Industry at large is mostly built around data at rest, especially big data analytics, which focuses on using long-term and large scale data collection. Big data is not new, and for many companies, it remains their go-to-source of information to determine how they can improve the business and gain new insights on their operations, customers and supply chain. For many of these companies, in order to derive business insights from all the data they have collected, that means they need to invest heavily in data scientists and analytics.

The reality for many organizations is that their investments into big data do not pay off. Why? Quite simply, while the big data approach can improve business over time, it requires an exhaustive and comprehensive data collection and reporting process. By the time the data is collected and analyzed, the window of opportunity to act is gone.

In order to gain insights in real-time, organizations need to shift from data at rest to data in flight. The utilization of data in flight is an effective, game-changing business tool for real-time decision making. However, today data in flight is less commonly used than data at rest, and as a result, not as well understood – or perhaps even overlooked – as a valuable method for improving business outcomes.

Data in flight enables streaming analytics so that organizations can analyze data in real time and act quickly. Additionally, streaming analytics is complementary to big data analytics. How? While big data analytics informs business operations using large amounts of data over time, streaming analytics looks to influence business outcomes in the present. From retail to oil and gas, all types of organizations can capitalize on both types of data to improve performance and gain a competitive advantage, but it’s important to note that each type of approach has its unique set of benefits for different types of industries and use cases, such as:

Supply Chain:

• Big Data: Big data is most commonly used to analyze financial data to look for trends/issues with costs, fees, and carrier or supplier problems.
• Real-Time: Real-time analytics can be used for logistics tracking for vehicles, freights, and goods, as well as identifying delays or bottlenecks in up and downstream delivery and changes to demand for quick response to prevent both shortages and overstocking.

Industrial Manufacturing:

• Big Data: While this space has many big data use cases, the most common is utilizing big data for preventive or predictive maintenance with ML systems or understanding operations over time and utility consumption.
• Real-Time: With manufacturing floor data, such as product output velocity and defect detection, manufacturing organizations can determine real-time KPI metrics. With these real-time insights the floor foreman can identify specific problems  such as issues in a specific assembly line workstation or be alerted to a jammed CNC machine. These problems can be addressed quickly and ensure the manufacturing goals for the day are met.

Customer Experience

• Big Data: Spaces such as smart venues can use data collection from computer vision AI in a smart venue application to track how people flow through an arena or coliseum. These insights can inform the venue how and where to install concession stands and set up entry ways to improve the customer experience.
• Real-Time: Smart venue systems can react in real-time to changes in crowd behavior during an event. For instance, a venue can respond at a specific moment to move staff to where they are needed the most. Additionally, a real-time system can manage facilities to ensure bathrooms remain clean and functional, and even restock goods at concession stands and stores.

Vantiq is an agile development platform with high performance stream analytics and “in flight” data processing, designed specifically to enable such real-time use cases. In a space where most platforms are designed to handle only one aspect of a real-time system, such as one for just data acquisition or data storage or directing data streams to specific outputs or data analysis and analytics or cloud integration or edge applications or mobile development or web development or dashboards, Vantiq provides the all-in-one platform to handle virtually all the needs for building, deploying, and maintaining real-time systems.

Want to know more about Vantiq’s platform designed for real-time analytics and response? Contact us for a demo.