Johannesburg, 07 Jul 2005
Increasingly, we`re seeing references to the real-time or agile enterprise, which no doubt sounds a bit like the latest IT fad. However, it promises to be so much more than that, potentially providing an opportunity for IT to really show its value to business.
So, what is the real-time enterprise? At its core, it means continually improving key business processes and adapting them to constant change. This way, we can deliver better value to customers and more profit to the company.
The real-time enterprise is not so much about any specific technology or system as it is about how people use technology to continually deliver business improvements and adapt to change.
Therefore, what would be the most effective way to employ real-time technology? Some believe you should automate routine transactions and to empower people to deal with the exceptions.
This way, unnecessary costs and complexity are kept to a minimum. But surely this contradicts what we`ve been proclaiming for the last few years - taking that human element out of daily IT operations.
Well not necessarily, all it is doing is taking the complexity out of your IT systems and handing some of the more important decision-making back to your IT department.
A practical example is to define complexity as any transaction that is an exception to the standard business rules built into your automated systems. When exceptions occur, the automated systems just flag them, trap the related data and send alerts to the appropriate people to examine it. The systems then return to handling the vast majority of routine business transactions.
There is a lot of power in handling complexity this way. Essentially, the people who are alerted will decide whether the non-standard data is the result of an input or process error or if it indicates something new in the environment.
If the data or the business process shows an error, people do root-cause which makes the standard business processes even more efficient. If the data shows a new development, then early detection allows more time to create business processes to respond effectively.
By implementing a real-time approach to IT, people have time to do more valuable work. They aren`t worn down doing the boring, routine stuff and can focus on the exceptions, learn from experience and find ways to increase their efficiency.
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