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The Industrial Internet usually is associated with wind turbines and jet engines equipped with sensors and streaming data into the cloud for analysis to predict outages and cut maintenance costs. Now workers at GE’s brand new Global Operations Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, will soon start using it to cut down on paperwork and make the wheels of corporate America spin faster.
The person leading the charge is Ashley Bolender. A lawyer by trade, she came to GE nearly two years ago to work in its Global Operations division — a suitably nebulous name for a business unit that centralizes support services from six global business functions — including supply chain, IT, tax and finance — into one common framework. Discouraged by the scarcity of digital innovation in the legal system, she thought a company like GE would be more forward thinking. “I was frustrated with how archaic the legal profession was,” Bolender said. “There’s a lack of technology, a duplication of effort and an overall lack of efficiency.”
Bolender was charged with the onerous task of streamlining various administrative functions to reduce costs. GE has over 9,000 channel partners — third parties who assist the company with getting products to the marketplace. Each one must be vetted before it can use the GE monogram, a process that can take as long as a year and result in several sales teams and departments duplicating work. “We were spending too long on this,” Bolender said. “We just don’t have the luxury in this modern economy to take that long.” (Neither do the partners.)
Bolender decided to shop for a solution in the GE store— the internal marketplace for ideas where GE businesses share technology and know-how — and discovered the power of Predix, GE’s software platform for the Industrial Internet. While GE uses it to connect and analyze machine data, Predix is also a software platform just like any other. Web developers and customers have been building apps on it to meet specific needs.
Bolender teamed with Mac Rothstein, GE’s commercial operations project manager, to build Channel Connect, an app designed to help GE Sales teams quickly sign up “channel” partners. Next, the GE team combined the app with a program from a company called Octiv that helps streamline the contracting process. Bolender came to Octiv through GE Ventures, which is an investor in the company.
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Top and above: GE’s brand new Global Operations Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, will use the new software system. It will also house up to 2,000 employees and fuel growth for the city’s up-and-coming riverfront area. Images credit: Getty Images
The result makes the administrative process virtually transparent, Bolender said. She was able to use Channel Connect to create a centralized digital hub combining law, compliance, IT and other technology. The system has helped her team reduce the time it takes to complete applications, do due diligence and train potential channels on compliance policies.
It’s exciting stuff, no joke. Today, work flows directly to the right experts on the Global Operations team. The system also allows the company to keep better control over where the partners are in the process of getting the coveted GE seal of approval. “Because everything can be tracked electronically, we can garner insights from the analytics,” Bolender said. “For instance, we can see with what frequency certain contract clauses are being negotiated and in what region of the world. This helps the team constantly adjust standard contracts to make them easier to push through in negotiations.”
Bolender and her team will be using the technology at the new Global Operations Center, which opened last week. It is GE’s first shared service center in the U.S., and one of only four around the world. (Other locations are in China, Mexico and Hungary.)
The brand-new building, located at The Banks in downtown Cincinnati, had its grand opening Oct. 25. Along with fueling growth for the city’s up-and-coming riverfront area, it will also house up to 2,000 employees — making it the largest creator of jobs in 10 years in the state of Ohio, according to Gov. John Kasich.