Real-time BI: The benefits of yet another cloud-based superpower

What if your business saw things before they happened? What if you had the power to find an opportunity that no else can see? What if you could not only spot the crucial tasks that most influence your company’s bottom line but also execute them automatically? Producing actionable insights from gathered and prepared data used to be a laborious process that would take months of manual work, at minimum. What’s worse, after all the tedium of collecting the data and thinking hard about the best action to take, there is no way to ensure that the insights generated are even worth anything.

These days, companies can leverage the power of cloud computing and artificial intelligence to generate insights in real time in order to stay smart about their business.

Real-time business intelligence (BI) refers to the data that companies collect on a range of business and operational activities and most importantly, the insights it is able to derive from that data in real time.  Real-time BI enables a more simplified decision-making process so companies can execute with confidence, anticipating problems before they happen and taking initiative on opportunities they might have otherwise missed. Here are the top ways companies benefit from real-time business intelligence.

Immediate gains

With real-time analysis, we can use the information about “here and now” and immediately obtain crucial information without waiting on analysis to emerge after lengthy periods of time. This helps us react faster - whether that means turning around from the wrong path, adjusting slightly or pushing further with the direction we've selected.

Real-time BI is easy for a company to set up and intuitive to work with. For all of the capabilities that can be unleashed through real-time BI, the fact that these tools are so intuitive enables users to get the most out of them.

Powerful and scalable

From providing accurate, rolling projections to sending timely and targeted messages to potential new customers, real-time BI offers a range of invaluable capabilities. Thanks to a rules-based approach and an ability to detect patterns, it allows you to easily recognize plethora of business situations and select reactions to each of them. Plus, no matter how much data you’re using to deliver insights, these tools are not going to die on you. And they're flexible: Once you’ve deployed real-time BI, you can play with it — finessing your way into more and more sophisticated business analysis, eventually shifting the burden over to AI if you so please.

Interconnectivity with other services

When powered by the cloud, real-time BI tools have the ability to connect with other applications —including “plain old BI.” This makes real-time BI a powerful tool for visualising  a range of data.

If the weather has a chance of disrupting the delivery of goods and services, it requires cohesion and the collaboration of a range of functions — from a weather reading to the delivery of SMS messages (For example: To tell drivers to “Be careful with the rain” as well as to alert business partners and stakeholders about an unavoidable disruption) to the creation of contingency plans. With real-time BI, complex protocols are executed harmoniously by utilising existing cloud building blocks seamlessly connected by communication fabric.

Business actions

Synthesising complex insight for complex problems and opportunities is just one possible “action” that can be delivered by real-time BI.

But what about the Internet of Things (IoT)? Imagine if the insight your real-time BI delivered could become the driver of strategic tasks… and perhaps even automate them? Automatically sending store credits when a customer gets disgruntled — or better yet, preemptively providing a service to customers you didn’t have yet. The only limitation to the automatic actions brought to you by real-time BI is the imagination of those who use it.


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