An Example of How "InfoTech Changes Everything"

"Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age"
By Tom Peters
Published by Dorling Kindersley Ltd.
Available at Amazon

Renowned management guru Tom Peters begins his latest book with a quotation from General Eric Shinseki, U.S. Army Chief of Staff: "If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less." This cautionary note sets the stage for "Re-imagine!," a free-wheeling deconstruction of traditional business practices—and exploration of what is inevitably replacing them.

Built on a bedrock belief that changes in the past decade or so have permanently transformed the world of work, "Re-imagine!" is infused with an optimism that things can and will get better.

In a chapter titled "InfoTech Changes Everything," Peters identifies ten companies that—even in the uncertain, post-dotcom, post-September 11th world—are fulfilling the promise of technology to create "incredible operational efficiency" in American business.

The ten companies are:

• Autobytel.com
• Cemex
• Cisco
• Ellie Mae
• GE
• IBM
• Oracle
• Progressive Insurance
• TowTruckNet.com
• Wal*Mart

Here's what he has to say about Ellie Mae:

"At first blush, the mortgage business sounds pretty simple. Realtors work with third-party lending organizations-typically small, entrepreneurial shops. These 'originators' broker/sell the loan to huge lenders such as Countrywide, Washington Mutual, and Wells Fargo. The giant retail lenders in turn bundle their loans and sell them again, this time to the likes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"As I said...sounds simple. But then the 'grunge factor' (incompatible information systems and the like) messes things up. The 'system' is so fuzzy that the average loan is handled by 61 people, and requires 45 days to travel from application to funding.

"Enter Ellie Mae!

"Ellie Mae is a four-year old company, a dot-com survivor, and part of a growing breed I call the 'fixers' or the 'enablers.' The losing breed of dot-coms primarily focused on the visible front end of business life: e.g., peddling us groceries or pet supplies. But winners like Ellie Mae focus on the invisible back end—and aim to revamp grunge-clad processes like those that mark the mortgage banking industry.

"Ellie Mae is the brainchild of longtime industry veteran Sig Anderman. He 'retired' to Sonoma County, California, in 1997 and started 'messing around with the Internet,' Mortgage Banking reports. Two years later, Ellie Mae was born, along with its primary product, ePASS Business Center. It's an Internet-based platform, or 'universal credit switch' (as Sig described it to me), that allows all the players to communicate with one another instantly and seamlessly. In March 2003 alone, Ellie Mae facilitated 700,000 transactions, Anderman reports, 'saving the industry over 100,000 hours of wasted work.' Growth is running 10 percent per month. No wonder co-founder Scott Cooley claims that 'Ellie Mae can do more for American forests than Greenpeace can'—through elimination of unnecessary, confusing, and expensive paperwork.

"Sometimes appetites are so big, even on the back end, that they lead to failure. (Prime example: the bid by legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jim Clark to clear the grunge out of healthcare through the founding of Healtheon, now WebMD.) We're still a ways short of having One Universal Cleansing Agent. But this new and mostly unsung breed of Web Drano-meisters is...changing the world as it removes detritus from system after system and industry after industry."

Copyright © 2003 Tom Peters