Words such as hearth and cafe might bring to mind homey images of a country inn, but at the MCI Rally Center in Boston these are parts of a futuristic virtual office. The Boston Rally Center is the first of 200 such offices that MCI Communications Corp. Plans to roll out in the next year or so. The rally center concept is the second phase of MCI's approximately $75 million investment in a mobile client/server project.
This is one of the largest sales force automation plans ever undertaken. Eventually, more than 5,600 field service representatives will work out of rally centers throughout the country. The Boston center is notable for its mobile workforce deployment, its state-of-the-art technology, and advanced office design.
Instead of having to report to an office and a designated cubicle every day, the center's approximately 120 sales representatives can work anywhere, anytime, by using loaded IBM 755CD ThinkPad laptops that connect via client/server software.
Sales representatives can share tips and retrieve data from resources that include a business library that lets users download pamphlets and product features.
The center of the office is the "hearth," a large, wide-open room with muted colors. Modular furnitureincluding small tables, comfortable chairs, and laptop standsis scattered around and can be moved to suit an individual's needs. Plugs allow laptops to be connected via floors or walls. Large, rolling whiteboards are provided as planning tools or to close off areas during meetings.
In one corner of the room is the "cafe," a coffee bar with laptop connections where field representatives can meet to compare notes. A large video monitor is in another corner.
"Home base" is a locker area where sales representatives keep small rolling files. Before moving into the virtual office, representatives were required to throw out anything they don't really need and fit everything they consider essential into the folding storage bins.
Representatives can set up shop for the day in the "heads down" area that was devised for quiet work.
"The managers roam around too; we share three glassed-in offices among 18 managers," said Susan Beckmann, the branch director of the Boston Rally Center. "And we're out on the floor more often than not, not holed up in our offices."
"What MCI has done right is to treat this center concept as a technological development issue as much as business development issue," said Gill Gordon, a telecommuting analyst at Gill Gordon Associates in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey. "And not so much for what this will do for space-saving costs, although that will happen, too."
"The other thing that will likely make this a successful rollout is that this is very aggressive. This isn't a pilot or a toe-in-the-water project; the Boston center is actually a prototype," Gordon said. "It's the first one out of the box."
Beckmann said MCI hopes the center will raise sales and revenue by as much as 30 percent in the first year of operation.
Source: Adapted from Mindy Blodgett, "Virtual Office Prototype Puts Field Service Reps to Work at 'Hearth' of MCI," Computerworld, February 26, 1996, pp. 73, 76. Copyright 1996 by Computerworld, Inc., Framingham, MA 01701Reprinted from Computerworld.