Real Time Data: How to Beat Rear View Mirror Decision

Real Time Data: How to
Beat Rear View Mirror
Decision Making
Using real time data can help your business face the future confidently and avoid
repeating the mistakes of the past.
Real Time Data: How to Beat Rear
View Mirror Decision Making
Using real time data can help your business face the future
confidently and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
Data is one of the most valuable assets your
organisation owns.
• Figures could be in line with expectations
at the beginning of week, but by the end of
the week they could be way down on the
But how you use that vital information is even
same time last year. When would you find
more important when creating an agile and
out? Next week? Next month?
responsive business.
Historical data is great for providing context and
background. And while ad-hoc or regular weekly
or monthly reports help give an indication of the
state of key performance indicators, they only
do this at a single point in time - and need to be
updated constantly if they’re ever going to stay
accurate.
This is why the ability to access your data in
Data collection capabilities have improved greatly
in recent years, meaning you can access more
data than ever before, and much more quickly. But
unless your data is delivered to decision makers
quickly, their strategic decisions are going to be
too slow, or possibly even wrong, because they
haven’t seen the most recent information.
This is where “real time data” comes into play.
real time is more important than ever.
When you are forced to rely solely on ad-hoc
reports - or even regular, scheduled reports - your
strategy suffers because:
• As soon as a report is produced, it is out of
date.
• By the time a manager gets to see it, it is
likely to be even more out of date.
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What is real time data? What is it for?
Real time data is when information is delivered
With access to this level of information:
immediately after it’s collected. This means that:
• Stakeholders and management teams are
• As soon as information is entered into your
systems, it is available for analysis.
• Data systems can be linked to give “fresh”
information some historical context.
• Your organisation has immediate access to
relevant data at all times.
• Your organisation is alerted to risks and
opportunities before it is too late to do
anything about them.
fully appraised of current conditions before
defining a strategy.
• Trends can be accurately identified and
acted upon.
• You will identify risks and opportunities
early, enabling you to act on them for
maximum benefit - or to avert disaster.
• You can take strategic decisions more
quickly, further increasing potential returns
that might otherwise be lost to competitors
or wastage.
Take this example...
The marketing department has been busy creating a new campaign and has hired extra consultants - or
even an agency - at significant cost.
Two weeks into the month-long campaign, the
At this rate it will have spent 150% of its budget
team has already spent 75% of its total budget.
by the end of the campaign.
For organisations where budget reports are run on a monthly basis, the overspend will have already
happened by the time the report is produced.
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For businesses that rely on ad-hoc data for reporting, there’s still the chance that the report will come after
the overspend has occurred.
Using real time data, budget monitoring can be performed continually so that potential overspend can be
identified before it even happens. Alerts can also be pre-configured when threshold values are reached to
create a second fail-safe warning mechanism.
So by using data in real time, you head off problems before they even occur.
Using real time data effectively
This timely access to data is imperative for agile decision making and accurate analysis. But true value from
real time data can only be recognised if:
• All of your data systems can be linked to give context to your real time data.
• Your system allows for on-the-fly analysis and reporting.
• Data is displayed in an easy-to-digest, easy-to-use way.
• Tools are user friendly, and save your
employees time and effort.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are not hard
to calculate, but tracking them can be. Not to
mention being unsure if your KPIs are the right
ones for the results you want.
To monitor the trends in your KPIs you need
instant access, so you can see where things
stand now - not how they stood last week. And
not only that, even when you’ve generated a KPI
report and it is reasonably recent, how easy is it
to spot the trends? More importantly, how easy is
it to share those trends with others?
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Distilling complex data down to its bare essentials is much more efficient for end users who are pressed for
time, and who are only interested in the answers - not how you arrive at the conclusion.
By far the most popular way to present essential data is through the use of graphics. Charts and graphs
make it easy to pick out the trends or events that demand instant action - as well as those showing that all
is well.
Combining several charts into a single display - or dashboard - presents users with an immediate overview
of their KPIs and enables them to make informed decisions as a result.
What is real time data worth?
Dashboards can be used across most departments, providing significant benefits in the process. Consider
these real-life examples of how dashboards and real time data have been used to improve organisational
performance:
Paul Carter, Management Information Manager, Pulse Staffing
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“
“
What we have been able to establish is a single place that
people within the business can go to for information - without
having to page through loads and loads of spreadsheets. It
also means that within the Management Information Team,
less people spend less time producing scheduled reports –
providing us with time to innovate rather than just producing
the same old reports.
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Many colleges have also noted significant benefits of being able to view their information on dashboards.
For example:
• Bournville College, in Birmingham, saw their number of unsigned registers drop from several
hundred per day before using dashboards, to just 40 per day across the whole college.
• Westminster-Kingsway College, in London, is on course to save the equivalent of one full-time
member of staff per year in the IT department alone – and that’s in just the first year of use.
Vanessa Howard, Director of Finance at South Staffordshire College
“
“
Previously in Finance we would have been reporting on monthend figures. By the time we had collated our key performance
indicators they would have been 10-days out-of-date. With the
dashboards this information is in real time and it’s available
immediately.
These examples clearly demonstrate the
diverse applications for real time data, and
the importance of presenting information
clearly.
The ability to unite information from a range
of sources, combined with up-to-the-minute
data, helps cut operational costs and
creates new efficiencies. Dashboards and
real time data offer a way to face the future
confidently and take well-informed decisions
to reach your goals.
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