Importance of Real-Time Data for your Business
Organisations across the globe are becoming more data-driven, leveraging data to drive business decisions and growth. Today's blog explores how real-time data analytics can help your business thrive.
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Data is being generated at an exponential rate in today’s digital-first world. With more data at their fingertips than ever before, organisations need to unlock value from this data or they risk falling behind the competition. According to McKinsey, data-driven organisations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers. Part of becoming a data-driven organisation is embracing the power of real-time data analytics.
Tools that provide real-time access to data analytics, such as Microsoft’s Power BI, have surged in popularity. Instead of being stored in a database and only being analysed in batches after a set period of time, data can now be viewed in real time. These tools allow companies to unlock the value within their data and help businesses streamline processes, shape strategies and maximise profitability. According to a NewVantage Partners survey, 91.9% of organisations achieved measurable value from data and analytics investments in 2023.
Below we explore some of the top benefits of having real-time analytics tools within your business.
Data Visualisation
In today’s working world, businesses need access to data in an easy way. Previously, a data snapshot of a particular period in time was presented in charts. However, when using real-time data, users can access it through data visualisation. Tools that offer data visualisation allow users to filter and drill down into data in real-time, lessening the need for manual data collation and report creation. Data visualization allows users to create data dashboards of their most relevant data and present it in a number of ways, meaning users can access all of their relevant reports at any time with little effort required.
Faster Decision making
As the pace of business increases, decision-making within a business needs to be quick. Without access to real-time data analytics, businesses would have to work off data that is only refreshed every couple of days or even on a monthly basis. This means that business decisions cannot be made using the most up-to-date data. With access to real-time data analytics, business leaders can make smarter and faster data-driven decisions as needed. Business leaders can also feel more confident in their decisions, knowing that they have based their decisions on the most up-to-date data sets and insights.
Operational Efficiency
Having access to real-time data can improve business operations and boost efficiency. When real-time is monitored, potential operational bottlenecks or issues can be spotted before they become a bigger problem and resolutions can be figured out more quickly. Real-time data analytics can help a number of different industries in improving operational efficiency, for example, retailers managing inventory and stock data to ensure supply meets demand fluctuations. Further, in manufacturing, if the scheduled shipping of important materials is delayed, the business can adjust operations accordingly.
Business Agility & Optimisation
Real-time data analytics can also help organisations build business agility. In a rapidly changing working world, there are many factors that impact the market and businesses need to be able to respond quickly. While some industries can have market fluctuations more than others, for example, airlines can be impacted by uncontrollable factors such as the weather or current events in any particular country. Having real-time data during scenarios where your business has to make adjustments allows the business to make more informed decisions about the best way forward. As well as this, real-time data can help businesses spot opportunities for optimisation such as areas to make cost savings or new growth areas for investment.
Improved Customer Service
Customer satisfaction is a priority for many organisations and having real-time data analytics within your business operations can help support this. Today, customer expectations are on the rise and therefore delivering a great customer experience is essential. Real-time data analytics can help in delivering this, for example when a customer contacts a support agent for help, they don’t want to wait around while the agent takes time to pull all their historical data. With real-time data at their fingertips, support agents can respond to customer queries with increased speed and accuracy. Further, real-time data can help sales and marketing teams plan campaigns based on data rather than guessing.
These are just some of the benefits that real-time data analytics can bring to your organisation. However, we understand that becoming a data-driven organisation does not happen overnight. If you would like to speak to an expert about unlocking the power of your data, get in touch today.
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