A Comprehensive Dashboard
2016 is going to be the year we see the pursuit of a new holy grail — a comprehensive dashboard for the chief operating officer that can provide real-time insight into metrics on inventory management, order management, asset management and more.
The last few years have seen the pursuit of the "marketing cloud" as a holy grail for the CMO — a dashboard with all the key marketing metrics visualized in real time. This year, business operations departments will begin that same pursuit: seeking a top-down view into application changes for a workflow for inventory asset management, maintained in part by the "citizen developer" who knows how to make the change in real time, rather than waiting for IT to do so.
New software platforms that break down siloed SaaS app sprawl and deliver automation between highly correlated operational disciplines on a single purpose-built PaaS will reap true, real-time operational management benefits of greater efficiency and accountability.