Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Growing up, to get a job at McDonald's meant you would learn a lot.  Sure, it was a thankless job, but it gave a teenager the chance to learn about responsibility, customer service, taking orders, counting money, and generally the ways of the world.  Broadband, and all the business systems that it empowers, is about to change that.

Fast food chains like McDonald's are realizing the efficiency of specialization more and more.  What if the staff at the restaurant didn't need to operate an order-entry system?  What if the back-room at a restaurant was simply an on-site production unit staffed only to meet the needs of food production in-store? 

How could that work?

Simple.  The drive up ordering microphone simply connects you via VoIP to an order-taker at a call-center in Dubai, or perhaps in his/her own home office.  The order is entered into the computer and displayed to the people in the shop for them to assemble.  Specialization!

But how far can this go?  Restaurants are just one example of a localized business unit with on-site staff for everything from production to finance.  What about banks?  Why do tellers need to be on-site?  I remember the first time that I visited a bank where -- for security purposes -- tellers communicated with me via closed-circuit television from behind a brick wall.  Why not across town, or across an ocean?  If one person can be trained to do nothing but appointment-setting, then countless chairs behind the window at doctors and dentists offices could be found vacant--replaced with an off-site specialist.

The point is this: as broadband connects the world at higher and higher speeds, there is less and less of a need for each site, each franchise, each individual store to staff on-site for business operations that can be entered elsewhere.  Where else could your job be done, and for how many sites could one person do it if that's all they had to focus on?

Labels: Broadband

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