Data-driven & Real Time

This is 2020. At this point, we know that you as an executive make your decisions based on data. You should consider indicators such as income statement, net sales, number of retained customers, monthly website traffic and more. There is something in common in all this: this is retroactive data, extracted on a specific day, week, month, year, etc.

A scenario of fierce competitiveness has put pressure on companies to make extremely assertive plans and decisions. There is no longer room for error because a poorly designed strategy can have negative – and often irreversible – impacts on the results and the brand.

Additionally, technologies have revolutionised the buyer’s journey. Despite having the same stages of the conversion funnel (discovery, interest, consideration and acquisition), the buyer’s journey is not so linear anymore, and because it is increasingly digital, it leaves traces of data that can (and should) be measurable.

These circumstances boosted the data-driven culture of many organisations, and the analysis of past indicators evolved into real-time data monitoring. A 2018 Harvard Business Review study conducted with 560 executives from all 5 continents revealed interesting insights on this scenario:

• 70% of companies invested in solutions that provided real-time analyses of consumer data;

• 60% of companies used these customer analyses to provide better experiences in different points of contact, regardless of the device used;

• 58% noticed an increase in customer retention and customer loyalty as a result of using real-time analyses;

• 44% won new customers and increased revenue after using analyses.

These figures show that companies understand that the evolution of retroactive data analysis to a real-time model is a trend that has been gaining ground due to its importance to decision making and the impact it has on business results.

Data driven and real time

Throughout our performance marketing journey, we always turn to data to establish, implement and operationalise results-oriented strategies for our clients.

Because some of them have online stores, we felt the need to have faster access to information to boost actions and help reach goals. The RTE (Real Time e-Commerce) platform, a set of dashboards for online stores that monitors sales results and goals in real time, was created for this need. 

The tool allows you to filter data, such as best-selling products, most used devices by store visitors, or media and channels that attract the largest number of users, among other options that support the campaign analysis and accelerate the optimisation process.

Despite the focus on real-time decision making, RTE also stores histories that can be used for future advanced analysis to help identify potential sales trends and opportunities. This strategy is known as advanced analytics and has been gaining ground among leading companies. However, this is a topic for another article.