Importance Of The Network Control Tower

The rise of the collaborative network and expansion of the social network practices increases the importance of the network control tower concept to help in coordination of the collaborative practices.  The practices and capabilities making up and supporting the collaborative network will not allow for any one partner to control the network. This requires a control tower concept implementation by the retailer to allow the retailer to coordinate the integration and communications across multiple partners and consumers.  This social relationships and practices required by the collaborative network requires a control tower type of capability in order to coordinate and encourage continued collaboration across all of the partners. The strength and stability of the collaborative network does not just happen, it requires effort by the partners within the network and this requires a control tower practice to coordinate and encourage collaboration.

This is where the collaborative network maintenance and support gets a little interesting, and complicated at the same time.  The collaborative network is based on a social network framework design that allows and expects each partner to maintain the connection and the communication.  Consumers are used to this and perform the connectivity maintenance as a matter of course and as the end consumer in the connection they are comfortable with maintaining the social links and connections themselves.  Consumers are accustomed to this maintenance as a result of interaction with other social networks and it should be a truly short trip for consumers to engage in the retail market collaborative network.

The challenge I see is with the retailers because of the requirement to release controls in interactions and in relationships.  This will be especially difficult for the larger retailers that have become accustomed to a level of command and control they have maintained for a long time.  This is where the benefits of the control tower practices and software capabilities can help to smooth the transition. The control tower provides the retailer with the ability to bring together the connections into a cohesive process that will allow them to control the flow and the interactions.  This is critical to the success of the collaborative network and will require a high level of focus to maintain and especially while the collaborative network is in the initial stages of integration and also communications.

The collaborative network creates a great deal of connections, both direct and indirect, and these connections themselves require a great deal maintenance, care and feeding, to grow and and expand over time.  This means that the partners much each maintain their own control tower process to maintain the number of relationships and demands from their partners. This control tower concept becomes essentially the collaborative network connection both to and from each partner and allows for the easy connection to new partners as well.  

This control tower must be easy to maintain and easy to connect to new partners and maintain the communication and interaction to existing partners.  This control tower allows the partners to provide access as necessary and also insulates the internal processes and data from external snoopers. The security provided by the control tower is an especially important aspect because of the potential impact of failure.  This security aspect is critical to the success of the entire collaborative network and cannot be scrimped on to ensure the comfort and the security of the network and the partners.