Tapping The Potential of Real-Time Business Intelligence
Organizations are creating more data than ever before. Most businesses create gigabytes of data every minute. The more real-time data companies produce, the higher the need for real-time intelligence that turns that data into actionable insights.
When the information generated by organizational data sources is instantly transformed into operational intelligence, companies can gain visibility into customer needs, opportunities to improve processes, and much more.
Why Businesses Need Real-Time Analytics
Real-time intelligence is essential for successful business operations in the world today. While reviewing data and reports after the fact can be useful for future planning, these actions cannot yield the same benefits as immediate insights.
Studies have shown that companies report higher revenue, increased positive customer sentiments, and more efficient process rollouts after implementing real-time data systems. Real-time intelligence empowers data-driven decision-making that benefits organizational leaders, employees, and consumers. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, real-time intelligence gives organizations the best opportunity for customer satisfaction and sustained profitability.
Understanding Real-Time Business Intelligence
Real-time business intelligence (RTBI) refers to the combination of data analytics and data processing tools that give organizations insight into the information they need as that information is being produced. Through data visualizations and personalized dashboards, RTBI makes a previously overwhelming amount of up-to-the-minute data able to be accessed and understood. This empowers business leaders to make informed, quick decisions that keep their organizations operating successfully in a highly competitive global marketplace.
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Benefits of Real-Time Business Intelligence
Imagine a CEO sitting at her desk. Employees stand in her office, all with their eyes on her. One of them voices the question everyone is asking: what do we do? The CEO stares at the piles of paper on her desk. Somewhere in these reports is the information that can help her answer that question. But by the time she finds it, the answer may not be relevant anymore.
Now imagine that instead of piles of paper—or even a dozen tabs open on her computer—the CEO simply looks at the dashboard on her desktop. The dashboard is continually updated with real-time data analysis about the company’s customers, processes, and trends. The CEO can respond with confidence, speed, and agility based on that immediate insight.
That is the benefit of real-time business intelligence: confident, data-driven decision-making that leads to positive outcomes. While the specificities of those outcomes will vary based on the organization, the benefits of RTBI include:
- Capturing time-sensitive opportunities, such as initiating a sale or changing a price based on demand
- Upgrading risk management as insights flag potential threats or breaches
- Enhancing the speed and effectiveness of decisions
- Improving customer relations through tailored communications and fast response rates
- Identifying inefficiencies in teams, production, or marketing campaigns
Across all aspects of organizations, real-time business intelligence can lead to better decisions and a clearer vision for the right next steps.
Achieving Real-Time Business Intelligence
RTBI collects, analyzes, and presents data that comes from a variety of sources. It requires infrastructure, tools, and techniques that may include:
- Data warehousing
- Data mining and analysis
- Data visualization
- Machine learning
- Predictive modeling
- Reporting
These components will leverage real-time data to produce meaningful insights that enhance organizational operations regularly.
Real-Time in the Real-World: RTBI Case Studies
From tracking sales campaigns and analyzing customer sentiments to improving health outcomes and accelerating customer service, RTBI is making a measurable positive difference in organizations of all industries. Consider some examples of positive RTB outcomes.
Reputation, Right Now
One of the most powerful uses of RTBI is the ability to keep up with a brand’s public perception. This capability makes all the difference for communications management agency, PulsePoint Group. Working with major brands like Toyota and Delta, PulsePoint leverages real-time analytics to provide customers with interactive, up-to-the-minute dashboards that have replaced 20-slide PowerPoint presentations.
In a market where sentiments toward companies can change at the drop of a hat, or, more aptly, the read of a tweet, RTBI-powered dashboards are critical for keeping consumers happy.
Connecting Caregivers to Meaningful Metrics
When leaders of Oklahoma’s largest hospital system, INTEGRIS Health, wanted to improve their healthcare processes and transform patient care delivery, they knew harnessing the system’s data was imperative. Through Microsoft Azure and Power BI, INTEGRIS leveraged data insights in a way that connected patients and caregivers to important analytics through visual storytelling.
These real-time analytics empower healthcare providers to perform critical patient care tasks such as reducing staph infections, preventing falls, and doubling surveillance for high-risk patients.
A Simple, Streamlined, Speedy Solution
Like many organizations, EdTech company GetSmarter had more data than it could manage. With more than 15 data repositories and the likelihood of fast organizational growth, leaders needed to eliminate silos and make the most of their information. Through the Denodo Platform in Amazon Web Services, GetSmarter connected all of its data sources in less than three months.
"Before the new solution, business users had to request specific reports, each of which needed about a week to develop,” explained Schoeman Loubser at GetSmarter. “Denodo Platform in AWS Marketplace helps our business users answer questions with no IT involvement and zero development time.”
Learn to Leverage Real-Time Business Intelligence with an Online Doctorate of Business Administration from Marymount University
Organizations of all sizes are looking for data-minded professionals who can drive success through meaningful analytics and actionable insights. The Online Doctorate of Business Administration in Business Intelligence can prepare you for such a career path.
Online DBA in Business Intelligence students gain relevant skills through a curriculum rooted in the real world. Coursework includes classes such as:
- Using Data for Business Intelligence: Students learn the technological and management aspects of developing and using data to support advanced decision-making. Students develop a data strategy for an organization of their choice and build a platform to create data-driven business intelligence. Students also examine the phases of data exploitation including collection, storage, analysis, and visualization using state-of-the-art tools. Coursework also covers artificial intelligence and robotic process automation as well as ethics, trust, privacy, and transparency.
- Maximizing Digital Transformation: This course covers the effective management of digital transformation efforts taking place throughout government and business organizations to improve operations through the effective use of technology. Students learn to manage the organizational transformation that occurs when enterprises "go digital" and develop strategies to best harness the strategic business value of digital technologies. The course examines 21st-century technologies from the perspective of effective implementation and management of concomitant organizational change.
- Risk Management in an Unsecure World: Students discover the application of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in government and business transformation and examine their important role in business intelligence. They are introduced to tools and techniques for implementing AI, including data science and machine learning technologies. Students work with existing machine learning models and implement tools to support business intelligence using available data. They study existing AI applications, the competitive advantage of AI, and trustworthiness and ethics in AI.
The fully online DBA in BI from Marymount University Online is cost-effective, includes an applied research project, and can be completed in as few as three years. Become a BI expert with a DBA in Business Intelligence from Marymount University Online.