Speed as a factor for success Our modern industrial society lives life in the fast lane. The catchwords “faster”, “shorter”, “more powerful” reflect what we experience in almost all aspects of our lives. Whether at home or at work, we are constantly on the move and in a rush. In our private lives we find rapid exchange of inf- mation most entertaining and we are fascinated by the wide range of inf- mation that pours in on us from all around the world, mainly via the new media. It gives us the feeling of being a part of the action everywhere and all the time. Seldom are we aware that the only reason this flood of inf- mation, often referred to as “overstimulation”, does not lead to overkill is that we manage to organize our time effectively. There are many parallels to this in the business world. Here too, a great deal of time pressure is exerted from outside; goals are set ever higher and deadlines become tighter. In other words, demands on our time demand faster reaction. Crucial information travels around the globe – across all time zones – in a matter of seconds. In fact, instead of CET or CEST, it would make sense to have a single time zone for the worldwide network called GST for Global Simultaneous Time. In business more so than in p- vate life, we are almost constantly online.

Real-time enterprise (RTE) refers to the seamless fusion of IT and business operations to foster event-driven marketing, process automation, just-intime provisioning, and readily available business intelligence. By ensuring that the right information flows to the right people at the right time, RTE allows companies superior efficiency and quicker response time to both problems and opportunities. Drawing on five years of research at more than 30 leading companies, Becoming a Real-Time Enterprise fills a gaping hole in the business literature by bringing RTE down to earth for business readers and providing a complete blueprint for achieving real-time status.

Successful management teams can identify the cost and return derived from the implementation of new technology, and they can properly apply the technology toward gaining a competitive advantage. IT and business managers alike need a resource that enables them to prepare for future operating conditions, identify beneficial solutions, and use high te

This book is organized and laid out to provide information in quickly understandable chapters and in sections within chapters. Each chapter stands on its own and provides a usable body of information on an aspect of the real-time enterprise. Chapters includes diagrams, tables, and lists to illustrate and summarize key points and real-world case studies and executive interviews to provide further insight into the subject matter presented in the chapter. Readers of this book will: Gain a clear picture of how organizations can profit from use of real-time operations Appreciate the theory, technology, and business practices that underpin the real-time enterprise Learn a pragmatic and efficient approach for developing real-time systems in their own organizations The author, Michael Hugos, is the chief information officer of Network Services Company, a $7 billion dollar distribution organization. He has over 20 years experience in applying technology to meet business challenges and he holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. His discussion of the real-time enterprise is a blend of both theoretical and practical perspectives based on his years of applying real-time concepts to actual business situations. He is also the author of Essentials of Supply Chain Management.

Enterprises have to react instantly to changing market conditions and disturbances that occur during execution of value creation processes. Depending upon the processes’ context, the goal is to significantly reduce lead times, reaction times, and time-to-market, among others. The vision of a real-time enterprise (RTE), which is able to sense and analyze events from internal and external sources, and perform adequate (re-)actions, has been envisaged by manufacturing enterprises. Daniel Metz presents a framework based on EDA and CEP towards the realization of RTE in manufacturing. The framework closes the vertical integration gap, and further, establishes feedback in (near) real-time among enterprise levels. As such, the framework provides a holistic and closed-loop control of (manufacturing) processes, and encompasses results and insights from management, engineering, and computer science. The framework has been implemented for a small and medium sized foundry in Germany. The developed control approach has led to a significant increase in (manufacturing) processes’ efficiency (i.e., performance, quality, and availability).

This comprehensive guide to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) draws on Barton Goldenbergs 20 plus years of experience guiding firms to a successful implementation of CRM solutions and techniques. Goldenberg demonstrates how the right mix of people, process, and technology can help firms achieve a superior level of customer satisfaction, loyalty, and new business. Beginning with a primer for executives who need to get quickly up-to-speed on CRM, the book covers a full range of critical issues including integration challenges and security concerns, and illuminates CRMs key role in the 24/7/365 real-time business revolution. CRM in Real Time is an essential guide for any organization seeking to maximize customer relationships, coordinate customer-facing functions, and leverage the power of the Internet as business goes real time.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed conference proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Business Intelligence for the Real-Time Enterprise, BIRTE 2013, held in Riva del Garda, Italy, in August 2013 and of the 8th International Workshop on Business Intelligence for the Real-Time Enterprise, BIRTE 2014, held in Hangzhou, China, in September 2014, in conjunction with VLDB 2013 and 2014, the International Conference on Very Large Data Bases. The BIRTE workshop series provides a forum for the discussion and advancement of the science and engineering enabling real-time business intelligence and the novel applications that build on these foundational techniques. This volume contains five full, two short, and two demo papers, which were carefully reviewed and selected with an acceptance rate of 45%. In addition, one keynote and three invited papers are included.