The Real-Time Revolution

Preface

Time is a precious commodity. In a world where the pace of business is continually accelerating, time is becoming the dominant customer currency. Customers want to spend their scarce time well. For example, when ordering a product, the ideal ordering process from the customer’s perspective would take virtually no time and would be completed effectively. The order would be accurate and complete so the customer can avoid spending time on corrective actions.

Real time in this ordering example is the actual time that a customer has to invest with a company to complete the ordering process. However, completing an order (or any process) in “real time” has popularly come to mean completing it virtually instantaneously. The reality is that instantaneous ...