The new key to success for Project Business is to continuously monitor their entire portfolio in real time. These instant insights enable more proactive management so they can deliver their projects on time and on budget.
To accomplish these goals, they a need a real-time approach to managing their enterprise operations.
News Flash: The Real-Time Economy Has Been Here for a Long Time
The Real-Time Economy is a consumer mindset that expects instant access to products, services and information. This macro trend is driven by business processes and value chains that are becoming entirely digitized and connected to enable data dissemination and business decisions to occur closer and closer to real time.
The Real-Time Economy is everywhere. You can see it in the automated and immediate availability of products and services online to the instant updates on just about anything you can imagine across every device. Consumers are becoming ever-more impatient – they demand and expect more from the companies they do business with or they’ll take that business elsewhere.
80% of B2B Buyers Expect Real-Time Interactions
Increasingly, these real-time expectations from the B2C arena are permeating the B2B world in a trend called consumerization. In fact, 80 percent of B2B buyers expect real-time interaction with their vendors.
Reliable and Fast Information is Key to Make Important Decisions
The ability to access, understand and disseminate the right type of information in real time is critical to making good business decisions. That way, companies can be more proactive and take the right actions when and where they’re needed.
The problem is that most Project Businesses use cumbersome processes and systems that make it increasingly difficult to get at this information. Or if they do have information, it is inaccurate and unreliable.
In this Real-Time Economy, the solution to great decision-making is your ability to process the right data and glean insight fast.
Project Business is Behind
Although the speed of business has been increasing for decades, Project Businesses still use aging enterprise systems and disconnected applications that yield incomplete and outdated data. Using outdated information to make business decisions is like trying to drive a car forward while only looking into the rear view mirror – pretty soon you’re going to crash.
Working with data that’s weeks old or even older won’t enable you to control your processes, manage issues and produce reliable forecasts. As a result, you will miss deadlines and go over budget.
If you don’t know how all your projects are doing at all times, you’re already behind. But it isn’t just about speeding up the flow of information. It’s about reliable information too. Yes, constantly monitor your entire portfolio, but it has to be accurate so you can take the right action immediately when situations change.
If you don’t know how all your projects are doing instantly, you are already behind.
Integration Delivers Real-Time Accurate Insight
Armed with real-time insight, you are better equipped to meet the demands of the customer and respond faster, exercising more control over risk, profitability and cash flow. However, you can’t do this unless you have the right system running the right processes.
Going from disparate, disconnected applications to one integrated system enables the real-time information needed to run a Project Business. One system creates a single source of truth that everyone can rely on. Processes work together in real time. There is no manual intervention, manipulating and consolidating data from disparate applications. Now everything is accurate and instant.
Here is a case study on Rex Moore, an industrial electrical contractor who eliminated 15 systems for one.
Making the Shift to Real Time
A consumer mindset that tends toward simplicity, and demands hard and fast deadlines is penetrating Project Business. Customer expect instant updates and transparent access. In the mind of the customer, projects should be highly predictable and low-risk transactions, just like everything else.
You can try to make excuses, or say “not in my industry.” Sorry to say, real-time is here to stay.
How are you going to adapt?
