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December 6, 1999

Real -Time Reality
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"It helps employees work across geography, across division, across function, and across time," Isaacson says. "They can work together without spending days in airplanes and hotels." Without real-time communications, work- groups had to delay meetings until each person could commit to the necessary travel time. And because meetings were so infrequent, they typically lasted all day. The Centra meetings can be done instantly and more frequently, so a typical meeting lasts just 90 minutes or less. It's an improvement over E-mail, which is one-way, one-to-one, and slower than real time, Isaacson says. "You don't collaborate on E-mail," he adds.

The ad hoc style made possible by real-time collaboration means the company can react quickly to changes. If, for instance, market-research executives learn about a rival product, they can set up a quick meeting with product managers and manufacturing specialists to develop or package a product to compete against it. "If they can quickly get together and collaborate, we're in the market faster and we can sell our products," Isaacson says.

Real-time collaboration isn't perfect. Isaacson says it's not well-suited for highly interpersonal activities, such as teaching negotiating skills or selling something to a new prospect. Collaboration technology is also not ideal for tech amateurs, some users say. American Life Insurance Co. is using Microsoft's NetMeeting collaboration software in its IS organization. But the product has yet to catch on among low-tech users in the New York company, who still prefer the comfort of face-to-face human interaction.

In fact, real-time communications in general can take some time to catch on in a company, both at an individual and an organizational level. Isaacson says Kraft's culture has not completely adjusted to the notion of real-time activity. "We have to change the culture," she says. "If you're a brand-new high-tech company, you're starting with nothing. But we're a mature company with an established culture."

For Isaacson, the battle comes in trying to convert people who aren't early adopters to new technology and new ways of doing things. That can take some creativity. One way the company eased users into Centra was to create a Centra "starter kit," a small bag with a headset and a quick-reference card containing tips and a user-interface screenshot so users can familiarize themselves with the application. Kraft has also worked to lessen the attraction of collaboration alternatives-for example, the only way to reserve conference rooms is online, not via phone or paper. And Kraft has hosted a number of sessions designed to illustrate the product's benefits.

Moving to a real-time environment requires more than just technology, as BellSouth Wireless Data found out. Berger, the consultant, says that because the system moves so fast, the company has to make sure its representatives are well-trained to avoid mistakes. The old set of disparate systems had enough manual steps that the company could catch many mistakes before the customer saw them. But "this is a system that will actually do what you ask it to do," Berger says. "There's no way to pull it back once it's done. That's the larger battle of most real-time enterprises." In order to double-check orders, BellSouth uses a saver, who saves the order, and a committer, who verifies the order and initiates it.

Liz Claiborne's IT execs say companies may adopt real-time technology but fail to address the business processes the technology is supposed to be powering. "Your business processes have to be in sync. If they're not, it won't matter what technology is behind it," says Nicole Cavallero, manager of application development. The parts of the business connected with the technology have to learn to interact on a human basis, too. Says Cavallero, "Ultimately, it's no good if hands don't shake."

The problems with business processes may be endemic. Meyer says that in order to stabilize themselves in case they start to move too fast, companies produce "drag": checks and balances, chains of command, spending authorities, and steps such as budgeting that make the business stop periodically and take note of its progress.

It's a way of minimizing risk, but it also means the company won't be able to react to changes or grow as quickly as it could without those safeguards. A company won't be able to move if managers are obsessed with "sandbagging" the budget, Meyer says. "Budgets are kind of the anti-real time," he says. Companies have altered the manufacturing and inventory process through real-time inventory-replenishment techniques such as Kanban baskets, bar-coded bins that let companies order parts just as they run out of them. But now they have to borrow cues from manufacturing to alter the management process so they can make real-time decisions and budget on the fly for critical projects.

Moving in real time does have its disadvantages. Companies that use it risk losing control of their operations, and of being inundated by data. For the smart company, though, its benefits are clear: Real-time technology and processes let companies be more nimble and responsive. As competition gets stiffer and customers more demanding, businesses may have little choice but to become real-time enterprises.

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