How Productive Are You? ..."Even after 300 years it still takes four musicians to play a string quartet." That's Hal Varian writing about the difficulty of raising productivity in an economy increasingly dominated by the services sector. (New York Times, Economic Scene, Feb 12, 2004)

So how does Varian explain the surge in U.S. productivity starting in the 1990s and continuing today? Two words: information technology. "It's just a lot easier now for sellers to track inventory, monitor operations, communicate with customers, and react to shifts in consumer demand."

But that's not news to Greg Moellering, Vice President - Property Management at Shorenstein, which owns over 20 million square feet of office buildings spread across the country. Last week I spoke with Moellering about Shorenstein's focus on technology to improve lease administration, document management and insurance risk management.

For example, Shorenstein has about 1,400 tenants. That means managing 1,400 insurance certificates for compliance with 1,400 individual leases. Previously, this task was performed at the building level by local management staff. Now the task is outsourced to Insurance Data Services, which monitors insurance coverage and handles all of the mail and phone correspondence with tenants nationwide.

It doesn't take much imagination to see that such a web-enabled, transparent process managed by insurance experts should be a lot more productive than local "building service coordinators" deluged with the day-to-day demands of managing an office building. Maybe it's not glamorous. But I'm guessing that this is exactly the kind of incremental business process improvement that Varian describes. So are you doing your share?

Realcomm... To learn more about other business process improvements, attend Realcomm in San Francisco, June 3-4, 2004. Save $75 by registering with the PikeNet Promotional Code, RC04PIKE1 (that's zero-four). Go to Realcomm, click "Register Now," and then the "Promo" link in the right-hand column.

--Peter Pike