Rules in a virtual venue

Chennai, June 20, 1999 - Aspire Systems was recently profiled in “The Oregonian” – the largest newspaper serving Pacific Northwest US. An edited, shortened excerpt follows:

After all, in a wired world without walls, where employees site doesn’t really matter. Aspire’s employees could be anywhere with good Internet access and build web based systems for customers. So far the model has worked. Sales at Aspire Systems, Inc. has been growing at a rapid clip since it was founded three years ago.

Questions of managing and training are becoming increasingly important as entrepreneurs and corporations alike wrestle with boundaryless work arrangements such as telecommuting and “virtual” teams of employees connected by telephone lines rather than office space. Although many corporations have some sort of “virtual” activity at their companies, few whole companies have taken the model to the degree Aspire has, say Internet watchers such as Brad Wieners, senior editor at Wired Magazine in San Francisco.

Internet improvements have increased the speed at which data can be delivered, fueling changes in the past few years, said Wayne Rash, manager of technology for New York based Internet Week. Rash reports a small but growing number of companies that are truly virtual.

To Gil Gordon, editor of New Jersey based Telecommuting Review, the phenomenon is part of the trend towards more agile companies. “I think it’s very tempting to look at these kinds of things and dismiss them as oddities,” said Gordon. “But, I think it’s more than that. We’re going to begin to see more forms of organization in the gray area.”

Managing in the boundaryless enterprises, of course, presents serious challenges. For Aspire, the biggest challenge has been to create training programs to get all employees onto the same page. The company’s customers are as spread out as the employees, with only a percentage coming from the United States.

Internet companies, with their heavy focus on technology links, are particularly vulnerable to overlooking such operational issues, according to Kathy Long Holland, an emerging business consultant with LongSherpa Consulting. “We think we can communicate because we’re connected by this machine ... but that still doesn’t replace communication processes and training,” said Long Holland, who praises Aspire’s willingness to tackle the issue.