Leveraging Real-Time Software Features: 6 Essential Advantages
Information technology hasn’t stopped continuing to transform the way businesses are conducted. Not only is there increased competition in a rapidly evolving market, but the new capabilities technology keeps churning out makes this competition even more complicated and cutthroat.
In the scramble to service as many customers and answer as many needs as possible, leveraging real-time capabilities has emerged as a critically important new business strategy. Here are some ways real-time functionalities can benefit businesses:
1. Essential Business Intelligence (BI)
In an interview by Attunity, Dan Vesset of IDC (International Data Corporation), a data analytics firm, talks about the emerging shift from the information economy to the “intelligent economy,” where the emphasis is placed not only on the means of acquiring huge amounts of information but also on the ability to analyze and utilize the information gathered.
According to CIO.com, companies that have utilized various applications for their BI efforts have gained effective ROI figures. Business intelligence allows companies to uncover and use data to develop ideas for cost-cutting, improve customer relations management, optimize outdated business processes, and discover further business opportunities.
These BI data gathered are used for supporting the decision-making process, which is why business intelligence should be the most current and actionable. Making sure that this information is updated in real-time means business intelligence used for supporting strategic decisions is timely. Getting time-sensitive information to or from anyone at anytime and anyplace is critical for a BI effort’s success.
2. Essential Business Decisions
Better information and data management most often lead to better decision-making capabilities. Real-time functionalities allow managers to know what is happening right now and make up-to-date decisions based on the data gathered, as opposed to a decision-making timeframe that could span days, weeks, or months.
Some business areas that thrive on time-critical decision-making include customer service, IT support, sales, supply chain or logistics management, and other contact center environments. With customers’ increasing demand to get their issues resolved as quickly as possible, making use of real-time data has become vital more than ever.
3. Customer Experience Management
In an article on KMWorld.com, Helena Schwenk discusses how “web time” has changed and toughened market competition for customer demand, satisfaction, and loyalty. Through multiple contact points (from an online store to a website, to a company’s social media account, to a call center, among others), it has become increasingly important to attend to customers’ needs as quickly as possible.
According the Schwenk, the challenge comes in integrating various points of customer information in the quickest manner possible to improve service and connection-building in as timely a manner as possible. It is with this process that real-time customer relationship management (CRM) analytics is found to be of significance.
This improved art of doing business and satisfying and keeping customers relies heavily on the real-time capabilities of CRM analytics. Nurturing customer relationships with intelligent, personal and useful interactions decreased response times, and made easier with information that’s always up to date.
4. Performance Management
Having real-time capabilities gives management critical control over mobile resources to plan, execute, examine, and eliminate unproductive steps and continuously improve.
In a case study by Compuware, it describes how Dole was able to solve stability issues by monitoring their business performance in real time. Bottlenecks were identified immediately, such as the slowdown of their systems during peak hours that thereby reduced their response time. Of course, issues such as this were cleared accordingly, sending ROI back up where it should be.
Another great thing about real-time performance management, or RPM, as Arc Advisory Group’s article states, is that targets can be continuously adjusted to exploit market conditions, including the most current fluctuations. Sometimes, demand is high; sometimes, it is low. Sometimes, customers want more of this, and the next, they want more of that. RPM allows businesses to quickly identify and adjust accordingly to constantly volatile factors, improving business agility.
By having a KPI (key process indicators) dashboard, managers are updated continuously within the day, all throughout the course of a project. Performance of the business, per department, down to divisions, teams and individuals can easily be recorded and accessed in real time. Not only are these short-term KPIs measured and monitored, they can be integrated with historical data for a more whole-picture analysis as well.
5. Real-Time Collaboration
In an infographic by cloud communication and solutions provider Esna, 37 percent of remote staff in the Americas, 32 percent in EMEA, and 40 percent in Asia-Pac report that telecommuting cuts back on their involvement with team activities, including access to important company information. This can be alarming, especially when 20 percent of the 4.6 billion people of the global workforce telecommute.
Companies such as Oracle, Microsoft and IBM have capitalized on this need to keep teams functional and collaborating in real time, wherever part of the world they may be, and rightly so. Real-time collaboration tools should help mobile staff access essential company information, reduce or even eliminate downtime, share reporting, collaborate on data analysis, and effectively update their project database.
A report by the Aberdeen Group indicated that real-time video collaboration helped in customer service efforts in 63 percent of best-in-class companies, while 67 percent reported that the same form of collaboration assisted development and learning activities.
With staff increasingly becoming mobile and the continued upward surge in the number of telecommuting employees, ensuring continuous and reliable collaboration in real time should become a necessary business endeavor.
6. Real-Time Business Functions
Having real-time visibility and control over business functions likewise allows for faster transactions, lower maintenance costs, and more satisfied customers.
For example, a research by Northstream identified impressive financial returns for businesses that implemented real-time billing and other self-service solutions. By focusing on increasing customer adoption of these capabilities, customer care cost, the most sizable among other cost savings, was reduced, and the opportunity for higher service revenues increased.
Self-adjusting applications, two examples being Oracle Real-Time Decisions (RTD) and Comindware Project, are programmed with a “decision” logic that combines pre-programmed business rules and more flexible predictive models to come up with an intelligent and relevant action in real-time. These real-time predictive capabilities can also be used to identify process bottlenecks, crisis situations, and other issues, which then result in alerting operators in a timely manner.
Maricel Rivera manages content for Comindware, provider of enterprise software like Comindware Tracker and Comindware Project that are both equipped with real-time software capabilities. You may connect with her on Twitter.