infoTECH Feature

January 29, 2016

Transforming Your Business with Fast Data

By Special Guest
Alex Ivanovs, Guest Technology Writer

In today’s business environment, companies must be ready to analyze and leverage business data that accumulates with every business step they take. Real-time data changes the way companies do business, making some analytics methods obsolete and creating space for new solutions and strategies. It goes without saying that real-time data is too valuable to be ignored. The extent to which companies will be able to benefit from it depends on the kind of resources they already have and their willingness to face new challenges.

Test various options and choose the best one

In today’s data-driven business environment actionable real-time data gives us the possibility to spot our mistakes and act on them quicker than ever. We can enjoy the freedom of making mistakes and learning from them – to realize which strategies work best and should be pursued. In practice it translates to running AB tests on two different variations of product features, campaigns or website design to compare them in parallel and learn which one works best. The test will provide you with solid real-time data on what option has yielded the expected result. For testing websites and landing pages you can use online tools, for example Google Website Optimizer. Having conducted an AB test, you can follow the more successful strategy immediately, without the danger of discovering only after few weeks or months that your actions don’t bring any result and you’ve been throwing money down the drain.

Get your hands on data

Two heads are better than one – give access to real-time data to all your employees not just data scientists or IT department. Create a beneficial dashboard culture in your company so that any employee can monitor their performance, discover weak points and find a field of improvement. Allow your employees to see step by step what failed on the way to goal completion and empower them to learn from their own experience. You can speed up the decision making process in your team by giving your employees an easy access to KPI dashboards. With solid data about what areas need improvement and what strategies work best, they can make fast and confident data-driven decisions.

Remove barriers to data you need

The time when only the privileged employees were given access to data is long gone. In order to make the whole team capable of analyzing data, it must be easy to reach regardless of source, format, size, whether it is structured, semi-structured or unstructured, static or dynamic. Advanced programming skills shouldn’t be a prerequisite to view data. Many business analytics tools available online have already developed methods to avoid these barriers. Users can connect their data sources and perform cross-database analysis via an easy-to-use interface even without IT engineer-equal skills. The resulting powerful visuals will constitute a perfect basis for informed and fast decision-making as well as a ready-to-use presentation material.

Access data on the fly

In certain parts of the world, it seems that everybody has a smartphone, tablet, or both, and these devices aren't used just for games or Web surfing – we use them to manage work-related tasks on the go and use our time in the most effective way. It is estimated that by 2016 the number of smartphone users worldwide will surpass 2 billion. What does it mean for the business landscape? Business owners must make sure that their websites comply with the rules of responsive web design. On the other hand, Business Intelligence software vendors must face the challenge of providing mobile optimized tools that enable workers to view business analytics reports and dashboards on mobile endpoints. Real-time access to critical data insights translates to faster decision making, regardless of where employees are located.

Moreover, companies often apply bring-your-own-device policy which means that every employee should be prepared to access data and perform tasks on their personal device. It has given organizations even more incentive to implement comprehensive mobile data access to their websites and tools. Both businesses and users benefit from more flexibility and easier cross-teams cooperation allowed by mobile endpoints.

Self-service tools for fast and hands-on business analytics

The avalanche of inputs from social media and other unstructured information that is characteristic of big data doesn’t fit into the spreadsheets any longer. The volume, variety and velocity of data have made it too complex to analyze data using old-school tools. The majority of them cannot afford a separate data analytics department stacked with servers and a team of highly qualified data scientists.

That’s where data analytics as a service will help. Self-service business intelligence is a great solution for companies who don’t want to take on a big fixed expanse of employing an IT department, but want to enjoy the advantage of advanced business analytics, data visualization and safe data storage. In a self-service model all the resources are delivered by the tool provider and they usually are reduced to comprehensive software that allows users to analyze data on their own, without any programming skills at all. An added value is automated reporting functionality or data warehousing – when you choose to entrust your data to external servers. Leveraging self-service BI tools facilitates swift data management, analytics and reporting and allows you to turn unstructured data from different databases into meaningful business dashboards.

Alex Ivanovs has been covering technology for over a decade, with extensive experience in web development and web design. His experience in business, data, and technology stems from having opened several large content publications himself, as well as working with industry leading names like MediaTemple, HostGator and Huffington Post (News - Alert). When not working on technological topics, Alex likes to share his thoughts and ideas on open-minded thinking at his project SkillCode. You can follow him on Twitter (News - Alert@skillcode.




Edited by Kyle Piscioniere
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