The Benefits of Real-Time Visibility In Intelligent Automation Systems

Brian DeWyer, the CTO and Co-Founder of Reveille Software, outlines the most significant benefits of prioritizing real-time visibility in intelligent automation systems. This article originally appeared in Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community that enables human conversation on AI.

They all have them—cars, planes, and boats. What do they all have? Dashboards! You don’t drive a car without knowing your speed and fuel amount; airplane pilots need to know their altitude, and boat captains want to see the depth of the water. The result can be catastrophic without dashboards that render real-time views of vehicle operation status. Excessive operating temperatures, threshold breaches, and critical maintenance lapses can all cause significant consequences. 

The need for real-time visibility into your content systems is similar; you need visibility into the operational status before applications break down. With the introduction of Intelligent Automation—composed of Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), Enterprise Content Management (ECM), and Robotic Process Automation (RPA)—and collaboration systems into business operations, real-time visibility into your enterprise’s systems has become crucial for smooth and efficient operation. In this article, we’ll look at real-time visibility for Intelligent Automation, how it works, and how it benefits your organization. 

Real-Time Visibility 

Real-time visibility allows you to see and comprehend events as they are happening within your systems and processes. This ability to gain instant insights will enable managers and IT teams to react when a change or challenge arises. With Intelligent Automation solutions, real-time visibility gives you complete knowledge of content access, user behavior, and system performance, which are measured and displayed in dashboard form. For example, Intelligent Automation will alarm before end-users are impacted if a server’s storage is nearing capacity. 

Without real-time visibility, numerous challenges can arise. Knowing what these challenges are is critical for keeping operational efficiency and ensuring prompt response to potentially crippling issues. Additional challenges are: 

• Delays in System Failure Detection: Slow or nonexistent detection of system failures can exacerbate problems and often lead to prolonged system downtime.
• Unauthorized Access: Without immediate alerts, unauthorized access can go unnoticed, posing a risk to data security and integrity.
• Bottlenecks in Workflow Processes: Lack of real-time data can prevent the timely identification and resolution of workflow bottlenecks.
• Compliance Risks: Delayed detection of non-compliance activities can lead to serious legal and financial consequences. 

Without real-time visibility, a business’s ability to manage, repair, and optimize its content is severely limited. Without it, operational inefficiencies, increased costs, and the risk of data exposure could all be “real-time” problems. Intelligent Automation systems manage large volumes of content across various departments and functions. Real-time visibility into these systems is vital, ensuring that any glitch in operations can be caught and immediately addressed before the damage is too costly or destructive to functioning. 

Benefits

Real-time visibility has two significant benefits: It minimizes downtime and reduces operating costs. It also bolsters security, improves records management, and helps ensure compliance by allowing swift responses to threats or anomalies. 

Intelligent Automation systems’ observability provides more than a broad overview of what’s happening; it also targets additional critical areas that need visibility to ensure metrics are being gathered, as well as: 

• System Performance Metrics: Your ability to monitor transaction performance and user response times can significantly improve response efforts. Real-time alerts on spikes in error rates can prompt immediate investigation, helping to maintain system health and reliability.
• Access and Security Controls: Tracking who accessed what and when gives insight into unusual access patterns that could indicate internal threats or breaches. Immediate notifications about changes in document permissions ensure that sensitive information is guarded against unauthorized access.
• Workflow Efficiency: Real-time monitoring helps identify and address bottlenecks quickly, reducing downtime and improving efficiency. Monitoring task completion also helps identify inefficiencies and reveal training needs.
• Compliance and Audit Preparedness: A real-time display of detailed audit trails helps businesses prepare for compliance audits and internal reviews without it being the laborious process that it’s known to be. Continuous monitoring also ensures that all content management activities comply with policies and regulatory requirements.
• Integration and Interoperability: Real-time visibility is essential for monitoring the performance of integrated systems and maintaining the ecosystem’s integrity. Tracking the frequency and response times of the application programming interface (API) provides insights into the system’s scalability and external dependencies. 

Intelligent Automation Observability 

The constant tracking of Intelligent Automation system performance and user activity with real-time observability and monitoring software allows for actionable insights that optimize processes. Here’s how real-time visibility improves enterprise content management: 

Customized Dashboard

The real-time dashboards that provide valuable visibility are customizable. A clear view of your performance metrics gives you a real-time understanding of Intelligent Automation systems. Customizable dashboards allow managers instant access to critical data, allowing them to monitor trends and gauge their system’s health. The immediate awareness and swift actions that address potential issues as they arise are indispensable business resources. These dashboards also improve productivity while ensuring optimal system performance and user satisfaction. 

Alert Systems

Real-time monitoring software instantly and automatically alerts to potential issues. Because the monitoring and tracking are based on defined or ML forecasted thresholds, issues are flagged before they harm the system. These alerts assist IT teams in responding swiftly to anomalies, minimizing downtime, and preventing minor problems from becoming major obstacles. Operational efficiency is improved while maintaining system integrity, security, and reliability. 

Performance Metrics

Monitoring system health and user activity can identify performance trends and anomalies. This visibility in real-time operations results in proactive management of the entire Intelligent Automation software environment, optimizing performance, addressing inefficiencies, reducing risk, and improving customer service. 

Conclusion  

As Intelligent Automation platforms, solutions, and systems evolve, the need for real-time visibility will become increasingly evident for maintaining operations. Observability with customizable dashboards will be integral to managing these newly sophisticated systems efficiently and securely. By integrating Intelligent Automation monitoring and management solutions, organizations will be ready to face any possible risks, eliminate potential harm, and enhance operational agility, which will benefit all users. 

A real-time dashboard that monitors all Intelligent Automation functions provides instant visibility into system behavior as it unfolds. Its proactive insights empower administrators with the data needed to ensure business integrity, just as a dashboard helps keep a car running, a plane flying, and a boat floating. The net result of full observability is greater efficiency, productivity, and profitability.