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.