This report examines how organizations can rethink their data management strategies to leverage real-time data to develop personalized real-time digital experiences or applications that customers want, increase operational efficiency and increase business performance.
The following are the main conclusions of this report:
• Real-time data collection and analysis enables companies to create innovative applications. When done right, real-time data can be used to measure customer sentiment and engagement, deliver precisely targeted content, optimize supply chains, fight fraud, and offer alternatives to missed flights, among other things. However, experts say only a fraction of the data from connected devices is collected and processed in real time due to obstacles such as legacy technology architectures, indicating untapped potential for businesses.
• Organizations need to determine which business processes will benefit most from real-time data collection and analysis, because capturing all the data and processing it in real-time is expensive. Building architectures to process captured data also becomes exponentially more difficult as the number of devices grows. Companies that create the right data architectures will be able to process captured data in real time and store the information in the most useful way for future decisions.
• Open source solutions, the cloud and artificial intelligence systems could help organizations overcome the challenges of real-time data management. Experts we spoke to for this report recommend developing initial data pipelines with open source technologies. This will help organizations develop internal knowledge, avoid vendor lock-in and establish a baseline for expectations. In addition, artificial intelligence (AI) is the next natural progression: operational data platforms must support real-time analytical functionality as AI and machine learning (ML) are incorporated every once more to business operations. AI-powered real-time applications with the right data, at the right time, will deliver the greatest business impact for leading organizations.
Download the full report.
This content was produced by Insights, the custom content group of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by the MIT Technology Review editorial team.
