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Running the Business is a Team Effort—But is Everyone Getting Their Say?

The collaboration technology within RapidResponse® marries human judgment with machine processing power. Machines are far better than humans at processing large amounts of data. But humans are far better than machines at dealing with uncertainty and compromise. For effective collaboration you need both. And the first step is knowing who needs to be involved.

What it is:

With RapidResponse you can collaborate across departments and with suppliers and customers. Through its unique responsibility map capability, RapidResponse can automatically identify who is impacted by a supply or demand change, and proactively bring together teams of people who are widely dispersed (and may not even know each other) for both planned and spontaneous interactions using RapidResponse "what-if" scenario capabilities.

How it works:

• You create a scenario (a complete copy of the entire dataset to use as a private sandbox to model changes) and share that with a team of people who can impact or who are impacted by the proposed scenario.
• You can have RapidResponse automatically suggest an action team based on a user's defined area of responsibility, or you can independently select which people to invite.
• Depending on the permissions you set, collaborators can make changes directly in the scenario's data, or by creating and committing child scenarios.
• An audit trail of each collaborator's actions is maintained so each collaborator can see what inputs and commitments others are making (accept scenario, reject scenario, or offer alternatives).
• You can leverage configurable weighted scorecards to objectively measure the value of one course correction versus another.

How it's different:

It is seldom that an issue can be resolved in the company's best interests by addressing the metrics specific to a particular department. Often, the functional metrics of one department will conflict with the metrics of another. This is when human collaboration supported by hard facts and fast analysis needs to be brought into play. Only when the entire collaboration effort happens within a single system, can teams effectively define alternative ways of resolving the issue and reach a compromise that is in the best interest of the company as a whole.

Why it's important:

• Provides a concrete means to initiate and manage human collaboration.
• Produces viable solutions that have been contributed to, and vetted, by the people expected to execute.
• Breaks down the departmental silos, guiding teams to follow a unified direction.
• Results in alignment of individual actions to corporate objectives.