Alright folks, let’s chat. By show of virtual hands (likes), how many of you are challenged by your organization’s inability to produce useful information in real-time to better serve your clients, partners and team members?
Fortunately, the future thrives on brainpower, and the wonderful world of programming can create real-time analytics that provide the answers you need now. Not stale reporting at a faster rate, but fresh, current information as it happens.
According to a recent study by the Aberdeen Group, “fifty-five percent of organizations driven by LoB [line of business] decision makers cited operational inefficiencies as a top pressure.” LoB managers are in the midst of the action when it comes to functionality. Streaming live data lifts some of the pressure off their shoulders since problems can be corrected as they are identified.
Aberdeen Group’s article builds on that topic with the desires of both LoB management and corporate executives. Their desire for real-time analytics comes from wanting to “reduce the number of decisions based on inaccurate or incomplete data.” Additionally, real-time analytics streaming delivers metrics in-the-moment, see who is looking at your site, what they are interested in, if calls-to-action are effective and resulting in sales… Limitless opportunities.
Guidelines for usage include using “guard rails and human oversight” to protect against errors, running monitoring systems, and viewing decision-making as an operating regulation. Guard rails serve as a checking procedure, since “computers have no common sense,” and surveying the analytics progression means that you can pause the process as an error is detected. Again, monitoring the systems allow these errors to be detected proactively, rather than reactively. Adjustments can be made promptly and operations can run smoothly with fewer interruptions. As far as “decision management,” it is determining a course of action, and that can be programmed alongside data management analytics using rule engines or similar tools.
There is a divide between the goals of executives and LoB personnel. LoB professionals desire real-time analytics for their own use, unwilling to give up the management of their BI operations. Executive-driven companies tend to promote a “culture of curiosity” and prefer BI to be studied by multiple departments, since analytics are user-focused and no longer a niche for IT only.
BI in real-time allows productivity to flourish, because there is no waiting around watching paint dry until processed data comes through. Real-time is live data that drives decisive action.
