Real-time Analytics – the Key Driver of Your Organization
In this day and age of information overload and big data, companies are increasingly relying on real-time analytics. It helps to make sense of all the information that is out there. Pitching the right product to the right customer at the right time is getting increasingly tough and this is where real-time analytics can help.
Businesses need actionable data in a timely manner to implement result-driven plans to get maximum benefit. We all are familiar with analytics but the moot point here is that analytics that is not available at the right time might not be much useful in most scenarios.
Most businesses wittingly or unwittingly are operating in complete silos. That means the IT team cannot speak to the marketing department and the marketing department cannot pass on vital information to the sales department at the right time. All this leads to inefficiencies and the business prospects drastically slow down.
Consider you have a popular website. It pays to know the activity of your visitors in real-time in order to gain meaningful insights. An ecommerce company has thousands of product categories and probably millions of visitors on a daily basis. Knowing what each user wants can help the company to sell the right product at the right price. Upselling and cross-selling is also a distinct possibility.
Gone are the days when you used to look at your analytics report once a month or something like that. The competition won’t wait for you to be ready. Your customers would have found a better deal somewhere and you risk losing their patronage once and forever.
Every wondered how these ecommerce giants know precisely what you want and when you want something? Well it is analytics in play. Today these companies have evolved to an extent that they are rightly harnessing the power of real-time analytics. This gives them instant insights depending on what you search, click and read on their web pages.
Your demographic data is also perused by these ecommerce companies in order to glean nuggets of information. If you are buying a pair of hiking shoes and a high resolution camera then they could pitch you a traveller’s bag, goggles or a pair of rugged jeans. This might seem straightforward as we are talking about only one person here. But to do that day in, day out for thousands of people at any given moment of time requires brute computing power in coordination with artificial intelligence driven decision making platform.
In today’s unforgiving global market place it is the survival of the fastest. So real-time analytics helps you stay ahead of the pack with real quick decision-grade data. There are various benchmarks using which real-time analytics are being gauged. According to one such criterion we can call it real-time if the system can make sense of a data that has been entered by a user not more than a minute ago.
The personnel in charge of this analytics can see that particular information being updated into the system almost immediately. When this data is processed by the IT system there are immediate decisions being made depending on whether to upsell, cross-sell or provide a certain customer experience to the user. Personas are created for every user and these personas get updated as and when new information flows in. This way the database is fully relevant and up-to-date providing decision-grade data at all times.
The content for websites of most major media houses also are driven by real-time analytics. Consider you go to a popular media website and click on a particular link and read the article spending a good amount of time and also clicking on relevant links, watching videos, images and so on. Now this is immediately taken cognizance of and your experience on that website could be bespoke going forward. You will be recommended only those articles that interest you in a layout that is most desirable to you.
Analytics undoubtedly is most valuable to the sales teams. It happens most often that the sales teams are barking up the wrong tree. This is a drain on the company’s resources and opportunities lost are hard to come by again. Thus there is a need to tread with caution and be armed with all the data that you can lay your hands on before pitching a customer.
Today’s consumers are definitely spoilt for choice. They have the best of both worlds – online and offline. When it comes to checking for a certain product you cannot beat the offline experience. But when it comes to prices the online world reigns supreme. This is what has created the popular trend that we today call as ‘showrooming’. You visit the brick and mortar store for the look and feel of the product before finally buying it online at the best price. Real-time analytics can play a big role here too.
Companies have slowly come to realize the power of real-time analytics in a big way. It can help not just at the customer facing roles but can help put things into perspective at the back-end too. Depending on what customers are buying you can have a lean inventory management powered by real-time analytics.
If a certain retail enterprise has a dozen stores within a particular city then real-time analytics can help to understand customer buying habits and future buying trends. This way you can better optimize your logistics and distribution so that you have all the fast moving goods in all the specific stores at all times.
Businesses today need to be smarter and the only way to do it is using real-time analytics. Your customers are leaving a rich trail of breadcrumbs that you can genuinely monetize. Enterprises today are information-driven and analytics offers all the important decision-grade data to tweak the methods and procedures so that they can stay competitive in a cut-throat corporate scenario. It is like staying on top of what your customers are thinking at all times. And since it is real-time you can decide upon your future course of action before it is too late.
Companies everywhere are betting big on real-time analytics in order to get a bigger market share and to provide customers with what they want before they have actually stated the desire to own it. Thus it is a win-win situation benefitting both the businesses and their customers alike.