I worked with a client once who was looking to implement an automated process for complaints handling. They explained their processes and began to slowly unveil their “integrated” customer system, explaining that over the years they grew to understand how information needs to move from one system to another for a single customer view.
And I froze in a state of shock.
I was looking at a standard application window with seventeen icons when it suddenly dawned on me; integration for this business simply meant the glossy front-end held seventeen manual points of entry into the back-end, which a customer advisor had to navigate in order to fulfill a simple enquiry.
And that’s where all the problems begin.Lost customer information, duplicated entries, half-truths and poor decision-making were all a result of this unnecessarily convoluted system.
Tiny Men Making Things Run Smoothly
Did you ever wonder as a child where the little men were who lived in the radio or television? Let me spin a similar yarn for the challenge of integration. [Read more...]
At the RSA Conference in San Francisco, it’s all security, all of the time. When one topic is the only focus over such a short period, it becomes easy to see current trends. Here are three that have caught my attention:
In the last decade, the world population has increased by more than 700 million to reach seven billion today. And by 2050, there will be two billion more people to feed. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food insecurity is a major global concern today. With food consumption exceeding the amount grown for six of the past 11 years, countries have run down reserves by more than 30%.
Now, well into 2013, the concept of Big Data is already becoming an outdated non sequitur. As data increases rapidly, storing huge amounts of data in uncorrelated, separated silos (in database or data warehouse storage) that need to be constantly queried can’t drive any new, intelligent change in a business. In fact, this approach creates even greater challenges. Big Data by itself can’t drive change because it is just a more efficient, more technological way of doing business as usual. Databases that store transaction history are a practice as old as a shop keeper maintaining a ledger of purchases and sales. How is simply scaling that same idea into the millions of entries going to drive any real change in business? That old approach is Big Data 1.0 and it can’t compete with correlated, referential Big Data. Integrating varied information in an individual context, in the moment of customer’s engagement is fundamental to move business forward in any way and has to be the foundation of any conception of Big Data 2.0.
Stop failing to plan with your 
Since our founding in 1997, TIBCO has always been there when needed. Before and after disasters struck, TIBCO was there to support businesses in need and the people they employ.
Waiting for a foreseeable problem and then fixing it after the fact is pointless and damaging to a company. Calculating risk and preventing an issue before it becomes one is the basis for why integration is no longer just a nice idea, but a basic IT skill, as expressed in the 
It’s a well-worn rule of thumb that you have little more than 10 seconds to impress someone with your website. Its design and, more importantly, your content will either draw in and convert someone into a loyal customer or allow them to remain a digital transient. You only have seconds to convince them.
Getting the right apps into the hands of your customers quickly requires an infrastructure that can handle the load. Assembling the components is tricky because there’s a combination of new data and old to manage in the moment for the best customer experience. Telecom companies like T-Mobile need to be able to handle this exponential increase in data volume, and also analyze this new source of data to deliver the right services to each customer.
