We're not talking hours. We're not talking minutes.
We're not even talking seconds. No, to get to consumers in the
hyperpaced (and cyberspaced) 1990s, it can conceivably take only
milliseconds. Fast. Faster. Fastest. What an astounding,
confounding and pulse-pounding time in which we live. And this push
to gratify consumers in an instant--even as the jesters among us
contend that instant gratification itself now takes too long--is
not a phenomenon destined to lose steam.

"Customers have so many choices today that they can be very
fussy about whom they buy from," observes Roger Blackwell,
author of From Mind to Market: Reinventing the Retail Supply
Chain (HarperBusiness). "If a store can't provide what
they want, when they want it, they have plenty of alternatives that
will."

It wasn't always this way, of course. Even assembly-line
pioneer Henry Ford once sardonically suggested customers could have
any color of car they wanted--as long as it was black. Those days
are long gone. Instead, consumers are now asking for--and
getting--the speed foreshadowed by Ford's assembly line coupled
with choices galore. "Today, consumers have a lot of
power," says Regis McKenna, chair of Palo Alto, California,
business and marketing strategy firm The McKenna Group and author
of Real Time: Preparing for the Age of the Never Satisfied
Customer (Harvard Business School Press). "Technology
providing immediate feedback [is in place], and it's building
higher and higher expectations by the consumer for immediate
service."

Full Speed Ahead

So what's the rush? Technology, particularly the Internet,
has accelerated the pace of doing business to the point where being
fast enough no longer is. "You have to be a Tiger Woods of the
business world," says Blackwell. "We've set a new
standard. I remember when people said it was impossible to run the
four-minute mile--then Roger Bannister did it. A similar thing is
happening in business: The Roger Bannisters and the Tiger Woodses
are setting new benchmarks, so if you can't run the four-minute
mile, don't bother to show up."

Blackwell's words ring true. Whether you refer to it as
"just-in-time delivery," "real time" or
"Internet time," the idea of fast-forwarding products or
services to consumers in record time is revolutionizing the
business world. "This is an irreversible trend," says
David Peyton, director of technology policy for the National
Association of Manufacturers (NAM). "There's no going
back."

Or slowing down. As computers keep chipping away at our notions
of what constitutes quick turnaround, the race is on for
entrepreneurs to prove themselves capable of running that
metaphorical mile in Roger Bannister's sneakers.

"One of the great mistakes many entrepreneurs make is they
think if they have a good product, they'll be successful;
that's no longer true," insists Blackwell, who is also a
professor of marketing at The Ohio State University in Columbus.
"A good product is essential, but an efficient supply chain is
equally important. And that involves state-of-the-art logistics.
There's a war going on between putting money into assets like
inventories, warehouses and trucks, or putting money into
information from the computer. And the [computer] nerds are winning
the war."

Blackwell's point is clear: The swift of feet realize that
in today's market, they must take an entirely new approach to
business.

What's New?

To Blackwell's way of thinking, the increasing
competitiveness of the marketplace is rendering the traditional
supply chain obsolete. "In supply chains, the products
normally start in the mind of the manufacturer, and they're
pushed through to distributors, then to retailers and eventually to
consumers," he says. "But when you reinvent this supply
chain, you start with the mind of the consumer. I call it a `demand
chain.' "

Peyton, too, points out the shift in emphasis in favor of
consumer demand. "[Business is] much more
customer-demand-driven than it was in the past," he says.
"You have operations that have this as the ultimate imperative
rather than having things organized according to how long it takes
to get machine tools set up to do a production run. It's
forcing companies to be much more agile--and to have faster
inventory turnovers."

Again, the idea is to have exactly the right product at exactly
the right time. Relatively simple in theory? Yes. Just as simple in
execution? Not really. "It's easy to talk about the
concepts of logistics, but it's difficult to do them,"
says Blackwell. "That's why execution is so important.
Entrepreneurs might say `Well, yes, I can see the importance of
it'--that's the first step. The next step is doing it, and
that's the hard part."

Ironically, at the same time companies are striving for speed in
the marketplace, they're also struggling to hold down costs
through low inventories. For examples of real companies doing
this--and doing it right--Blackwell points to the computer
industry. "In the traditional supply chain, a computer company
decides what is to be made and then builds it and puts it into
inventory," he explains. "At Dell Computer and Gateway
2000, however, they've revolutionized the computer business
because they don't make the computer until somebody orders it.
That's much more efficient."

Leaders Of The Pack

Efficient, yes. But isn't the trimming of inventories a
potentially risky maneuver at a time when consumers are loath to
wait for the product of their choice? What if something as
unexpected as, say, a UPS strike slows down the wheels of delivery?
"In doing this high-wire act, [businesses] have become a lot
more dependent on everyone else to do their jobs and do them on
time," says Peyton. "If you look at it as a
vulnerability, then that's the price we pay for the privilege
of having a system that's more attuned to ultimate consumer
demand and has succeeded in squeezing out some of the inventory
costs that used to be there."

On the plus side, entrepreneurs may find themselves in a
position of advantage in this business-be-nimble, business-be-quick
era. "Small companies can notoriously move faster than large
companies," says Ted Lewis, author of The Friction-Free
Economy: Strategies for Success in a Wired World
(HarperBusiness). Lewis, who heads the Salinas, California-based
high-tech consulting firm Technology Assessment Group, recommends a
two-pronged approach to stay ahead of the pack. First, make your
own products obsolete before another company does. And second, if
your company falls behind in its industry, adapt the latest
innovations in your own way and extend the innovation further.
"A small company that has an expertise or niche in the market
can always compete against even the largest companies," Lewis
assures, "if they stay ahead of them."

But aren't instant-gratification-seeking consumers focused
exclusively on speed, speed, speed? Not necessarily. It's
imperative for a company to stay on the cutting edge because
modern-day consumers don't just want what they want when they
want it--they want exactly what they want, too. "Just having a
good product at a good price worked in the past, but it's not
enough for the new millennium," cautions Blackwell. "The
consumer reins."

Speed Racers

Clearly, such elevation of consumer demands begs renewed
consideration of just who exactly these consumers are in the first
place--and why are they so speed-happy? Perhaps a little historical
perspective is in order. Of course, we're talking about an
unprecedented pace of life born from the fruits of recent
technological advances--but we're also talking about a society
that has always subscribed to the point of view that faster is
better.

"I don't see this so much in other societies,"
Lewis says. "The Germans, the Japanese, the French and so on
are not hooked on speed--or change. But the American way is the
idea that things will always get better."

And, like it or not, getting better is irrevocably linked to
getting faster. "Clearly, the United States is on the leading
edge of [the quicker-is-better revolution]," agrees McKenna.
"The trend is toward more and more of this sit back and push a
button and get whatever you want. The TV remote control, for
example, will [some day] also be a computer so if you see a product
[you like], you'll simply push a button and order it. This
isn't Buck Rogers; this isn't 20 years from now. This is
within the next five years."

Not for a moment, moreover, should you entertain thoughts of
going against the tide. "Imagine making televisions without
remote controls today--nobody would buy them," McKenna
contends. "And yet, what we're asking the consumer to do
is get up and walk perhaps 10 feet across the room and push a
button or turn a knob. But we've become so accustomed [to not
doing this] that we won't buy such a TV set."

Or sit through double features at a movie theater. Or opt for
bank teller service instead of ATMs. Or forsake the speedier
microwave in favor of the good old-fashioned oven. "We are
gradually becoming so adapted and accustomed to this real-time
technology that it's changing us in subtle ways," McKenna
concludes. "We're not even conscious of it."

But business owners, in particular, must tune in to this
changing frequency.

Partners In Time

Interestingly, business owners have a potentially powerful ally
in providing consumers with the instant gratification they crave:
consumers themselves. "Adding systems where your customers can
help themselves but can go away feeling content about it is
key," says McKenna. For example, think of a furniture store
that has every product consumers want in stock--provided the
consumers are willing to assemble them themselves. Then, too, there
is the delivery company that allows its customers to track the
progress of their own packages. And, yes, there are
the no-longer-reserved-only-for-tech-companies Web sites that
provide opportunities for customization and customer service
heretofore only dreamed of.

"All of these things are possible because technology is
enabling consumers to have access to channels and information to
serve themselves," McKenna explains. (Ironically, the very
same consumers who won't walk 10 feet to turn the TV dial.)

At any rate, the future shock long predicted by pundits and
philosophers alike has finally come to pass--and with it, a
shocking new level of customer expectations has become the
standard. Although much of the next few years remains difficult to
predict, the very speed at which we'll experience these years
seems all but guaranteed.

"The speed with which you can communicate is going to
increase at a very rapid rate--just in the next decade,"
McKenna says confidently. "And we already think it's
fast."