Real-time Business Intelligence (ERP and CRM)

Real-time business intelligence enables business users to get up-to-the-minute data by comparing current business events with historical patterns to identify issues or opportunities automatically.

Real-time business intelligence is made possible with data warehouses that include:

Data virtualization: abstracting, transforming, and delivering data from a variety of information sources so that it may be accessed by a consuming application or users upon request Enterprise information integration: using data abstraction to provide a single interface for viewing all the data within an organization Enterprise application integration: a collection of technologies and services which form a “middleware” to enable integration of systems and applications across the enterprise Service-oriented architectures (SOA): flexible design principles used to package functionality as a suite of interoperable services that can be used by different domains within the same business

The bottom line is that real-time business intelligence supports instant decision-making. With real-time business intelligence, if a customer walks up to a checkout counter at a department store with a shirt, the cashier can tell him about the coordinating tie available for purchase in the adjacent department.