The Real-Time Enterprise

Using up-to-date information, getting rid of delays, and using speed for competitive advantage is what the real-time enterprise is all about. But first, you need to know how to:

		plan ahead to become a real-time enterprise

		develop and maintain the right infrastructure

		support your business goals with time-based initiatives

This three-part report explains what you need to know about the real-time enterprise. Key issues and concepts about each of the key areas — planning, support, and infrastructure — are explained below. Read more

Real-Time Process Management: Rules Before Actions

As the push toward real-time management grows, traditional business processes will fail to keep up. Enterprises will have to adopt new collaborative rules and roles if they want to stay in step.

The Gartner Definition of Real-Time Enterprise

Creating a definition clarifies thinking. Sharing the definition with others can give them a head start in reaching their own understanding.

The Real-Time Enterprise: The Quest for Strategic Gains

The "real-time enterprise" is still at the preliminary stage of evolution, but its outline is becoming clearer. It will become an important IT investment area by year-end 2003.

Six Imperatives for a Real-Time Enterprise Endeavor

Use these six imperatives to begin a "real-time enterprise" endeavor, which requires a coherent program of strategic change that will span the enterprise and its business environment for several years.

The RTE 'Cyclones' Model Changes the View

The real-time enterprise (RTE) extends beyond operational activities. It brings a focus to higher-order business activity cycles where new, genuinely transformational improvements will be uncovered.

Real-Time 'Cyclones' Sweep Through Management

By re-engineering managerial processes, implementing business activity monitoring and creating a collaborative and empowered culture, enterprises can increase their agility in dealing with threats and changes.

Releasing Cash Flow Through the Real-Time Enterprise

Business managers need IT to help them develop business processes that offer measurable financial advantages. IT managers can boost their organizational and personal value by enabling improved cash flow.

Real-Time Risk Management and Capital Allocation

This global investment bank can view and analyze transactions taking place across the globe to manage risk in real time.

The Value of Becoming a Real-Time Enterprise

The velocity of "information flows" has increased dramatically, assisting first in the automation of internal business processes, and now external processes. Using non-real-time data can be costly.

Nine Key Principles of the Real-Time Enterprise

The real-time enterprise is still developing. So far, we can identify nine core concepts and behaviors that make this a unique recipe for business improvement.

IT-Accelerated Corporate Transparency Will Enable RTE

Internet technologies have exposed enterprises to uninvited scrutiny. Faced with a common threat, management support for deeper, cross-functional improvement will pave the way for the real-time enterprise.

Real-Time Enterprise Delivers Value in Lead Management

Lead management best practices highlight the importance of getting the right information to the right person at the right time. Automation of lead management processes can reduce latency to enhance the relevance and value of leads.

Real-Time Enterprise Affects Customer Interactions in CRM

When implementing a customer relationship management strategy, leverage real-time techniques to deliver stronger intimacy and greater relevance in customer interactions, but don't sacrifice quality of response for speed of response.

Real-Time Customer Service: Is It Possible?

Before taking on an implementation of real-time customer service, enterprises should understand the technology and resources required, and how to decide whether to do it.

Balance Optimization- and Synchronization-Focused SCM

Externalized manufacturing and logistics processes have become the rule, changing the scope of supply chain management by increasing the importance of real-time extended enterprise SCM functionality.

ERP II Is a Critical Player in the Real-Time Enterprise

Real-time enterprises require expanded business application functionality, supported by changes in manual process activities and metrics. ERP II is a necessary element in such an initiative, but it may not be enough.

Using Portals as Gateways for the Real-Time Enterprise

Enterprise portals form a key part of a "real-time enterprise" initiative. The connection between the two is not just in technology, but also skills, governance and implementation.

Helping Executives Benefit From Real-Time Information

Real-time information offers tremendous benefits when properly used. But enterprises risk drowning their executives in irrelevant data, unless the information is carefully and properly directed.

Managers Begin to Apply Business Activity Monitoring

Managers are not fully using real-time capabilities for decision making; they implement BAM with basic analytic methods instead of more sophisticated tools to obtain alerts of impending process problems.

Knowledge Management: RTE Processes and Technology

Real-time management is an exercise in extreme knowledge management. Most real-time processes must be knowledge-enabled to support two real-time enterprise goals: minimize response times and optimize response quality.

A Real-Time Enterprise Is Event-Driven

Enterprises that want to operate in real time must expand their use of event-oriented design, message-oriented middleware and publish-and-subscribe communication.

Use ZLE and STP Strategies to Build a Real-Time Enterprise

The zero-latency enterprise and straight-through processing — and the related benefit they provide by enabling business activity monitoring — are important when enterprises implement a real-time enterprise.

Content Management and Portals Power the RTE

The real-time enterprise can best be realized with content management and portal adoption. The creation and sharing of unstructured information is a fundamental underpinning of the RTE.

Frictionless Security Isn't an Oxymoron

Concepts that are used to achieve real-time operations for business processes can be applied to security procedures to reduce security-based delays. Security also should be embedded in all real-time processes.

Real-Time Enterprises Need Mobile-Enabled Middleware

Mobile devices and wireless networks can enable the real-time enterprise. However, a sound, mobile-enabled middleware infrastructure is necessary to achieve strategic business benefits.

Client Devices: The RTE's First Line of Success

A real-time enterprise (RTE) has to match client hardware with the needs of business processes. Failure to do so may compromise cycle times and workers' productivity, or result in costly overprovisioning.

Real-Time Enterprise: Business Continuity and Availability

Real-time enterprises must plan for and mitigate the risk of any type of business process interruption. Use our new planning scenarios and our methodology for assessing requirements early in the project life cycle.

Mobility: Vanguard of the Real-Time Enterprise

The real-time enterprise begins with its mobile users. To take advantage of the effect this group has on sales and revenue, getting the best information to and from them is crucial.

The Business Services Value Chain: An Enabler for the RTE

IT services delivered via the business services value chain will enable solutions to be implemented with greater speed, agility and predictability than one-off, customized solutions, enabling the "real-time enterprise."

The RTE Must Challenge the 'Custom IT' Belief System

Enterprises must question their belief in custom technology. The "real-time enterprise" must understand the market perspective regarding the evolution from custom to noncustom IT services.

Package Applications as Part of the Real-Time Enterprise

The real-time enterprise (RTE) is yet another challenge for the integration of package applications. Their proper implementation and integration can yield significant architectural advantages.

Why the Real-Time Enterprise Needs Real-Time Management

Implementing real-time enterprise business processes will need applications that come with instruments to measure and manage them pre-installed.