Faster Data. Better Decisions?Faster Data. Better Decisions?

Access to real-time customer bank-statement information at Royal Bank of Canada, a unit of the RBC Financial Group, lets the financial-services company's loan managers make more-informed credit decisions, says Andy Hanna, the bank's project manager of report management and distribution.

There are other benefits. Royal Bank recently used Information Builders' WebFocus business-intelligence software to automate the process of retrieving customer bank statements. Before implementing its Bankbook Reconstruct application, when any of the Royal Bank of Canada's 12 million personal-banking customers requested copies of their old bank statements, they often had to wait days or weeks while bank employees manually searched tape and paper archives, Hanna says. "Now, it takes under a minute to get this information."

Access to this information is more convenient, and it's helping the bank reduce the amount of manual work needed before risk managers can make credit decisions, Hanna says. "This makes our loan people much more productive," he says. "They can make decisions quicker because they don't have to send other people out to look for client information."

Even though some real-time systems can help users become more productive and accurate, sometimes the results are the opposite. Several years ago, disk-drive maker Maxtor Corp. began using Acta Technology's ActaWorks extracting, loading, and transforming software to extract data from SAP manufacturing, financial, sales, distribution, and human-resources applications and load the information into an Oracle-based data warehouse -- all in real time. Maxtor executives tapped into the data warehouse using Business Objects SA's WebIntelligence reporting software to monitor everything from inventory levels to sales-order backlogs to profit margins.

But because the data warehouse was constantly updated, managers often went to meetings with reports based on conflicting numbers, says Scott Hicar, CIO and VP of worldwide IT. The rapid updates didn't help the decision-making process -- they just created discussions about which numbers to use. After several weeks, Maxtor changed its strategy and began extracting data from its operational applications three times a day -- once for each shift in its American, European, and Asian operations. Says Hicar, "We learned that sometimes real time is too fast."

Marianne Kolbasuk McGee ([email protected]) Visit our Workplace Trends Tech Center at information.com/TC/careerdev/trends

Illustration by Christoph Nieman