Kenan Frager

With journalism experience at the L.A. Times, Newsweek, and Forbes, Kenan Frager writes, edits, and produces TIBCO's global collateral from web to print. As a blog contributor, he conveys TIBCO's philosophy and software in context that is relevant and engaging.


Why IT Must Proactively Get Involved in Long-Term Strategy Planning

April 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Email

shutterstock_111469742To face the 21st-century challenge of managing a digital customer experience, which means consciously interacting with all business partners and customers in real time, organizations need to take the step to integrate IT infrastructure with new and existing cloud applications.  Starting with the premise that “we are in the age of the [digital] customer,” there is no question (at least as heard in a Forrester Research webinar) that any forward-looking business must go forward with integrating their cloud data to back-end enterprise systems.

“The first thing is for IT to get in the game! A lot of IT practitioners are not contributing to their firm’s customer experience strategy. They are locked in the back office, providing point-to-point integration for project support.”
– Forrester Research, VP and Principal Analyst John Rymer

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Cloud, Integration Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Big Data is Yesterday’s News – Integration Has Become Big Data 2.0

February 26, 2013 by 2 Comments
Email

Now, well into 2013, the concept of Big Data is already becoming an outdated non sequitur.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.

The Process of Storing and Using Big Data is Inherently Limiting

If data is stored and siloed on a system-by-system basis, like transaction history in its own isolated database, all the petabytes in the world won’t give any real business advantage. Trying to gain understanding of customers, suppliers, or partners from transaction data in isolation, even if it’s every piece of transaction data from a company’s founding, is a one-dimensional approach with one-dimensional results. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Integration Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Trade Processing in One Second is Like Not Answering Email for Two Weeks

January 30, 2013 by 3 Comments
Email

The high-speed financial services industry (FSI) can’t deal in seconds or even milliseconds.  That would be far too slow.  Processing a trade in one second would be like taking two weeks off, not telling anybody, and not touching your email.  When dealing with stock prices that fluctuate in real time, any delay can mean the potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars.  This means the trades that really matter in the financial services world need to move in one millionth of a second (10-6) and technology “pipes” need to carry an incredible amount of data.

Speed is all that matters

For Citihub, an FSI IT provider, performance is absolutely paramount for their clients.  If it’s faster, Citihub wants it because their customers need it.  If technology isn’t even a thousandth of a second faster than the latest version, they don’t want to hear about it.  They want to know how quickly a message can get from point to point, whether it’s trades, market data, or any piece of useful financial information.  Bottom line: it needs to travel unnaturally fast.

Citihub provides consulting services and technology infrastructure to serve their clients in technically complex and business critical environments.  Citihub searched for a faster messaging solution for their clients’ high-volume, low-latency trading needs and that search ended with TIBCO. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Financial Services, Integration Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Caesars Makes Them Happy Even When They Don’t Win

January 23, 2013 by 1 Comment
Email

Every business has customers, even if they seem to pretend they don’t. There is always an end-user who has to deal with the products you build or services you provide. And you likely have information, perhaps an unmanageable amount, on their preferences. From billing history, to usage habits, to loyalty data – you are already keeping track of your customers’ experiences. Yet, how are you actively managing customer experiences and expectations?

“In the context of the 21st century, we believe in engaging, interacting and predicting customer behavior.”

- Rizwan Patel, Director of IT, Caesars Entertainment

Companies like Caesars Entertainment can’t afford not to invest in the customer experience.  In terms of customers, the stakes can’t be any higher than in the casino gaming industry.  Unhappy customers seem to be an inherent part of the mechanics of gambling.  How do you keep customers happy when they are statistically proven to be handing your money more often than not?  Caesars had to create an entertaining experience around losing money and have succeeded so much that customers are happy to lose again and again and keep coming back. The thrill of the possibility to win, while surrounded by an entertaining atmosphere makes the risks worth taking and maybe even enjoyable to lose. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Integration, Loyalty Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Is the Healthcare Industry Beyond Saving?

January 16, 2013 by 1 Comment
Email

Everyone seems to agree that the current US healthcare system is broken, or at least needs serious overhaul.  Healthcare has been an ongoing national debate with both sides agreeing on the many problems (although not the solution), and everyone has their own personal tale of healthcare falling short.

Many of healthcare’s systemic problems come from being overwhelmed by big data, too many systems recording too much diverse data and not actively working together.  If a healthcare organization’s billing doesn’t connect with patient discharge, treatment tracking or a customer web portal there are bound to be problems.  Mistaking a patient’s gender seems like a small problem, but can reflect a systemic lack of connected data that can and does lead to faulty billing, misdiagnosis, bad overall care, and unrealized revenue for the business.  Enter Siemens Healthcare, whose job is to fix the healthcare industry through technology solutions, services, and consulting. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Healthcare, Industries, Integration Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

How Enterprise Social Media Can Prevent Disasters

June 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Email

Imagine how different our world would be if man-made oil spills could be prevented entirely?  If all oil companies used enterprise social media, this would be a more likely possibility.

Apache Corporation spends $2.8 billion annually to drill wells.  With about 4,000 employees who have the knowledge needed to prevent trouble costs, they use TIBCO’s enterprise social media offering to share information needed on a real-time basis.  Their business model is one of rapid acquisition of fiercely independent sites with their own techniques for drilling – their own tools and processes.  Now, these diverse, once-competitors who kept best practices to themselves can share key learning and avoid redundant mistakes in global operations.

If all oil companies had an enterprise social media implementation like at Apache, there would be more community-driven oversight.  The dialogue among employees at sites who know drilling is going badly could ask for advice and critique from key knowledge workers across the globe to identify what is going wrong.  The instant feedback loop created by private social networking between experts would rapidly feed the cycle of communication.  Rather than ignoring the warning signs and continuing drilling obliviously, there would be many more internal checks and balances and helpful advice through open, real-time communication on the situation. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Cloud, Social, Two-Second Advantage Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Capture Market Share from Brand-Name Competitors by Betting on Your Customers

May 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Email

How does the sixth-largest mobile carrier compete with brand giants such as AT&T and Verizon? They come out swinging with a counter-intuitive stroke of brilliance by sticking to the belief that attrition is best fought by completely eliminating contracts for all existing customers. Think about it: a strategy to keep customers in contract by dropping the penalty for breaking out! It’s the perfect irony. Turns out, it is also perfect marketing.

The majority of Americans  in the mobile phone market already have a mobile device and contract so carriers are resorting to stealing customers from each other. 82% of American adults own a cell phone, Blackberry, iPhone or other smart phone. The customer’s question has evolved to: what can you do for me that my current provider doesn’t? The mobile market is changing drastically, leaving carriers scrambling for ways to stay ahead of one another. Many carriers are finding out how beneficial it can be to use loyalty programs to invigorate your network of customers and ultimately increase growth.

Teaming up with TIBCO Loyalty Lab, U.S. Cellular brought to fruition its visionary concept, called the “Belief Plan,” powered by enterprise functionality that orchestrates a complex landscape in which most users own multiple lines in different stages of contract cycles. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Loyalty, Mobility, Transform Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Lowering the Total Cost of Ownership for IT Projects

May 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Email

At global, dynamic organizations, like commercial banks, IT undertakes large and small projects every week. This becomes increasingly more complex and increasingly more expensive for companies when implementing software solutions across regions and through language barriers. TIBCO lowers the costs for every new project by integrating diverse enterprise systems. Having a uniform, centralized dataflow allows IT to have greater access to the easy-to-utilize information they need to implement new software solutions.

Taiwan’s largest global bank, award-winning Chinatrust Commercial Bank, used TIBCO in their expansion to the huge financial markets of Singapore, New York, Hong Kong, Japan, and India. You can see how IT would have problems standardizing a single service like loans with such a diverse customer base. New projects at Chinatrust have cost savings as high as 30 to 40 percent for any given project, with a service re-use rate at 30 to 35 percent.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Financial Services, Industries, SOA, Tech Trends, Transform Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Automate Risk Management with a Highly Secure IT Backbone

April 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Email

High performance, highly secure IT integration of business process systems is now becoming a requirement to compete. Without automated communication between disparate systems, a business runs the risk of leaving important information on the table that can be used to discover opportunities and mitigate risks. Connecting a risk management solution to other systems allows for further monitoring and prevention of possible problems.

When considering government regulations and fines for non-compliance, in fields like securities trading or healthcare, quick and reliable automation of reporting systems becomes essential to function with operational efficiency. Manual data entry is an inefficient use of expensive man-hours, while also greatly increasing the risk of human error. TIBCO solutions leverage years of experience in real-time automation and integration to enable seamless monitoring and documentation.

When a new transparency regulation asked for market price data to be published within just three minutes of a trade, Postbank AG (one of Germany’s largest financial services providers) implemented a TIBCO solution in just six weeks. By integrating 15 different solutions, automating pricing, and using internet platforms, they achieved the highest level of automation in trading transactions. This not only reduces the significant manual effort previously needed, but ensures the efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of processes.

“TIBCO Software’s predefined tools and range of interfaces allowed us to map our business processes extremely quickly – much more quickly than would be possible with normal tools … in a record time of just six weeks – clear proof of the flexibility of our architecture.” - Dr Michael Schlosser, Head of Group Client Execution, Postbank AG

Read the details of this rapid implementation.

Filed Under: Automation, Financial Services, Integration, SOA, Tech Trends, Two-Second Advantage Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Unifying Electronic Health Records to Improve Patient Outcomes

April 3, 2012 by 1 Comment
Email

In healthcare, the need to conform to government regulations and the ever-increasing desire to improve patient outcomes results in a significant challenge to stay competitive.  How can you provide better care while avoiding risk and raising revenue?  By properly utilizing healthcare information technology.  Technological solutions allow healthcare providers to streamline processes and raise operational efficiency.

Most health networks have multiple records per patient with no easy way to link these records for a full, cohesive picture of the patient’s health and the services they require. This unconnected infrastructure results in slower care, higher costs, and reduces efficiency on a large scale.  TIBCO’s solution provides a unified electronic health record that links each admission across multiple care settings, thus increasing operational efficiency for a view of each patient that is single, complete, and unique.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Healthcare Tagged With: , , , , , ,
«Older Posts