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Right-time information—right now
How to turn the data you get into the information you need
Strikes. Materials shortages. Backlogs. Opportunities don’t wait—and neither do crises. That's why businesses need to know what’s going on, not just in their organizations, but in the companies they buy from, sell to and partner with. In a world governed by demand, your business needs to get it right the first time. And for that, you don't just need real-time data — you need right-time information.
"The fact of the matter is that most executives are still operating on monthly management reports that they receive two to three weeks after the end of the month," explains IBM's Michael Schroeck, Global Leader of the BCS Business Intelligence Community. "As top-line growth returns as the number-one business goal, executives are moving towards weekly, daily and exception-based real-time access to critical business information. It's not about data, but about getting the right information to the right people at the right time for them to impact the bottom line—not just react to what's already happened."
Real-time data and right-time information sound similar, but there's a critical difference: Real-time data is the 27 days your main supplier is backlogged. Right-time information is a warning that, if the backlogs continue and labor and facility costs remain constant as a result of an unchanged production mix, overall output will drop by 10%, and revenues by 40%.
Maybe your IT department is already feeding you real-time data about your finances, supply chain, partners and personnel. Perhaps you have a team of analysts that monitor key business processes and provide information on pressure points within the organization. But can those analysts:
- Provide objective measures for each division against driving the corporate strategy?
- Unify different sales teams around a single goal?
- Grade your Orlando plant manager's labor plan against the regional growth strategy on a daily, weekly or monthly basis?
With right-time information driven throughout your enterprise through the judicious use of business-performance-management (BPM) balanced scorecards, the answer to these questions can be a resounding "YES!"
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| Step into a right-time world |
Many mistake real-time data for right-time information. They think the people in the IT trenches and marketing departments will scrub the data and come up with the gems that executives can use to guide the enterprise to success. But the truth is that a unifying, effective strategy is the first step to creating right-time information out of real-time data. And strategy is driven from the top.
Real-time data reflects activity without concern for new business initiatives, product launches, or effects from regional expansion or world events. Only corporate leaders have the vision, insight and experience to identify outside occurrences that can make or break a business.
IBM's Schroeck recommends that executives start with their corporate strategy and then drive down to key business processes—sales channels, production or services—that support the strategy. Using the business processes as a guide, the leaders can then identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that quantify the success of those processes. A KPI can be either real-time data for simple operations, such as daily sales figures, or right-time information, such as book-to-bill in the context of existing operational costs.
Finally, Schroeck suggests creating a business performance management (BPM) scorecard that drives the responsibility for KPIs to the relevant business divisions. By starting with the corporate strategy, then setting up objective measures through KPIs to monitor the strategy's success, and finally pushing the strategy to the limits of the enterprise through BPM scorecards, each employee can be measured against the overarching corporate strategy. Thanks to leveraging right-time information, your enterprise is finally unified behind a single goal: success.
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| Getting started |
How can you turn real-time data into right-time information? Here are a few starting points to get the process started:
- Look around. What information are you able to get from your enterprise? What information do you need? How accessible and how dependable is it?
- Data or information? There's a reason it's called "raw" data. Before you can use it, it needs to be carefully prepared: filtered, scrubbed, carved into manageable pieces and readied for presentation.
- No fear. Doing a data inventory great, but don't make the mistake of thinking existing processes and data structures are the best. Use a top-down approach to determining the ideal form of information for each business process, then design "information supply chain" links to accommodate those needs. It may take more work, but it's better than staying inside your organization's data comfort zone.
- Talk to us. Even for seasoned professionals, turning data into information can be tricky work. Choosing the right partner can help. IBM has spent years building real-time information transparency—in our own business as well as our clients'. And we have the tools you need: deep expertise in your industry and professionals dedicated to finding effective, real-world solutions tailored to the needs of your specific business.
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