The element of time, referred to as the 4th dimension in physics, so important to ensuring the predictability of business processes, has largely been missing as a focus of digital business. This research note discusses how this can be changed using collaboration as a key example of an area ripe for improvement.
Timing affects everything in business, but it is often not a focus, leaving much of the time commitments to human management. However, management’s ability to meet time commitments is overstressed today with little support from automation, except in a few areas such as in manufacturing. Digital business takes a broader view of processes, integrating humans and computers, internal, and external systems. Such processes must be interconnected but they must also include time sequencing, managed increasingly by computers that augment human oversight.
