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It’s a sunny, windy morning in Eugene, Ore. A place best known for access to the outdoors, a history of environmental activism and the birthplace of Nike. I stand outside an indescribable one-story industrial space and talk to Mark Frohnmayer, CEO of Arcimoto, manufacturer of a three-wheel-drive electric vehicle he calls a ‘fun utility vehicle’.
Only I’m not in Oregon. I still sit at home, on the other side of the coast, relying – like many of us – on an ever-growing range of tools with which to do my work remotely. In this case, I get a tour of Arcimoto’s factory via FaceTime. Mr. Frohnmayer carries ‘me’ around on an iPhone, points things out, brings me close to machinery, parts and semi-finished vehicles, and asks me questions. To me, it seems like a pretty facsimile to actually be there. Minus the eight-hour flight and stay in a Dow Jones-approved discount hotel with a continental breakfast, that is.
This is how mr. Frohnmayer and his team have been giving factory tours to investors, customers and suppliers since the start of the pandemic. It works well enough that Mr. Frohnmayer wants to continue doing so after the pandemic ended, as it has no loss of productivity due to travel days.
Since the start of the pandemic, Arcimoto has given tours through its factory via FaceTime to investors, customers and suppliers. (Arcimoto)
Thanks to cloud-based collaboration tools of every description – not just Zoom – the pandemic has led to a recovery of office culture, from personal to remote or hybrid. Surprisingly, there has also been a recovery made for workers who almost no one thought could do their job remotely, including field service engineers and emergency medical personnel.
Although these changes explain trends in the post-pandemic workplace, they also show a new way forward for business relationships. Many examples come from the most practical industry of all: manufacturing. Workers still have to show up at a factory and assemble products, and quality control may require overseas travel from time to time, but many other activities – including the necessary investment prudence, building relationships with suppliers and customers, and even research and development – – became unexpected and perhaps permanently remote.
Delta CEO predicted that business travel by 2023 will again be up to 70% of the level before pandemic. But it will take even longer to earn another 30%, now that the definition of ‘essential travel’ has changed.
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Using FaceTime as a form of telepresence to perform factory tours – without the need for robots or bulky headsets – is just one of the ways Mr. Frohnmayer transferred most of his work at Arcimoto to a remote model. For meetings, he relies on what he calls his FutureCube, an insulated, soundproof barn in his backyard. It has power from his home, broadband via Starlink satellite internet, and most important of all: none of the barking dogs that interrupted his calls.
He uses this office in the backyard for meetings, also with investors, which is especially important as Arcimoto, although traded in public, is still just rushing up.
‘The idea used to be that I only had to fly through the country for half an hour for lunch to complete a business deal. And then the finance industry found out that you can have a person face to face. , and it can be a very personal discussion from a distance, ‘he says.
Arcimoto, which raised more than $ 50 million through inventory sales last year and another $ 14 million in 2021, is now designing its next plant, which will be more than 200,000 square feet, compared to the current 34,000-square-foot plant.
| Ticker | Safety | Last | Alter | Alter% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FUV | ARCIMOTO | 11.45 | +0.32 | + 2.88% |
| ZM | ZOOM VIDEO COMMUNICATIONS, INC. | 329.95 | -2.43 | -0.73% |
| DAL | DELTA AIR LINES INC. | 46.69 | -0.13 | -0.28% |
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Clearpath Robotics, based in Kitchener, Ontario, is the parent of Otto Motors, which builds autonomous mobile robots to help manufacturers and logistics businesses. Just before the pandemic, CEO Matt Rendall raised a round of start-up capital. “My life was on a plane and I jumped from city to city, investor to investor. But now I have not been on a plane for 14 months. The pandemic has changed the standard for what you are going to require on a plane. to climb. “
Clearpath has many customers in Japan, where personal meetings with customers were absolutely essential, says Mr. Rendall. As Japan even earlier than most of Europe and the Americas was hit by pandemic shutdowns, the culture there shifted rapidly and dramatically to remote meetings. If he does not regularly have to plan two-week trips halfway around the world, Mr. Rendall is concerned about the business strategy. It is time he said he was reluctant to give up, even after the pandemic was over.
For businesses that actually make things, there is a limit to how much work can be done remotely. Both Arcimoto and Clearpath continued to operate manufacturing facilities throughout the pandemic, when local regulations allowed them to do so, while maintaining social distance between workers. And some of their employees are eager to travel back for business.
Terry Becker is Arcimoto’s Chief Operating Officer, responsible for its supply chain, manufacturing, engineering and R&D. Before the pandemic, Mr. Becker and his deputies regularly traveled to China to visit suppliers who make most of the mechanical and electrical parts for Arcimoto’s vehicles. Such trips were critical to maintaining the quality of parts that flow to Arcimoto’s factory in Eugene, he says. He would use machines that manufacture the parts, and see how processes and quality controls work in a given factory. The lack of these trips, according to him, has led to problems in recent years: parts that were not specific and unusable.
Thanks to cloud-based collaboration tools of every description – not just Zoom – the pandemic has led to a restoration of office culture, from personal to remote or hybrid. (Arcimoto)
Despite these setbacks, Mr. Becker that many meetings inside and outside his company will remain remote, even after the pandemic. He also thinks the old-fashioned phone call will be changed forever.
“People will even move to Zoom meetings in the future, as opposed to conference calls or emails,” he says. “It has its merits because you can share so many better photos, spreadsheets and Gantt charts.”
In Clearpath, engineers had to come to the company’s testing facility, in a large warehouse in Kitchener, to test changes in the software that runs the company’s Otto robots, which can weigh up to 3,000 pounds. Now they can try out software upgrades on stripped-down versions of the robots. These ‘wallbots’, as the company calls them, contain only the sensors on board the robots, drives and computers. Since they do not have the half ton bucket and suspension system, it is small enough to fit in a home garage.
While wallbots were originally a contingency of the pandemic, they have the potential to become a permanent way for the company to recruit talent remotely. Engineers can now work from anywhere and do not have to be within commuting distance of the company’s facilities, says Mr. Rendall, who expanded the geographical reach of his search for talent.
Some analysts and executives have argued that, in addition to the inevitable necessities of practical work, the fear of missing out will drive workers back to the office – and sellers into customers’ conference rooms – as soon as they are allowed.
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An analysis by the Wall Street Journal from December 2020 predicted a lasting decline of between 19% and 36% in the number of business trips.
An analysis by management consulting firm Oliver Wyman in October 2020 predicted that business travel will bounce back more slowly than leisure travel. A year of ‘lockdown’ has shown that technologies such as video conferencing can replace meetings that take place within businesses, and that it works well if people already have an existing relationship, says Khalid Usman, a partner at Oliver Wyman. But not all business travel will be affected the same – the firm says that travel for sales and customer meetings will bounce back first.
However, this is the opposite for mr. Rendall. He did not see his revenue officer for a year. He says he can’t wait to fly back to Texas, where the other driver lives, to make contact again. But he says he will continue to hold initial meetings with potential investors and customers about Zoom.
“We’ve proven over the last twelve months that you can establish a new investor or client relationship remotely, and I think over time these will be the most important relationships where you need the time to travel,” he adds.