There are some interesting trends on how the landscape of business is changing. This is going to have some profund impact on
- How customers are going to be managed or served.
- How a customer's business is going to get done in corporations.
- And also, how employees as consumers are going to change.
The world is going to see the burgeoing of BWPEs(Business without paid employees). First, there were large corporates, then came the SMBs and in the future it is going to be BWPEs. So, Small in the new big theory of Seth Godin seems to being a reality quite fast.
Take a look at some interesting stats that US Census released last month:
The image of a typical “mom and pop” business is getting a makeover, according to new data on these burgeoning enterprises released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. Yesterday’s notion of a family-run corner store is giving way to Internet-based auctions, nail salons and evenmotorcycle dealerships...
The nation added nearly a million businesses with no paid employees between 2003 and 2004 to reach 19.5 million, a growth rate of 4.7 percent over a one-year period. Businesses without a payroll make up more than 70 percent of the nation’s 27 million-plus firms, with annual receipts over $887 billion.
The report has data on 17 million individual proprietorships and on more than 1.3 million corporations and 1.2 million partnerships. Nonemployer firms may be run by one or more individuals, can range from home-based businesses to corner stores or construction contractors and are often part-time ventures with owners operating more than one business.
Among the fastest-growing: building finishing contractors (22.5 percent), Internet service providers (18.7 percent), nail salons (14.7 percent), electronic shopping and mail-order houses -- including Internet-based consumer trade (12.7 percent), lessors of real estate (9.7 percent), formal wear and costume rental stores (8 percent) and motorcycle dealers (7.4 percent). Read more
So, what's the impact on business services?
Therefore, businesses will get more and more local. Hence, businesses will get to know their customers on a one-to-one basis even better than ever before. Customers will start entrusting their businesses to BWPEs who can serve them the best. The BWPEs will inturn become 'micro organizations' collaborating with each other to offer best-of-breed services. The large corporations could turn into a group of insourced BWPEs and hence we might see the death of hierarchies, unwanted meetings & review sessions and even greater accountability from large corporations.
Imagine the corporation like a hospital! It has the operation theatre, the scanning centre, the pharmacy and an entire infrastructure but these are run by doctors who necessarily are not the employees but are paid consultants!
Thanks Dan