Technology

Processing Speed

“Having the ability to control the speed for each individual tasks is what enables an enterprise to act as cost-efficiently as possible without losing effectiveness. Without this possibility, sustainable agility cannot be implemented. This is a decisive advantage over the market competition.”

Marc Costea
Chief Executive Officer
Qilin.Cloud

What is Processing Speed

In the current era where an increasing number of business processes are undergoing digital transformation, it has become more crucial than ever to manage the resources required by these processes responsibly and in alignment with the company’s objectives.

With highly scalable solutions like Qilin.Cloud, prioritizing specific tasks is not only desirable but also indispensable for a company’s success. The ability to expedite the implementation of such priorities reflects the demands of the enterprise.

Think of it as a vehicle for transporting data.
It can be as fast as a rocket or as cost-efficient as a container ship. You can decide flexibly – individually for each task.

Definition

The ‘Processing Speed’ technology is all about the ability to differentiate the processing speed for each task individually, based on task priority and urgency. We believe it’s crucial for users to have the direct and individual control over this feature for each task separately, as they possess the most intimate understanding of their business processes at all.

The resulting flexibility from this technology ensures an optimal cost-to-benefit ratio. Tasks that are highly prioritized and/or urgent can be executed with significantly increased speed, while lower-priority tasks are handled in the most cost-effective manner possible. This allows the company to operate as cost-efficiently as feasible without compromising on effectiveness.

The Qilin.Cloud technology platform empowers users, software developers and decision-makers in the SaaS realm to finely calibrate their operations for maximum efficiency and impact.

Benefits

The ability to adjust the process speed is the decisive advantage in market competition.

Here are some of the common benefits of this technology:

High scalability, without cost explosion

Business area that previously had to be cross-financed can be self-supporting

High focus on important tasks

Resource optimization: Developers could adjust the speed depending on the task to optimize resource usage. Less critical tasks could run slower, while time-critical tasks could be sped up.

Cost Control: Adjusting speed could reduce operational costs by using fewer resources in less urgent scenarios.

Flexibility: The platform could adapt to different requirements, be it rapid development or the need to perform high-performance tasks.

Challenges

There are three challenges that must be considered when enabling adjustable processing speeds to the users:

I – Quality Assurance

The introduction of variable processing speed could make quality assurance and testing more complicated, as different speeds would have to be checked for potential sources of errors. Therefore, please make sure within your quality control to consider and test the variable processing speeds in the test scenarios for unit, integration and end2end tests. Especially when it comes to asynchronous processing of tasks, the processing speed is relevant and must be tested.

II – User expectations

Users may have different expectations of speed, which could lead to challenges in delivering a consistent user experience. Therefore, try to be as transparent as possible to your users about the differences in processing speeds using examples of real data and processes that your users encounter in their daily work environment – but also be transparent about the costs.

III – Find the right speed for the job

The great flexibility that Qilin.Cloud provides to its users with the Processing Speed technology to be able to set the speed for each task individually results in an additional effort to have to determine it. Several categories of solutions have emerged:

Fixed prioritization & speed per task type

With fixed prioritization per task type, the data source or the source connector decides which priority a task got in Qilin.Cloud. In this case, the prioritization is made dependent on the data type.

Example:

If master data such as product data is to be changed, e.g. a product description, this receives a low processing speed.
If supply data, such as stock, is to be changed, e.g. a stock close to sell-out, i.e. between 0 and 5, this task type receives an increased processing speed.
If legally critical information is to be updated, e.g. resulting from a current court case or legal changes that would mean severe penalties for the company if not complied with, this task type receives the highest processing speed.

Default priority & speed with exceptions

With a default priority, the data source or source connector assigns the normal prioritization for each task and thus a low processing speed (or a different one, since the user can specify what he wants to have as the default processing speed).

Individual – higher priority tasks – are then passed by the data source to the source connector with a special flag, so that the source connector forwards the tasks to Qilin.Cloud with increased processing speed.

Example:

The user wants all data to be transferred at the normal speed (for reasons of cost efficiency). Now, there is the exceptional situation that he has forgotten a legally important note in the product data of a product series, so he wants to update this series as quick as possible on all channels with the new note. Therefore, he assigns a flag for increased processing speed in his data source, which the sources connector then forwards to Qilin.Cloud.

Optimization of prioritization & speed

The Process analyzation in Qilin.Cloud allows not only the view and analysis of the process paths, divided into “planned” and “actual”, but also the automated, AI-supported optimization. It is also possible to optimize the processing speed in order to automatically ensure an optimal cost/benefit ratio. Neither the data source nor the source connector determines the processing speed, but the process analyzation technology within Qilin.Cloud.

A mixture of all the previous

This is the most common use case. It is a mixture of fixed prioritization per task type and exceptions, garnished with automated optimization.

The data source or the source connector assigns a priority depending on the task type, but this can be overridden by the user in exceptional situations. In addition, Qilin.Cloud’s process analyzation technology is involved and tries to further optimize the priorities to achieve the best possible cost/benefit ratio.

Recommendation 

It is advisable to adjust your budgeting gradually and slowly approach the optimal cost/benefit ratio. This process should take at least 1 year to analyze all fluctuations during the year, before a well-founded permanent budget planning is decided.

Conclusion

The ability to adjust the processing speed for each individual task enables a company to act as cost-effectively as possible without losing effectiveness. Without this capability, sustainable agility cannot be implemented. This is a key advantage over the competition in the market.

Process Speed Technology is one of the core components of Qilin.Cloud.