Sept. 11, 2000

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Simplicity Takes Hard Work

By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee

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Under Murphy's leadership, 3Com is migrating employees to a browser-based desktop where all applications will be launched. Though 3Com has standardized on Netscape Communicator, users can use any browser. When employees power up their PCs, they typically see the corporate home page, known as 3Community, which is tailored to present applications the employees use. 3Community gives employees direct access to E-mail, databases, workflow apps, and corporate information.

One application popular with employees allows 3Com expense reports to be processed electronically. Employees send expense reports to their managers via Lotus Notes for approval. The reports are then routed to the financial department, where reimbursements are directly deposited into employees' bank accounts. The process takes a few days, compared with a week or more under the old manual method. Also, there's no cut-off day when expense reports must be filed in order to be repaid in a particular cycle.

"3Com has done a nice job in streamlining processes via the Web," says Forrester Research's Schreck. "Compared with the places I've encountered, 3Com is ahead of the curve in Web-enabling many of its processes."

Not all of 3Com's IT activities focus on Web-enablement and radical simplicity. 3Com has devoted a good deal of time and resources to create new IT infrastructures for its divested businesses. Because 3Com's IT organization is managed centrally, it had to create mirrored versions of its systems for Palm and U.S. Robotics, including SAP applications for enterprise resource management and PeopleSoft apps for human resources. "It's not a matter of just flipping the switch and turning the applications over," Starr says. "They had to have data centers, networks, and people to run all these things."

While the divestitures created challenges--such as having to designate IT staff to work for Palm and U.S. Robotics--Starr says it's easier to create systems for a spinoff than to combine existing systems when companies merge. "When you spin off a company, you have control over the whole thing," Starr says. "But when you acquire, you inherit all the stuff they've got, good and bad."

Including divestitures, 3Com employs some 500 IT workers at its Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters, with another 300 staffers scattered at facilities around the globe. Finding and keeping IT talent in Silicon Valley is a challenge for any company, and 3Com's restructuring had adversely affected employee morale as workers worried about the company's future. Starr met with his entire staff in groups of 10 to allay their concerns. The results: 3Com's turnover rate this past year was a bit lower than the 25% rate for technologists in Silicon Valley, Starr says. The company works to maintain its IT talent pool by recruiting programmers and analysts at locales outside California; for instance, the support staff for its financial systems is in London.

The fact that 3Com is a technology vendor is an attraction in recruiting IT personnel. The company's IT staffers serve as guinea pigs by trying out new products, as well as sounding boards and advisers for 3Com's product designers and engineers.

Not surprisingly, 3Com, which offers a line of wireless networking and connectivity products, plans to implement a wireless company network that will give employees access to its intranet from anywhere on campus. Employees will stay connected to the network as they move from building to building, using personal cluster technology the company is developing. "Part of our competitive advantage is to walk the walk," says CEO and chairman Eric Benhamou, referring to 3Com's use of its own technologies.

These days, Benhamou says, nearly all of 3Com's business initiatives are heavily dependent on the talent within 3Com's IT organization. "I can remember a time when IT was just one of the necessary functions that you'd have to run the business," he says. "Now it's a key enabler to just about every competitive weapon we have."

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