Business Making Progress

Banking Industry Session Sneak Peek - Richard Bentley on Responsive Customer Engagement

 

Maintaining customer loyalty and identifying new revenue opportunities is are recurring themes within today’s banking industry. As mobility and social computing proliferate, the ‘instant-on’ customer need more and more touch points. Although a challenge from the perspective of data security, storage and compliance, there are significant cross and up-sell opportunities that are ripe for the taking.

Today, in a special drill down post, Progress Industry Vice President for Banking, Richard Bentley, shares his take on Responsive Customer Engagement as well as other topics he’ll be exploring during his talk at Revolution.

To read Richard’s full post, click here.

 

Earthquakes, hurricanes and Steve Jobs - unexpected events...should be expected

So in the past week two regional events and one national (really international) event have captured the headlines. For those of us of that live or have acquaintances on the East Coast, we had an earthquake and a hurricane - those are the regional events I mentioned. The national event was the announcement that Steve Jobs was stepping down as CEO of Apple. So what do these events have to do with one another? Or with supply chain?

These events represent a fundamental aspect of the extended supply chain - out of plan events. Granted one might argue that Apple had know that Jobs' health was not good and that he was destined to having to step down at some point, but it was still a shock to the system. An earthquake, that cannot be predicted, a "bolt out of the blue" that can have different degrees on impact. A hurricane, well we can predict the path, model the damage and prepare for the results. But that requires a certain level of modeling and guess work, what happens when it does not go according to plan, or when some infrastructure survives while others fail?

Just as with these events, it is the speed at which the systems can recover that determines how damaging the impact will be. Apple had visibility into the reality of Steve Jobs' health, they could implement a plan rapidly, ensure that Apple, its employees and customers would not see too drastic an impact on the business. With Hurricane Irene, the East Coast cities and states were able to prepare and respond once the event occurred - some better than others. The quicker the response, the faster cities and states get back to "business as usual." Finally with the earthquake, there was no warning, who would expect an earthquake on the East Coast? While the damage appeared to have been minimal, what had it been more severe? How would cities like New York and Boston reacted and been able to resume business as usual?

What this means for the extended supply chain is you need to think about out of plan events in three buckets:

• Events you know will happen, ones that you can plan for - like Steve Jobs retiring. You might know a product is going to be replaced, how do you plan for the new product introduction while sunsetting the old? You might not know the exact date, but you know it is going to happen.
• External events that you will know will occur (hurricane season) but have no control over. Yet you can prepare some contingency plans for - product recalls or design failures, these are always potential for these to strike, but you can plan for how to handle them if they arise. Or a potential dock worker strike in Long Beach that could cut off your ship bound supply. Much like a hurricane you know that they will occur, just not always the severity.
• Bolt from the Blue events - an earthquake, the SARS outbreak or a volcano. On smaller scale a computer virus attack or power outage - while you can simulate these events, you never know when they will strike or impact your extended supply chain.

With all these events what is key to rapid recovery is real time visibility, your need to be able to see through your extended supply chain to identify where the event is impacting your business and more importantly how to get to the root cause, and therefore implement a solution. The key is - the sooner you can identify the problem the sooner you can recover.

What do you think about the relationship between visibility and recovery? Let us have that conversation at Progress Revolution.

Do you know Dr. John Bates?

If you don’t, get to know him. Though not a native of Massachusetts, it’s safe to say, “he’s wicked smaaht”. Not only is he smart, he’s really a genuine, nice person.  Recently, Dr. John Bates was named as one of the Top 10 Innovators of the Decade for Capital Markets, in which he has an extensive background. He helped pioneer new techniques in algorithmic and high frequency trading, real-time risk, and market surveillance. He was also a co-founder of Apama, a complex event processing (CEP) technology provider that Progress Software acquired in 2005.

Last year John became a member of the newly established Technology Advisory Committee (TAC) for the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The CFTC is an independent agency with the mandate to regulate commodity futures and options markets in the United States. Most recently, he joined the blog roll over at the Huffington Post – his most recent post is From Icebergs to Autos, Effects of the Japan Earthquake Are Long-Lasting.

If you haven’t already, get to know John. I promise you, he’s a man worth knowing professionally, and if you are lucky, personally.

• Follow him on Twitter (@drjohnbates)
• See if he’ll confirm you as a friend on Facebook
• Watch him on YouTube
• Read what he has to say on our Apama and Business Making Progress blogs
• Listen to his CNBC interview Is a 'Splash Crash' Next?
• Check out his Executive Profile on Boston Business Journal

How to Justify Your Professional Development Costs and Save Money through Attending Progress Revolution

When budgets are tight and time is scarce, it’s hard to justify investing dollars and man-hours on activities and programs that don’t directly and immediately impact the bottom line. 

Many managers view professional conferences as expensive perks for staffers and don’t understand the value that conference attendance brings back to the organization.

The return on investment for conferences is undeniably challenging to quantify – it’s virtually impossible to specify the value of an individual’s  “networking” and “professional development” to the broader organization.   

How can you reframe the thinking around the benefits of conference attendance within your organization?  By focusing on what specifically you will bring back as a return on the investment – content, tools, technologies and best practices that you can implement to improve bottom line performance including notes you take during conference sessions, documentation from your exhibitor meetings and cards from all of the people you network with at Progress Revolution.

To get started with building the case for attending a conference, it’s important to have a solid handle on the expenses that you will incur – registration, transportation, and lodging.  This comprises your investment, or sunk cost. 

Then, estimate the dollar value that a new tool, technique, or solution could bring to your company – think in terms of both revenue generation and cost savings. The next step is to assess breakeven – how much lift or savings is required to recoup the initial investment and how long you think it will take to achieve the return?

When you propose attending Progress Revolution 2011 in Boston from September 19-22 at the Westin Boston Waterfront to your organization’s stakeholders, focus on the specific benefits that your attendance will bring to the company. 

For a modest investment we’re confident that your organization will reap the rewards of improved efficiency, reduced cost and a better customer experience – this translates into more dollars in the coffer. 

We’re looking forward to an informative, valuable, and lively event in September and hope to see you there.

Why and How Responsive Process Management Differs and Augments Business Process Management

Next month I’ll be speaking at the Progress Revolution Conference in Boston.  As I prepare for my talk and review presentations by our customers I’m struck and pleased by just how much companies have improved their bottom line through Business Process Management (BPM).  It’s incredible to see the growth from a mere technology solution to an established best practice.

Obviously, it’s not surprising that a solution that reduces costs, improves quality and boosts efficiency delivers better business results. However, cost management and streamlining processes are only half the picture.

Many companies are challenged by the increased velocity of business operation, reporting lags, fragmented functional areas and an inability to quickly and effectively analyze a complex chain of business events and respond appropriately.  When you don’t have visibility into business events and access to all the information you need at your fingertips precisely when you need it, opportunities are lost.

The key to Responsive Process Management (RPM) is actionable insight. Without it you’re analyzing what HAS happened instead of what’s about to happen. Hence, you’re powerless to affect the outcome. Consider how many companies first learn about a problem from their customers – after the damage is already done. 

Imagine that you work for a transportation company and that one of your trucks carrying a critical shipment on behalf of a key customer breaks down on the highway.  With RPM in place, all stakeholders have immediate visibility to the situation and can act quickly to implement a solution. They do not need to wait until they are told about it. Your logistics team will know to send another truck to complete the shipment, your scheduler will be able to update the delivery window and shift resources as needed, and your account management team can keep your client appropriately updated.

Without RPM it’s highly likely that your team will learn about the incident only when the customer calls to report that the shipment never arrived. The damage is done – your people are scrambling, your customer is dissatisfied, and your relationship is compromised.

The cost of cleaning up business messes extends beyond time and resources.  Your reputation and brand equity suffers.  You’re distracted and likely missing out on revenue producing opportunities.  Your position in the marketplace erodes as your competitors pass you by.

It is critical to be able to dynamically control the outcomes and handle exceptions that impact your business.  By responding to opportunities and threats within the actionable window, you eliminate disruption and distraction while increasing revenue.

RPM provides actionable insight. It presents a company comprehensive visibility into any combination of processes and events.  All users of the RPM solution have access to the whole picture.  Information flows seamlessly from all relevant sources within the organization and outside of it.

This puts everyone on the same page at the same time.  Your staff can anticipate and solve problems, reset priorities, keep customers happy, and leverage dynamic revenue producing opportunities.

Because everyone’s operating from the same vantage point, you can proactively collaborate on day-to-day operations to improve efficiency, increase revenue and provide a better customer experience.  

Businesses are facing increasingly complex operational challenges – more stringent regulations and higher transaction volume increase compliance requirements and risk.  RPM helps you anticipate threats around non-compliance and fraud by providing the insight necessary to head off these events before they become full-blown problems.

It’s not enough to focus on cost reduction and streamlined processes.  To achieve meaningful business performance improvement, you can’t ignore RPM and the power of agility and ability to sense and respond through real-time visibility.  It’s good for the organization and it’s good for the customer.

I hope you can attend my breakout session, “RPM Enables Enterprises to Improve their Top and Bottom Lines” at the Progress Revolution Conference in Boston this year. I’m speaking on Tuesday, September 20, 2:30 – 3:30pm. Click here to learn more.