way back to the airport, I pulled out my iPhone and launched the Uber app. I tracked my driver, Corey, whom I could identify immediately via his picture, car model, and license plate as he pulled up in his Toyota Prius. I saw his positive ratings, and an imme-diate sense of relief washed over me. We had a lovely chat as he skillfully maneuvered through rush-hour traffic. Corey was originally from New York. He was in his mid-40s and worked as a loan officer and an eclectic musician, supporting three kids in college. His plan is to move to San Diego and to pursue music engineering. We talked about jazz, college tuition craziness, the housing market, and the ever-widening socio-economic gap. We were practically best friends by the time we arrived at my destination.

Then, the unthinkable: $25, including tip. This must be a mistake, right?

‘CBF’Back in the early 1990s, NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin worked with Mars Pathfinder Project Manager Tony Spear to assess best practices through a series of interviews and workshops. These, coupled with his own personal experiences and expertise, led to the observation that performance improvement comes from a combination of elements of cheaper, better, or faster (CBF)—with an emphasis on choosing two out of three.

Fast-forward to the present, when Singapore’s minister of manpower, Lim Swee Say, appeared at Financial Times No. 1–ranked global business school INSEAD’s Knowledge Conference. There Lim reig-nited the CBF debate but argued that countries must now be competitive because their output—whether product, service, or talent—must be all three: cheaper, better, and faster.

In the relocation industry, if not all industries, we face the enormous challenge of remaining competitive globally. Many of today’s fundamental business processes are now automated, thanks to technology. So, this leaves us to grapple with very complex issues.

Take payroll as an example. The moment a com-pany decides to “go global” and set up operations outside the U.S., suddenly the simple debit/credit accounting with a direct deposit to follow doesn’t cut it anymore. Payroll processes need to be set up in multiple regions, and each country has a unique way in which it is delivered. The amount of risk to the business grows exponentially as new legal, financial, and compliance requirements come into play. Integrating those components across coun-tries and keeping everything aligned with a unified strategic direction becomes a daunting process. Simultaneously, giving transferees a superior cus-tomer experience is necessary to retain them as key talent. What will not work is cobbling together a process with gloss on the outside, while gerbils are running the flywheels on the backside.

Examples of successful cheaper, better, faster strate-gies within the mobility industry abound. Destination service providers (DSPs) have reaped productivity gains in several areas over the past few years. DSP prices haven’t increased in years; in fact, they’ve decreased. This is not just a commoditization of the service, but instead, DSPs have been able to more effi-ciently run their business by implementing program management technology, infusing virtual assistance into what used to be face-to-face time with assignees, and leveraging economies of scale when training new consultants in the field.

Suzy Leinbach, GMS, IOR global services director of client services and quality management, highlights the value of online tools. “Assignee knowledge cen-ters and toolkits disseminate important just-in-time information such as: What documents are needed to open a U.S. bank account? How does one apply for a Social Security number in the U.S.? When can one apply for a driver’s license? This makes for a more enhanced customer experience.”

DSPs have become more nimble while remain-ing more customer-focused, but they now face the enormous challenge of having to interface with a multitude of technology platforms for each company or partner organization they support. In addition,

What will not work is cobbling together a process with gloss on the outside, while gerbils are running the flywheels on the backside.


resurrecting the earlier Uber example, suppliers are being challenged with new state regulations with respect to the classification of workers. Are Uber driv-ers employees or contractors? What about movers? Destination consultants? And so on.

CBF: NOT POSSIBLE FOR EVERYTHINGThere are still areas within every industry where it is not possible to achieve all three cheaper, better, faster, elements. While there have been many benefits with the onslaught of data available to us, along with them come additional rules and regulations for data disclosure, especially within the lending industry. Buyers, sellers, real estate agents, lenders, mortgage brokers, and movers have all been impacted by

the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, implemented October 3, 2015. The new three-page Loan Estimate (LE) has replaced the previous Good Faith Estimate (GFE) and initial Truth in Lending (TIL) disclosure. And the new five-page Closing Disclosure (CD) has replaced the previous HUD-1 and Final TIL.

Intentions are good; we want consumers to be informed about their home purchase decisions. But this may be a case where things are not cheaper, better, nor faster. There are now very specific rules relating to the three-day waiting period. However, in practice, because there are so many changes that occur prior to closing a transaction, the wait is more like five days at best. Every change can start the clock over and turn

A CHEAPER, BETTER, FASTER EXERCISEDuring recent strategy meetings at IOR Global Services, the team engaged in an exercise to elicit ideas around the cheaper, better, faster concept. The group was divided into three teams, assigned a specific industry (fast food/coffee, transportation, or real estate), and tasked with determining not only how that industry/business utilized the cheaper, better, faster concept, but also with extracting key learnings and concepts that could then be applied to the global mobility business. Below are a few outcomes from the industry studies:

QUICK-SERVICE RESTAURANTS (E.G., COFFEE)Selected company to review: a fast-food chain with multiple locations worldwide.

• Cheaper □ Decent price/delivering on expectations

□ Food cooked in advance

• Better □ Limited menu, do it well □ Quality food/ beverage items

• Faster □ The process is efficient; no lingering

TRANSPORTATIONSelected company to review: a rapidly expanding web-based ride-share company.

• Cheaper □ Lower overhead □ No cash □ Can become a driver quickly

• Better □ Convenient app □ Customer service/response □ Marketing contractor opportunities

□ Users rate driver

• Faster □ No middleman, users follow driver progress

REAL ESTATESelected company to review: web-based national real estate company.

• Cheaper □ Free to users □ Offers a discount commission to use their real estate agents

• Better □ Housing area info □ Can filter properties

• Faster □ See properties on app □ Mobile, accessible— contact person


into a postponed closing. That, in turn, can start a domino effect, should household goods be scheduled to arrive that day and a DSP already be engaged to help the transferee settle in. “It’s like kicking the can continually down the street,” says Aaron Dennison, private mortgage banker at Wells Fargo Private Bank. His advice? “Listen to your lender, and follow their direction to a T!” In addition, engaging with an inno-vative lender who has a web-based tracking system in place can help make approvals and information dissemination happen almost instantly.

If you’ve been speaking with household goods and freight forwarding providers, you will know that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) regula-tions are resulting in a lack of truckload capacity and increased costs, which negatively affect service levels in our industry. The introduction of governmental restrictions has wreaked havoc on the industry, and until enough time passes so that a cheaper, bet-ter, faster, solution can be put into place, trucking companies and their customers will likely absorb compliance costs, with the very long-term benefit of cleaner air. Recent reports show that clients have been amenable to this.

THE NEED FOR MORE HIGHLY SKILLED TALENTNot only do our services need to be cheaper, better, and faster, but the talent we seek and retain needs to be capable of producing significant continuous improvements in our already complex processes, time and time again. The type of employee who will best be able to deliver the cheaper, better, faster, results will be someone who can successfully operate with uncertainty, can feel comfortable with chaos, and is unafraid of sudden “market disrupters” that change the game entirely. In short, we will need talent who is more highly skilled, has global experience, and can adapt more quickly than his or her peers.

Thanks to social media sites such as LinkedIn, the available talent pool has become extraordinarily transparent, so searches for prospective employ-ees have results that look like trees loaded with sweet, low-hanging fruit. In the words of U.S. News careers blogger Arnie Fertig, founder and CEO of Jobhuntercoach, “search functionality will be turned upside down.”

According to PwC’s “Talent Mobility 2020 and Beyond,” 54 percent of employees expect to have

more than five employers in their lifetime, while 9 percent expect to have more than 10! Gone are the days when company management dictated when, where, and for how much an employee would work. TLNT.com reports that 65 percent of a company’s workforce is looking for a new job. Employers must accept these facts, as an all-out war for talent has erupted. We must be prepared for more jockeying for position to attract and gain the talent who can deliver results cheaper, better, faster.

TALENT POOL MUST CREATE DYNAMIC ORGANIZATIONAL CULTUREIn order to achieve cheaper, better, faster results, orga-nizations tend to focus on process and technology, while ignoring the organizational design, structure, and culture. Rick Schwartz, former president and

DSPs have been able to more efficiently run their business by implementing program management technology, infusing virtual assistance into what used to be face-to-face time with assignees, and leveraging economies of scale when training new consultants in the field.


CEO of Brookfield Global Relocation Services and now an independent consultant, says, “If there are too many handoffs between people and departments, then the work process will likely be slower and more costly than it needs to be. And if there are ‘silos’ that separate client management from the operational pro-cess, then the communication and problem resolution is slower for the customer, and the people are likely spending too much time assessing blame rather than serving the client.”

INCORPORATING LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT INDUSTRYRelocation needs to embrace the lessons learned from other industries. Michael LaVista, president of a leading Chicago technology development firm, Caxy Interactive, reminded me of how the relocation indus-try can use the principles of “agile” development that are common within the software development indus-try. During the development process, a team engages in a meeting called a “retrospective,” or “retro,” at the end of each iteration. Each iteration is typically a two-week cycle where the project team plans, builds, tests, and releases a new feature for a product.

During the “retro,” the team identifies things that they should keep doing because they are work-ing well. They also identify things that didn’t go well and generate ideas for changing them, and they brainstorm about things they should start doing that are not done now. LaVista explains, “What we have found is that the work done in the retro speeds a team up over time. It’s a way to opti-mize your process as a whole as well as optimize for a specific project or initiative.”

Some organizations outside of the tech industry may do this exercise. But most would perform retros or similar meetings only at the end of a project or at an annual strategy meeting. Anything organizations learn in these meetings, LaVista argues, is learned too late. Competitors have zoomed ahead, constantly changing, evolving, and adapting to the needs of their clients.

Having these meetings more frequently gives teams a chance to improve what they are doing and go faster by streamlining processes, eliminating waste, and increasing understanding of the work while simultaneously improving quality.

HOW CAN YOU IMPLEMENT THE CHEAPER, BETTER, FASTER APPROACH? We know that clients and assignees want faster response times, more accurately described as on-demand response, getting pertinent informa-tion exactly when they want it. Clients expect more value coming from their partners, as well as cost containment. You may be asking yourself, What can you do in your organization to achieve a cheaper, better, faster outcome?

Maura Connor, director of marketing for IOR Global Services, says, “Creating and implement-ing a process for continuous improvement equals working more efficiently and addresses both faster and better. However, we also know outstanding service and high quality cannot—and should not—be sacrificed. It is important to clearly define the value proposition and remain competitive, and not necessarily cheaper, on pricing.”

At the end of the day, our corporate clients are win-ning in the process. The reality is that a global mobil-ity professional is now well-equipped to take the ROI analysis to her CFO, demonstrating ROI through all the data that is being captured. If a company spends $2,000 on a destination services program and the DSP negotiated a $3,000 annual savings for the company, what CFO wouldn’t give her a raise?

So, no, the $25 Uber trip was not a mistake. Uber has successfully provided us with cheaper, better, faster service. And once someone has experienced this, the old ways are seen only through the rearview mirror. M

Kendra Mirasol, GMS-T, is president, IOR Global Services. She can be reached at or +1 224 326 2490 or [email protected].

A global mobility professional is now well-equipped to take the ROI analysis to her CFO, demonstrating ROI through all the data that is being captured.

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE AUGUST 2016 ISSUE OF MOBILITY, PUBLISHED BY WORLDWIDE ERC®

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