Push vs. Pull
I know in a lot of demos I use the term Push and Pull when discussing our e-services. Generally I promote the fact that we are PUSHING information to those who ask for it, instead of trying to make customers go find it. The argument goes that if you are waiting for your customers to go to your web site to VIEW the information, they likely aren't going to do it. Therefore our e-services do it for you- by sending them an email.Recently though, there is a technology called RSS. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it's all about publishing information in a way that others can get it without having to bother you for it (in short, PULL vs. PUSH). With RSS, users subscribe to a piece of information and then they retrieve it whenever they want.
The subscription is simply a file that can be pulled into what is called a News Aggregator. See the Wikipedia for a better description but for example, you can get all of the news from our web site without having to go to it by clicking the RSS button and subscribing to it. Then in Outlook or your web browser, all of the news is instantly made available to you. If you looked at the RSS file itself, it would look very messy - the news aggregator is what makes it readable.
It's a concept that is radically changing the way information is passed around, from "blogs" to "podcasts" and other formats as well.
MTI is using RSS in a variety of ways. You can subscribe to this blog via RSS, the News release page or just the basic Web site itself. But I'm working at bringing this technology into the product as well.
ExecView summarizes key information but doesn't make the details easily available, except via an email. With an RSS feed, individual stats could be made available as they change with full details. Almost like an audit trail - more advanced than the one we currently use.
But maybe more importantly, RSS could change the way you identify delivered shipments to customers. Each one of your customers could have their own RSS feed. Anytime something happened in Horizon that affected that customer, be it a new load, new invoice, cash payment, anything, it would be logged to their RSS feed. Your customer would then be able to see at a glance everything that is happening in real time. They wouldn't need to ask you for the information - they would be PULLING the information from your feed. You wouldn't even have to send email, or use the e-services to do this.
It's an interesting idea... stay tuned while we explore it further. If you have ideas on this, please let us know.
Gnomedex Keynote
posted by Andrew MacNeill @ 8:34 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home