Just as the world we work in has sped up the COVID pandemic sped up many developments of technology and processes to allow work to continue in extreme circumstances. Companies are at point where they need to be able to react to changing customers behaviours and also be able to respond to global events. Delays in decision making could prove costly in more ways than one. That’s why real time data is becoming so important. For any company wanting to keep up with the competition, real time analytics has an indispensable tool.
Real time data analytics (also known as streaming analytics) allows a user to capture, analyse and use data as soon as it appears in a system. And present it in a format such as a report or a dashboard that is understandable to analyze. It means retailers can see what is trending in sales, finance companies can detect fraud at the point of sale, social media has the ability to detect fake news or bullying language that needs to be acted upon, smartwatches can analyse heart beats and traffic apps report on problems as they occur.
Being able to react quickly to a problem or a website click, adjust the price of a product, or target an ad based on a users actions improves customer engagement and loyalty.
Where is the data collected from? It is being streamed from such things as website clicks, GPS, video views, sensors and transaction logs. Is it possible for a small company to collect such data? After all streaming does require a lot of resources as it is a never ending flow of information with a time limit on its usefulness. Luckily real time data services are available from companies such as Amazon and IBM. You subscribe to their services to access information logs from various sources. So any company can have access to data that will allow them to make smart and timely decisions.