| Abe Darwish: You can't measure the interaction between two people walking down the corridor and snapping an idea. | |
| Ann Bamesburger: What you could do, you could take a call center, I think you're on to something, where people are dependent on each other to answer questions. Questions come in, and somebody by themselves may not be able to answer the question. Use that as a hypothesis, and say, questions are getting more complex and any one person can't answer them. So, if you put five people together, which is a version of co-location, that could be measured because the call response rate would inevitably change. They would be answered more quickly. It's a dumb example, but it's an example of something very easy to measure, assuming that the co-location makes a difference. Assuming it's the knowledge. The driver behind whether to co-locate or not to co-locate the business needs to be knowledge-centered. If it's just cost, then it doesn't make sense. | |
| Marina Van Overbeek: That's just one element. | |
| Ann Bamesburger: The reason that most businesses choose to co-locate is usually for knowledge exchange or because they have had a reorganization and they are trying to force something. I don't know whether that is intuitive. I think that is more on the business side. | |
| Abe Darwish: There are certain things you can measure. What I'm saying is not everything. | |
| Parkash Ahuja: Well, let me share with you how we measure our performance at Schwab. Last year, I sat down with our business leaders and I said, "How are your customers rating Schwab's performance?" And I said I would like to have the same measurement criteria in Real Estate and Facilities. They do these focus groups all the time. There are three things that came out loud and clear. One was that our customers want us to be available all the time, 24 hours a day, Second they want us to be nimble and thirdly, they want us to be knowledgeable. I said fine. We came back and said that these are going to be our measurement criteria. We are going to be available all the time. The responsibility that we have is to put the measurement criteria and the pieces in place so that we will be available all the time. Meanwhile, we will have to find alternative ways to do the business. Thirdly, knowledge , information, and all of those things. So, I think there are ways that we can get away from traditional ways of measuring our performance and ways of getting away from historic data, and those things are all important. Cost and square footage are very important. They keep us uprooted, those things keep us sharp, but in terms of the measurement, in terms of the contribution we make to the company, we need to look at it from a different perspective. That real estate is a fraction of the business. Real estate should not drive the business issues. Real estate should be responsible to meet the business objectives. So, that is what we are aligning ourselves with. Okay, from now on, those three, and we communicate with our business groups all the time. We ask them, "Is there anything your customers are measuring you by?" |  |