A new class of business process solutions based on rich Internet applications (RIAs) is fundamentally changing how business professionals collaborate and their customers engage with services. With RIAs, organizations can provide high-impact, easy-to-use online and offline services that integrate effortlessly with back-end systems, enabling users across manufacturing, financial services, government and other industries to easily access the services they need anywhere, anytime. Already, RIAs are replacing less dynamic online services built around traditional point-click-wait models with more engaging, interactive online experiences.
“With RIAs, we can break free from long-accepted Web constraints and be limited only by our imaginations,” says David Crowder, senior vice president of technology at MFG.com, the world’s largest manufacturing marketplace. MFG.com serves manufacturers procuring materials or selling goods ranging from glue guns to Mars landing modules. Its elegant RIA interface allows buyers and sellers to collaborate in complex transactions. Buyers set up custom request for quote (RFQ) templates to specify what they need, when they need it and where they need it delivered, and suppliers worldwide bid on those RFQs, matching their capabilities and capacity with the buyer’s requirements. The buyer accepts a quote and can then monitor the entire production of the order - including revisions, negotiations and even tracking shipment - until the goods arrive at the doorstep.
This is inherently a complex process, but MFG.com’s unique platform makes it easier for bothbuyers and sellers. RIAs slide contextually relevant content in and out of the dashboard-style user interface based on the decisions that users make while working in the application. A process-focused RIA such as the MFG.com application can manage massive amounts of data - including CAD files in platform - and application-independent PDFs cached and pushed to users on demand - providing all project team members with instant access to current, relevant information. To further improve performance and avoid confusion, MFG.com can enhance services by integrating rights management capabilities with its RIA to help safeguard the integrity and accuracy of content shared across teams. “Overall, the robust combination of front-end RIAs and back-end process systems is redefining what is possible for the manufacturers and suppliers that use our services,” says Crowder.
Migration to RIAs
MFG.com is just one example of a larger trend toward using RIAs to deliver better, more intuitive ways to improve collaboration across project teams and enabling customers to interact with organizations to place orders, request services or get information. Leaders in a variety of industries - from Internet innovators such as eBay to financial giants like NASDAQ - are using RIAs to meet customers’ changing expectations, increase customer loyalty and generate higher profits - all while making use of existing staff, back-end business processes and infrastructure.
Because RIAs can greatly improve user experiences, Forrester predicts that moving forward, RIA technologies will be used to augment or even replace traditional enterprise portals and Microsoft Office as information workplace front ends.1 RIAs are especially suited for complex, multistep processes, consolidating multiple tasks into a seamless, individualized and visual user experience.
For many businesses, RIAs are becoming synonymous with improved business processes, particularly as they relate to efforts around business process management (BPM). In fact, RIAs help BPM overcome one of its greatest challenges: the gap between an organization’s ability to automate processes and users’ readiness to participate in them. The powerful and complex business processes that underlie MFG.com, for example, could easily be daunting without the intuitive RIA front end. As business managers know all too well, failure to engage staff and customers fully in processes can result in high attrition, low conversion rates, overloaded customer service centers, lengthy cycle times and missed opportunities - all things that RIAs can help address.
New Views of Engagement Inside and Outside an Organization
Engagement is where RIAs shine: the overwhelming majority of those who use RIAs say that rich applications greatly enhance their Web experience.2 Users like RIAs more than traditional online Web sites or enterprise portals because RIAs can provide capabilities such as real-time data visualization and dashboards that instantly pull data from multiple locations into consolidated images that help users complete transactions or gain new insight into their businesses.
