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Mark Raskino, Research Director |
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"Real-Time" Can Create Real Business Value
Monday, 24 March 2003
Mr. Raskino, a Gartner Research Director specializing in IT management at Gartner's U.K. office, outlined the challenge facing today's technology managers.
"CIOs and IS leaders now recognize that to get the return from the Internet-era technologies they are adept at deploying, they must somehow get the organization to take full advantage," Mr. Raskino said. "But transformational benefits require deep business changes — not just new technology. The key question is how to catalyze that change."
Increasingly, he said that will focus attention on the real-time enterprise (RTE) — "the next big idea in strategic business IT."
The RTE concept will gain importance as a faster economic pace and increasingly impatient customers transform the new economy to a "now" economy in which rapid response and "time control" promise to replace cost control as a leading business concern, he said.
How RTE Works
For anyone unfamiliar with the concept, Mr. Raskino pointed out that "real time" means running systems in ways that keep pace with real-world processes and environments. "A real-time enterprise must detect events early enough and respond to them within a given tolerance window, or else it will leave opportunities to its competitors and not see threats until they hit," he said.
He said that organizations that apply RTE concepts effectively should expect to see earnings improve by 15 percent to 20 percent.
The concept is powerful enough that Gartner predicts with a 0.8 probability that the dominant players in every segment of the economy will have achieved leadership through key components of RTE by 2007.
Gartner also projects a better-than-even probability that, by 2010, companies that haven't adopted RTE will be so disadvantaged that they will fail.
Transforming Business
Mr. Raskino said CIOs should start small. Imposing simple time targets for faster business objectives can produce a catalyst for change.
"IS leaders should collaborate with their business colleagues to develop visionary stretch targets for time-based change," he said.
He offered the following nine key principles for time-based transformation of business:
Uncover the critical information you need to have in real time.
Use the power of elapsed time — a scarce resource in a virtual world.
Exploit maturing technologies to drive real transformation.
Make elapsed time control the norm — as cost control is today.
Target "tolerance windows" of people, processes, businesses and systems.
Rely on time reduction to also reduce costs and improve service.
Exploit simple, inexpensive measurement — time stamps are everywhere.
Extend these ideas horizontally and vertically and across value networks.
Remember that rapid reporting drives better decisions and reinforces ethical behavior.
Mike Hill
Gartner Staff
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