In a previous post, we described the fourth stage of the Analytics Maturity Model, “Operationalize,” in which organizations make analytics accessible across the enterprise for all business users, bringing analytics outside the traditional domain of analysts and data scientists.
The fifth stage of the Analytics Maturity Model, “Automate,” is where organizations take advantage of the time sensitivity of data. This means leveraging real-time streaming data to respond immediately to an event as it is occurring to take advantage of an opportunity or nip a risk in the bud.
By using real-time analytics or event analytics, you can act while the data has the greatest value to make immediate decisions or take immediate action.
Some real-time events require human intervention to decide on the right course of action, e.g., a competitor lowers his price in a key market. In this case, event analytics software can automatically generate an analysis that marries the real-time data from the event or transaction with contextual historical data. This allows the decision-maker to immediately determine what to do. In this case, perhaps the decision is to immediately offer an in-store promotion in that market.
For other real-time events, the decision may already be predetermined. For example, the policy at a sporting arena may be to send mobile offers to purchase jerseys in the gift shop to loyal customers who arrive at the arena to attend an event. In this case, event software can be programmed to automatically take that action (send mobile offer) once event analytics detects the event has occurred (customer enters the arena).
Not all use cases require immediate actions. If you’re making a decision about what to do next month or quarter, then historical data may be exactly what you need. But as analytics becomes a key to competitive advantage, the strongest companies are increasingly applying real-time analytics to more and more new use cases.
The next and final step of Analytics Maturity, “Transform,” is where a data-driven mindset is embedded into the culture of the organization.
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