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Mark Raskino, Gartner research director |
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Enterprises Will Flourish or Perish in Real Time
Tuesday, 11 March 2003
Managers should learn the disciplines of using IT to cut elapsed times in critical business processes. Those that fail to do so, will see their companies perish this decade. Those that do, will see earnings rise by at least 15 percent - They will have created a real-time enterprise (RTE).
Recent research has persuaded Gartner to hold these beliefs more strongly. This year it exposed the research to public debate at an extended session on Monday at Symposium/ITxpo 2003 in Florence, Italy. Research directors Mark Raskino, David Flint and Monica Basso gave separate presentations about underlying business trends, the technologies and processes to pursue and the applicability of mobile technologies.
Raskino started by showing how one of the key business drivers - being faster to innovate - has steadily worked its way up the list of concerns of CIOs. In Gartner's CIO surveys this issue has risen from 6th to 5th and now to 3rd place in their list of key business trends.
Gartner has also just surveyed about 120 IT managers about the issues of the RTE. This revealed a challenging paradox. Most managers were typically confident that they could continue cutting the times it takes to achieve various tasks. They were asked, for instance, how long after the end of a quarter it took to make financial results available.
This took more than four weeks for 51 percent of companies five years ago. Only 24 percent need that long today and only 13 percent expect to take that long in five years' time.
Similar results were reported for many other business activities. Yet when it came to direct questions addressing real-time enterprise architecture, they were pessimistic. Over half (55 percent) agreed that it would be impossible to get most of their systems and processes to work in real time, even over a decade. Yet they agreed that a new entrant in their industry could probably start out with much faster business cycles.
Raskino said: "There is a discontinuity between the pessimism about approaching RTE and the optimism about shortening business cycle times."
For the RTE, focusing on management processes and time-based transformation is likely to be more rewarding. Raskino said, "Management decision-making process times now often hinder operational response times, and managers are less productive than they should be."
Gartner classifies business processes into 10 broad groups. In each group, or "cyclone," there is a recurring sequence of an enterprise's sensing an event, making a decision about it and taking action. "An RTE doesn't just respond faster. It knows sooner. This gives it more elapsed time to consider and action the best response options" Raskino said.
David Flint then outlined some of the key technologies and processes that can help an enterprise become an RTE. And Monica Basso showed how mobile technologies can reduce many business process cycle times by allowing information to emerge from the shadows of not having been entered into a corporate system.
Jonathan Green-Armytage
Gartner Staff
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