My Live Twitter Q&A with @ProgressSW

Recently, I took part in a live Twitter Q&A with our official Twitter feed, @ProgressSW. For those who missed our online chat, we transcribed the Q&A so you can read what I tweeted about optimization, agility, and industry trends.

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Optimizing your organization

PRGS: What are the simplest and best practices we can put into place to improve our organizational agility?

Bates: Base all applications on an explicit model – so they can be understood, analyzed & rapidly changed

PRGS: What can we do to move from a reactive culture to a proactive, anticipatory organization?

Bates: Tap into the events in your business. Look for patterns that indicate impending opportunities and threats

PRGS: How is being able to predict and react quickly to shifts and crises in the biz environment improve org performance?

Bates: Org can reduce risk & continually optimize itself, e.g. deploy “nearest” truck – saving fuel

Competitive advantages and agility 

PRGS: What competitive advantages can our organization achieve through improving market intelligence and responsiveness?

Move before your competitors; increase profits 

PRGS: What risks are companies facing if they don’t focus on improving agility?

Bates: Your competitors will launch services first & adapt before you. You’re dead!

PRGS:  Can you give some examples of companies that have successfully translated improved agility into better overall performance?

Bates: Reliance Capital, BT and Dell – all on a panel with me at Revolution

PRGS: In what industries are advanced intelligence, agility and rapid response most critical?

Bates: Capital Markets, Banking, Telco, Supply Chain – to name but a few

PRGS: How can we leverage agility to create a better customer experience?

Bates: Detecting customer problems before they happen – makes 4 delighted customers

PRGS: Can you give some examples of organizations that have successfully turned crises into opportunities?

Bates: Plus markets will be speaking about real-time surveillance – avoiding rogue traders and market abuse

UBS has shown today what happens without proper real-time risk and surveillance. Our customers have responsive systems to protect them

Industry trends and pain points 

PRGS: What are the most important trends and shifts in the business environment currently, forecasts for the future?

Bates: Self-learning systems that can provide intelligent suggestions to business users

PRGS: What do you think are the most pervasive operational pain points in organizations today generally?

Bates: Decisions take SO long. Also companies operating with 20^th Century models

PRGS: It’s hard to argue that improving organizational agility isn’t a good thing, so why isn’t everyone doing it?

Bates: It’s really hard! The data isn’t visible – lots of stuff on mainframes or legacy apps

Only Progress can light up that data and enable you to sense and respond to events & improve your processes

PRGS: What are the most common obstacles to improving operational intelligence, agility and responsiveness?

Bates:  Organizational – people are living in the 20^th Century

Technical – no visibility to the events running thru the org

PRGS: Thank you, @drjohnbates, for participating in our Twitter chat. We will see you next week in Boston for #ProgressRev!

Bates: Thank you @ProgressSW for asking some challenging Qs in the twitter chat. I look forward to #ProgressRev next week!!