The Real-Time Enterprise
by Guy St. Clair
Guy St. Clair is the consulting specialist for Knowledge Management and Learning at SMR International in New York City, and is a past president of SLA. He is the author of Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services, to be published by K.G. Saur in September 2002. He can be contacted at GuyStClair@cs.com.
Making It Happen
Specialist librarians have a critical role to play in the real-time enterprise. In fact, the more you think about it, the more you realize specialist librarians are ideally positioned to help their organizations get the best from the information technology/knowledge services connection.
Here's how it works.
The successful organization in today's business and research environment is a knowledge-centric organization. Knowledge services (which I've identified as the new over-arching profession that incorporates all current and future disciplines, professions and types of work that contribute to successful information delivery) provide the management methodology that enables a company or an enterprise to achieve excellence in the organizational mission. In fact, knowledge services is the basic management tool for the knowledge-centric organization, building as it does on trust, integrity and collaboration, and providing tangible and measurable benefits for all organizational stakeholders.
Specialist Librarians
as Knowledge Services Professionals
Knowledge-centric organizations include the companies and enterprises where specialist librarians work. These information professionalsknowledge services professionals unlike any other knowledge workersare uniquely qualified to lead the organization's efforts in moving toward the real-time enterprise. Why? Because knowledge services as a construct builds on the convergence of information management, knowledge management and strategic (performance-centered) learning; there's simply no one else in the organization that has the education, background and leadership experience in this area to match that of specialist librarians. In the modern, knowledge-centric organization, it's the convergence of these three constituent elements that provides the highest return for the information/knowledge investment, and it's the specialist librarians who have the intellectual and operational expertise to keep things flowing smoothly as new information-delivery challenges are identified. Among these challenges, of course, is the development of the real-time enterprise.
As early as 1995, information leaders like Sylvia Piggott (later a president of SLA) were talking about the potential for specialized libraries to provide real-time information delivery. In that heyday of reengineering it wasn't at all far-fetched to predict that information managers would be required to think in terms of real-time information delivery. Certainly Piggott recognized the power of that particular paradigm, writing in "Why Corporate Libraries Must Reengineer the Library for the New Information Age," Special Libraries 86(1), Winter, 1995:
"We are entering an era where businesses and professions are reengineering and restructuring as a consequence of the exponential leap in information technology. This reengineering and restructuring, some believe, will lead to vast improvements in customer-valued productivity, optimization of businesses and competitiveness. The corporate world expects products to be delivered faster, using more flexible manufacturing and distribution processes with the ability to get the products anywhere, 24 hours a day. In this kind of environment, information professionals, especially in the corporate world, must also be looking for ways to optimize their services by reengineering and restructuring. Corporate library managers, to keep in sync with this kind of performance, must reengineer their libraries or information centers to deliver information using the most cost-effective tools and products available in the industry. In addition, the library or information center must seek to exist as a borderless service, a place where information can be sought wherever it exists and used immediately by local or remote customers. Business information professionals must make the adjustment as, except in rare cases, only real-time information will be valued as a competitive tool."
The Real-Time Enterprise
Since 1995, the concept of the real-time enterprise has become a reality for organizations that have the resources and the management leadership (particularly in their information technology units). Simply put, the real-time enterprise is one in which all information delivery is provided when the information is required. Or, as described by Ludwig Siegele in "A Survey of the Real-Time Economy," The Economist, February 2002, the real-time enterprise is "an organization that is able to react instantaneously to changes in its business." Because of advances in information technology, it is now possible, using increasingly complex software, to "drive the lags and latencies out of the economy and make it much more efficient," Siegele said, quoting Andrew Odlyzko, director of the Digital Technology Center at the University of Minnesota. Because of these advances in technology, the former trade-off between being integrated and being flexible is now eased, or even done away with altogether, according to Siegele.
For those of us educated and experienced as specialist librarians, perhaps Siegele's best image is the one that depicts the real-time enterprise as "a giant spreadsheet of sorts, in which new information is automatically processed and percolates through a firm's computer systems and those of its suppliers" (The Economist, February 2002). Just think what the implications of such a "spreadsheet" can mean for information specialists and other knowledge services professionals seeking to identify and anticipate users' needs; a whole new world of client relationship management becomes possible for specialized libraries and knowledge centers.
In fact, as one vendor has put it, "There's nothing like the rush of the real-time enterprise." Certainly the phrase seems to apply to specialized libraries in the business community, and probably to many other specialized libraries as well. If we think about what goes on in many specialized libraries and knowledge centers, much of the work (no matter how we try to describe it in our professional jargon) is a matter of what might be called "high-class" record keeping. But that's no insult, because we understand the organization of information and we do it well. If we take those organizational skills and link them to the different areas of our work in which real-time information delivery can improve performance and lead to more efficient management, there are some very fine results in store for us and the organizations where we are employed. All specialized libraries and knowledge centers have to deal with client (or customer) relationship management, or CRM as it's popularly known, and real-time information delivery could vastly improve the way we keep track of our customers and their information needs. But there are further opportunities as well. Such tasks as supply chain management, financial management, human resources management and even the highly-specialized tasks relating to information delivery and knowledge services management can all be performed better and more efficiently if the individual unit (the specialized library or knowledge center) is part of a real-time enterprise. If the purpose of the real-time enterprise is to enable the organization to move away from information "silos" and "smokestacks" (those vertical information collections that all departments and organizational units necessarily develop), and to move to a horizontal framework for information capture, the benefits for the specialized library become increasingly apparent.
The Real-Time Enterprise/Knowledge Services Connection
As the real-time enterprise comes into being, it establishes itself as an organization with the fundamental elements of knowledge services, knowledge development and knowledge sharing. Knowledge development and knowledge sharinggenerally designated with the acronym KD/KSbecome the critical and essential underpinning of successful information delivery throughout the enterprise. As information is turned into knowledge that can be used and then reused to create new knowledge, the specialized expertise of specialist librarians and knowledge services professionals comes into play. Collaboration is basic in the real-time enterprise and no one is better at collaborative information delivery and knowledge services management than specialist librarians. Collaboration is part of the specialized library's management framework, and entering into and managing relationships has consistently been one of the strengths of the specialist librarian's professional expertise. For most who are employed in specialized libraries, KD/KS is established as the workplace driver. As these knowledge services professionals use their information management, knowledge management and strategic (performance-centered) learning expertise to introduce collaboration where it is needed, and strengthen it where it is already in place, the benefits of real-time information delivery become increasingly apparent.
According to Pamela C. Rollo, a professional colleague employed in the financial services community for many years, one of these benefits is that the concept of being able to link to information in real time looks at information management in its most intuitive capacity, which is where specialist librarians and knowledge services professionals excel.
"It's intuitive," Rollo says, "because in order to make information available in real time, we have to know intuitively that it is going to be valuable and useful.
Real-time access to immediately historic information speaks to evaluation skills and collection development skills and information-ranking skills. Technologically this can be done almost easily, particularly if we acknowledge that all information (proprietary at the corporation or organization) is created electronically. It's the incoming information that presents the challenge, for knowing and anticipating what is coming in and how it is to be tagged and categorized requires that those in knowledge services understand, unsentimentally and unromantically, precisely what business the enterprise is in. When we connect knowledge services and the real-time enterprise, what's happening is that we're creating cognitive links that enable knowledge development and knowledge sharing, and that's a natural role for specialist librarians."
The emphasis on the electronic creation of information is of importance to knowledge services professionals, because one of the issues being considered on a very frequent basis is the digitization of collections, and people in our profession give a great deal of attention to digitization projects. But the real-time enterprise is not about that. Where real-time information delivery works, as Rollo makes clear, is in organizations where the authorship of the documents and data collection originate as electronic information, not digitized from another format. So we are not talking about wholesale conversions when we speak about real-time information delivery, and we have to be careful not to get this mixed up with digitization projects going on in libraries and similar research organizations. That's a different information model, and one that does notat this point in timerelate to the real-time enterprise as it is being developed in the corporate community.
In fact, it is important to recognize that real-time information delivery is not appropriate for all organizations. Where the information being sought is historical and/or archived information, moving toward real-time information delivery would be something of an overkill, and serious attention should be given to how real-time information might or might not be of benefit to the organization or the department (such as a specialized library or knowledge services center) in question. On the other hand, as described above, there are other real-time information delivery benefits that can be integrated into the management of that unit. These can be usefully explored.
Practical Considerations
A first step toward the successful consideration of the real-time enterprise and its connection with knowledge services is to becomeas one colleague puts it"opportunity focused." What's going on in the enterprise that will lend itself to real-time information delivery? How can the specialized library or knowledge services center lead (or even simply participate in) the effort toward real-time information delivery?
Obviously, when we speak about the real-time enterprise, what is being described most of the time is an idealized, "pie-in-the-sky" approach to information delivery, but there are practical implementation efforts that can be considered. Such efforts may take different forms, depending on the individual conditions that apply in different organizations, but it is not difficult to identify situations in which real-time information delivery can be developed and benefits realized. Or, as Rollo puts it, "If you're looking at real-time information delivery, there are two objectives: 1) Does this help the health of the organization?; and 2) Does this make my boss happy?" If the situation you're considering will bring a positive response to both questions, you should seriously think about moving forward. If that's the case, there are several questions you might ask:
1) What is the collaborative environment? To successfully organize (and implement) a real-time information delivery product for the organization, the specialized library/knowledge services staff will be required to collaborate with the IT staff, targeted departments and other stakeholders who will benefit. In fact, the smart innovator will identify only one or two other departments or units to work with at first, to define a need, propose a solution and measure the effort as implementation takes place. Only then, after success at that level has been achieved, will you transition the product to the larger enterprise. But you can't get to first base if there isn't a strong collaborative environment in the workplace.
2) What are the goals and expectations throughout the enterprise? For the process to succeed, it is essential you identify the knowledge services stakeholders, to ensure the innovation will be of benefit to them. By working with these other departments, you will determine their expectationsboth "hard" expectations (those that are measurable and tangible) and "soft" expectations (those that are intangible and more related to the culture of the organization than to its products and services).
3) Is there a management framework that supports what you want to do? Is there a justification framework for innovation, based on the support of enterprise management, other workers (both knowledge workers and others for whom the real-time enterprise would have advantages) and champions who endorse innovation? Is there a rewards and recognition system that supports innovation? Are people willing to identify opportunities for KD/KS? Are they rewarded when they do so?
4) How do you go about measuring the benefits? As you work with your collaborating colleagues in other departments, can you create metrics and establish ROI that match those of the organization at large? Is there a rewards and recognition system that rewards those who develop and share knowledge? Is there a rewards and recognition system that rewards those who use knowledge?
Will It Work For Us?
To be absolutely frank, we're not there yet with the real-time enterprise. In fact, Vivak Ranadivé, co-author of The Power of Now: How Winning Companies Sense and Respond to Change Using Real-Time Technology, suggests, "at this point it is anybody's guess what a typical real-time enterprise will look like." However, Ranadivé is willing to offer some suggestions about what the real-time enterprise will probably look like. In fact, Ranadivé has put forward a chart describing how real-time technology might change the nature of a company. In a specialized library or knowledge services center, Ranadivé's predictions might be altered to describe a scenario that, at the very least, offers a picture of real-time information delivery that is attractive to many knowledge services professionals:
· The management of a specialized library/knowledge services center will move from strategic planning to medium- to long-term planning, but with a short-term planning horizon.
· The management of the specialized library/knowledge services center will move from consensus-oriented management to entrepreneurial leadership, something like a star system, but built on collaboration.
· Recruiting staff, especially professional knowledge workers, will move from hiring team players to recognizing that prima donnas and highly-motivated specialists will bring the greatest value.
· Information technology supporting the specialized library/knowledge services center's information delivery will move from database-centric, passive, demand-driven to knowledge-centric, active, event-driven KD/KS.
· The operational focus in the specialized library/knowledge services center will move from continuous monitoring to achieve quality to one in which quality and service-delivery excellence are assumed, and the focus is on exceptional trends and events.
· Monitoring, measuring and metric design will become much easier, and the old-fashioned "we-can't-measure-because-knowledge-use-is-intangible" excuse will no longer be accepted.
· The organizational culture in the specialized library/knowledge service center will move from egalitarian to meritocratic.
As companies and organizations seek better organization for electronic data and information, the real-time enterprise could possibly become a reality. Combining the enabling benefits of information technology with the productivity benefits of knowledge services opens up a whole new world of organizational management, and that's what happens in the real-time enterprise. This new work environmentif and when it becomes our operational workplaceoffers valuable opportunities for specialist librarians to put their expertise to work, and just might be the doorway to a new workplace experience for knowledge services professionals. We know that knowledge services enable the collaborative workplace. Our challenge now is to bring the collaborative benefits of KD/KS to the real-time enterprise and put the real-time enterprise to work for better service delivery for our customers and all other knowledge services stakeholders in the organizations where we are employed. 
References:
Piggott, Sylvia E.A. "Why Corporate Libraries Must Reengineer the Library for the New Information Age," Special Libraries 86(1), Winter 1995, p. 11.
Siegele, Ludwig. "A Survey of the Real-Time Economy," The Economist, February 2, 2002, p. 3.
Rollo, Pamela C. Interview with the author, June 7, 2002. Rollo also shared her interest in the real-time enterprise in a "Hot Topics" session at SLA's Annual Conference in Los Angeles in June 2002, in a joint presentation with the author. The presentation was titled, "The Real-Time Enterprise: Special LibrariansGetting the Best from the IT/Knowledge Services Connection."
Ranadivé, Vivek and Scott McNealy. The Power of Now: How Winning Companies Sense and Respond to Change Using Real-Time Technology. New York: McGraw Hill Osborne, 1999.
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