Guide to Real Time Business Intelligence (RTBI)
Being able to make smart business decisions requires access to data. However, not just any data will do. For best results, organizations need real-time business intelligence. This information provides the most up-to-data insights around current operations. This is where business intelligence (BI) tools come in. BI tools can produce reports and datasets that are up-to-the-minute, so you can make informed decisions quickly as your business grows.
In this article, we will discuss how real-time business intelligence can benefit your organization and give you a competitive edge.
What is Real-Time Business Intelligence?
Real-time business intelligence is a term used to describe the delivering of insights harnessed from live data around a business’s operations. Processes and tools are used to harness this data and uncover insights which can be used to make business decisions and develop strategies. Interactive visualizations and dashboards are often used to support these insights and provide context.
Real-time business intelligence differs from business intelligence in general in that the data is current and up-to-date. In other words, the data is a live snapshot of what is happening in the business at that very moment.
The Importance of Real-Time Business Intelligence
The information provided by real-time business intelligence helps businesses adapt to changing market conditions and customer expectations as quickly as possible. Decision-making becomes not only informed, but nearly instantaneous. This capability allows businesses to earn a competitive advantage over their competitors who may be relying on less current information.
Real-time, current information is also more useful for forecasting and trend analysis. Businesses can get as close as possible at predicting future occurrences and prepare accordingly. Trend analysis is key for adapting offerings, marketing, and advertising to current customer behavior.
Benefits of real-time business intelligence
Real-time business intelligence allows you to spot changes in your market and adapt your strategies accordingly. For example, if you’re a retailer and you notice that sales are trending down, you can quickly make changes to your inventory or pricing strategy. By reacting swiftly to changing trends, you can avoid major losses in revenue.
Real-time business intelligence also helps drive an organization to become more data-centric. Businesses that rely on their data to make critical operational decisions end up making better decisions because they aren’t just guessing. They are using data to predict future outcomes and analyze previous trends.
As your company adopts real-time business intelligence, you can expect several benefits.
Increased value of data
Businesses today often have massive amounts of data to analyze. However, not all data is created equal. Overtime, data degrades in value. Data around customer behavior on your website from a month ago may not represent how customers are behaving on your site at this very moment.
By relying on real-time business intelligence, businesses can assure they have the most valuable data as possible at their fingertips. That way, they can respond swiftly to changes and better prepare for what’s to come.
Improved decision-making
Real-time business intelligence can also help you make better decisions about where to allocate resources. If you have real-time information about all aspects of your business, then you know exactly where to focus your time and energy. You can double down on efforts that are producing results and pull back on less successful initiatives.
A great example of this is having real-time access to the point of sale data in your retail stores. By collecting and analyzing this transaction data in real-time, your store leaders can make better judgment calls when it comes to sales, stocking and order products, and labor allocation.
Discovery of trends
One of the biggest benefits of real-time business intelligence is that it can help you identify trends as they’re happening. With access to up-to-date data, you can perform trend analysis the very same day the data is occurring. This can be quite powerful, as most traditional tools require a lag, meaning you can only analyze historical data. For example, you may notice a product line is more popular at a specific time of year. This information will allow you to plan for peak demand and ensure that you can meet customer orders.
Creation of custom alerting systems
Having access to data instantly also allows you to create unique alerting systems when exceptions occur within the business. Modern BI tools offer alert systems that can text, email or send push notifications to a mobile device whenever irregularities occur in the data.
A specific example of this is sending alerts to sales reps whenever a potential prospect has signed a contract. As soon as the contract is signed, that data can be sent to the BI tool which will then fire off alerts to any number of people. That way, the appropriate contacts are notified to begin preparing for a new client.
Notifications help business users take action when it is required, and the timely delivery of those notifications is absolutely essential to good business. Real-time business intelligence can help your business users stay more informed than ever before.
Better business reporting
Reporting is an important tool used by businesses of all sizes. Where traditional reporting is usually done on a monthly or quarterly basis, real-time business intelligence allows reporting to be accurate up to the very minute. BI tools allow for the creation of dashboards, charts, and key performance indicators (KPIs) that allow business leaders to see just how well their business is performing at that very moment.
How can I get started with real-time business intelligence?
Helping your business become more data-minded is by no means an easy task. It often requires additional training, adopting new mindsets, and adapting to new technologies. Real-time business intelligence can serve as the engine to drive the adoption of a more data-driven culture. Here are a few suggestions on how to get started.
Start small
Any large project starts with just a few small tasks. By identifying certain departments or business processes where real-time business intelligence can be beneficial, you can begin to plan a more full rollout within the organization. Focus on the areas or departments that have the greatest potential ROI with real-time business intelligence. Early successes will make it easier to consider wider adoption across the organization. Be sure to share information about this success with the entire organization.
Find champions within different teams
Data professionals exist within all departments of an organization, and many of them are just waiting to get their hands on the data. By identifying and working with these champions, you will start to see the overall desire of the organization to increase when it comes to real-time business intelligence. As you identify champions, make sure you get buy-in from leadership. It’s important to have someone with influence evangelizing the initiative. People are more likely to respond positively to a change when they see that leadership is behind the initiative.
Continually improve
Following an iterative approach when it comes to real-time business intelligence is the best way to produce a scalable and durable solution for your business. Iteration is the process of constant improvement and change, meaning you are never actually done with the project. As you become more familiar with the BI tool, you will naturally find more and more innovative solutions to test out. Through experimentation and time, you will better understand what data and insights are valuable to your organization.
Gather feedback from stakeholders
It’s also important to not develop in a vacuum. Always be asking questions and gathering feedback from your end-users in every department. Real-time business intelligence can benefit any job function, so gather feedback from individual contributors, managers, and executives. It may be useful to consider having a regular meeting time to take in this feedback and make plans for improvement. You can also use surveys to generate feedback in asynchronous fashion.
Real-time business intelligence use cases
There are a plethora of real-time business intelligence use cases. For example, your IT department may use a dashboard to track projects and tickets and review custom alerts. You can track how many tickets are open, closed, and in process. Your department may even find it useful to monitor tickets by a help desk specialist. For projects, you can track open tasks, finished tasks, budget and more.
Marketing dashboards are another example of real-time business intelligence in action. Monitor KPIs such as click-through rate, cost-per-click, engagement rate, conversion rate, and more. You can track these metrics by campaign, time period, and target audience. Following these insights in real-time will allow you to tweak campaigns quickly for greater ROI.
For companies with a customer service department, a dashboard with real-time business intelligence is incredibly useful. You can track calls, chats, resolution time, retention rate, customer satisfaction, and similar KPIs. This information is critical to have access to in real-time to avoid problems escalating.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for a way to automate your business analytics and get real-time updates, partnering with a BI vendor is the answer. Through this partnership, you can access data that you use on a daily basis that will update automatically. This will give your business leaders the tools they need to succeed with their goals each day.
BI tools are essential for turning data into insights. By giving your employees the ability to explore and analyze data in new ways, you can unlock a world of intelligent insights that will help your business grow, scale, and evolve.
If you’re not already taking advantage of BI tools, now is the time to get started. With so many options available, there’s sure to be a tool that fits your needs. Watch how your team transforms when they have access to the power of BI.