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Kinetic aims to "shrink wrap" telework

Tools and consultancies can bring enterprise-level telework tools to SMBs.

By Toni Kistner
Net.Worker, 08/13/01

For years now, telework consultancies have wrestled with ways to market their proprietary tools and methodologies downstream to smaller businesses. It's not like they've needed the business - one client like Procter and Gamble rolling out 5,000 teleworkers can keep a telework firm afloat for months.

"Can we serve both the enterprise and the SMB? It's a matter of how many hours are in a day," says Tim Kane, president and CEO of Kinetic Workplace, a Pittsburgh telework consultancy.

Getting the best tools into the hands of small businesses has more to do with honor and reputation than making money, it seems. When smaller companies skip the consultant and launch programs without proper training or in a knee-jerk fashion, everybody loses. Inevitably, programs stall or are scrapped altogether; workers return to the office, quit or get fired, and end up featured in USA Today articles.

The trouble is, the enterprise-caliber telework audit and assessment tools are so tightly integrated into the consultancy they can't easily be broken away, automated and mass marketed.

However, Kinetic Workplace has figured out a way to do it. Kinetic has already converted two of its tools - Kinetic Appraise for Teleworkers and Kinetic Appraise for Managers - into software-based tools used by its consultants. Next year, the firm plans to offer these tools to smaller businesses as a Web-based service sold on a per-seat basis. (Costs are expected to fall in within the $200 to $500 per user range, Kane says.)

Kinetic's appraisal tool, which formerly lived in workbook form, assesses individual workers to see if they're right for telework and makes recommendations on additional training they may need. The candidate accesses an URL, fills out an online questionnaire, and the results are then e-mailed to the supervisor and employee.

"It gives the teleworker and manager a feel for where things stand. The manager is alerted to areas that might need improvement, and the teleworker can brush up on skills before they're deployed," Kane explains.

An assessment tool such as Kinetic Appraise also provides companies with a standard selection and assessment tool for deploying teleworkers. If a manager says yes to one employee, then no to another, and that second employee brings a lawsuit against the company, it's really hard to argue the process is completely unbiased, Kane says.

Once Kinetic brings these tools to market, the small 20- to 100-person company will be able to set up a high-quality fail-proof program without spending a lot of money. Selling stand-alone tools also has the potential to create new business models. In time, value-added resellers, independent consultants, and broadband and network service providers may partner with Kinetic to offer its telework modules as part of a larger package of remote services.

"Companies need to figure out how to distribute these tools to small businesses. If you have 100 250-person clients, that's as good as Procter and Gamble, right? Small companies don't need their own policies. We can automate a lot of this stuff," Kane says.

Kinetic also recently announced two new tools - Kinetic Audit and Kinetic Diagnostic - that it plans to package next year in guidebook form to accompany the Web-based Kinetic Appraise service. Kinetic Audit helps companies with a struggling or stalled telework program diagnose and cure the problem. Kinetic Diagnostic assesses a company's readiness to launch a telework program. Kinetic consultants interview managers, administer surveys, and study HR issues, cultural barriers, IT readiness and requirements, and a telework program's impact on the company's real estate. In six weeks, it returns an assessment that includes among other things the projected amount of money saved, and specific employees who are best suited to send home. Armed with the assessment, the company can choose whether to launch a program, or hire Kinetic or another firm to deploy it.