What are Real Time Analytics?

By definition, Real Time Analytics is the use of or the capacity to use, all available enterprise data and resources when they are needed. Real Time Analytics is constituted by two factors- dynamic analysis and reporting. It is based on data entered into a system less than one minute before the actual time of use. Real-time data analytics, real-time data integration, and real-time intelligence are other names used to describe Real Time Analytics.

In real time analytics, the stress is mostly on the part ‘real-time’. It means that any analysis that is to be made is done in real time, that is, at the same instance that the event is occurring. Real Time Analytics finds its applications in many spheres of human life.

One of the most important fields is business software. Software has played a very important role in revolutionizing the way business is done in this age. It has automated many of the business processes, taken out the need for human intervention; thereby speeding up processes and minimizing the chances of error.

Just as necessity is the mother of invention, real time analytics in business is the product of the modern day business practice of cutthroat competition, where one’s loss is someone else’s gain. Unlike the previous era of monopolistic markets, today’s business is much more competitive and when it becomes competitive, customer becomes the king and customer focus is the name of the game. So how do companies serve their customers better? It is by providing them with fast and reliable service. So the whole thing boils down to making better business decisions faster. This is where real time analytics plays its role through popular software applications such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) analytics and data mining. In this, data regarding all the customers of a business/enterprise are collected and analyzed by experts so that better and faster decisions can be made. It is about taking or executing some action based on an input or a series of inputs. To execute this action even predefined models of data mining are used.

Another very popular application of real time analytics is in the field of web programming. In some cases it is very desirable to monitor the traffic in websites. It may be done for various purposes such as to determine the popularity of websites, to improve the usability of user interface, to analyze the user behavior pattern etc. Woopra is a popular tool used to perform real time analysis of web traffic. Using this, user can determine the number of users who use or browse a website at any given point of time. This data can be used to determine the user friendliness of the site, the factors to be improved, the most popular item in the site or even the potential to generate revenue by placing advertisements.

Real Time Analytics is a broad term that may represent anything about data that demands acquisition and analysis in real time. But nonetheless, it is a very powerful tool at the same time, providing solutions to complex problems in domains ranging from pure sciences to software.