Exciting things are happening behind the scenes at Realtimeknowledge.com and we want to let you into a few of our secrets.

We are passionate about innovation and in order to innovate and bring new ideas to fruition, we set aside time for conceptual design and development activity. We call this RTK Labs.

Through RTK Labs the Product Team gets time to challenge current thought, invent new tools and concepts and have fun. RTK Labs time cultivates experimental strands of thought that may be translated into new elements of the platform or even new standalone products to complement the Realtimeknowledge.com suite of tools.

Lifting the Covers

Under the white sheets in the RTK Lab at the moment are the fledgling investigations into a new reporting idiom - we are currently dubbing ‘Workflow Kiosk Mode’.

We have thousands of mobile and desktop reports being generated each week by known users in Realtimeknowledge.com. Kiosk Mode is a step towards anonymous reporting. We are investigating using the Realtimeknowledge.com Workflow Designer to build kiosk style reporting workflows.

Why anonymous reporting? Anonymous reporting has real benefits. Capturing customer and staff feedback without constraint is informational gold dust.

Capturing customer feedback is great but the BIG bonus in this scenario is that customers are actually checking and reporting on your behalf. Most traffic light feedback tools, think of smiley or sad faces, collect a single piece of information. With our Workflow Designer we can ask the reasons why. We can even send people to fix a problem found!

Taken a step further, Kiosk Mode can transform the way we gather customer feedback in busy, high traffic areas such as airport security, check-in, baggage reclaim and boarding.

Confidential self reporting can really help with improving safety standards and awareness in critical operational areas like airfields, construction site and manufacturing facilities. A simple kiosk would make the reporting of foreign object debris (FOD) found or the confidential reporting of near misses simple and discreet, encouraging openness and trust.

Kiosk Mode is going to be prototyped and then trialled over the summer. We cannot wait for users to get their hands on this and give it a go. Then it will be down to all of our Workflow Designers to start inventing great new ways of collecting data.

Why do we do this?

As software people, when we think about investing in a piece of software, we always consider the longevity and value. An important dimension of this is the development roadmap. Where is the product going? Is it moving forward? Are the team behind it innovating and being inventive? Will we get increasing benefit from being involved with this software vendor?

That is why RTK Labs exists. We expect the best from our software providers so it follows that we do the same. RTK Labs time means we can be sure of innovation being at the core of what we do.