Right-Time Information for the Real-Time Enterprise
Timely Information Drives Business Agility
InfoManagement Direct, October 3, 2008
Macroeconomic Conditions and the Global Economy
If we look around us, it is pretty clear that the day and age of the global economy has arrived. Businesses are looking to transcend international and trade barriers in search of new markets for their products and services. Economies of scale are drawing businesses into the global business ecosystem due to cheaper raw materials, more cost-effective resources and new business partners. However, to really thrive in this global economy, businesses have to face a whole new set of macroeconomic conditions such as increasing regulatory compliance, stiffer competition, a variety of consumer channels demanding higher levels of service, shrinking product lifecycles and faster time-to-value resulting from mergers and acquisitions. Overcoming the challenges presented by these conditions requires the modern enterprise to continuously improve business agility in order to achieve its corporate goals.
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Enterprises are realizing that access to critical business information at the right time is crucial for maintaining competitive advantage. However, the ongoing explosion and fragmentation of data across the enterprise and beyond complicates the situation. For example, without the availability of accurate, consistent and timely information, businesses cannot effectively respond to customer service demands, consistently rollout differentiating products, support inventory optimization efforts, rapidly on-board new systems or adhere to changes in information-centric regulations. To support such dynamic environments, enterprises are striving to evolve into what are called real-time enterprises by leveraging the power of their enterprise information assets. In this article, we will discuss how an IT organization can enable the real-time enterprise to improve business agility by delivering accurate, consistent and timely information across the extended enterprise.
The Real-Time Enterprise Enables Business Agility
A real-time enterprise uses business processes, IT solutions and best practices to ensure that information about its customers, products and partners is always up to date and of the highest quality. Armed with such information, a business can address increasing customer demands, changing market conditions and approaching competitive threats in a more cost-effective, expedient and proactive manner.
In the words of David Stodder, vice president and research director of Ventana Research, “Businesses are being driven by growing customer expectations, intense competitive pressures, and constantly changing macroeconomic issues to become more adaptive, agile and efficient. To thrive in this environment, leading businesses are actively trying to evolve into the real-time enterprise – an enterprise that maximizes the value of its information assets by integrating and analyzing critical data in its various front-office and back-office systems in real time and using it to drive more efficiency and profitability.”1
If we were to make a list of the typical business processes that a modern business engages in to drive increased revenue or market share, we would notice a common theme across all of them. Let’s consider a few examples, such as cross-selling and up-selling initiatives, point-of-sale fraud detection, real-time insurance policy quote generation, regulatory compliance, personalized best offers for marketing, supply chain optimization, retail out-of-stock replenishment, straight-through processing and reconciliation and 24x7 global operations. All of these business processes reflect the increased responsiveness involved in conducting business in this new global economy and mandate real-time or near real-time information. An effective IT organization can thus help a business make the leap to a real-time enterprise by enabling the availability of timely information to improve decision-making and operational efficiency.
The Information Latency Continuum and IT Projects
The timeliness of information, or what we refer to as the information latency continuum, can span a wide range, depending on how fresh the information must be to provide the most business value. The latency of information used for analytical purposes can typically range from weeks to days, as is required for business intelligence (BI) reports based on historical data. On the other hand, information used in operational scenarios such as inventory management, straight-through processing, customer on-boarding and online order confirmation typically must be delivered within hours, minutes or seconds.
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