THE
REVOLUTION
IN PRODUCTIVITY
Trapped inside your company’s processes are activities that can now be swapped,
bought, and sold. If you liberate them, you can create a radically more efficient
plug-and-play business. by Ric Merrifield, Jack Calhoun, and Dennis Stevens
David Plunkert
USINESSES HAVE BEEN reengineering their processes
for nearly 20 years. For many companies, knitting
together numerous fragmented tasks and data into
cross-functional business processes has had a substantial impact in terms of cost savings, cycle-time reductions,
and service improvements. However, many companies that
embraced the reengineering revolution are now hitting a wall.
Fortunately, the means to break through that wall are emerging. Thanks to the development of new technologies for using
and sharing functions via the internet, the frontier is no longer
the process but rather the business activities that make up
every process – from pricing a product to issuing an invoice to
