Every sector is facing tough competition. Companies that are operating in the automobile industry want to build great cars. Similarly, food companies are trying to provide tasty and healthy food. There are some companies that are crushing their competition. These companies are always making the right decisions.

Companies are adopting different technologies, techniques, and strategies. These strategies are helping them in making the correct decisions. Operational intelligence has changed the world of decision making. In this article, we are going to talk about OI.

Definition of Operational Intelligence:

OI will give you all the real-time information about what is happening in your company. It will help you in taking better decisions.

In the old days, companies were monitoring their entire business for making decisions. They were making charts and graphs after collecting all the data. This helped companies in visualizing their growth. The main problem with the BI approach is that you need to spend a lot of time collecting data. Also, your decisions will be based on old data. Thus, most times your decisions will produce inaccurate results. This process was known as BI or business intelligence.

OI and BI can help you in making better decisions. Many people consider OI as the successor to BI. The main difference between operational intelligence and business intelligence is that OI will actually look at the real-time data only. It will use real-time data for making the best decision. Thus, OI is activity-centric in nature. All the decisions will be made according to what your users are doing. If you are using BI, then you are actually using the past data of your company. Thus, BI is data-centric in nature. The decisions will depend on the data that you have stored. You can store all the business metrics and data in databases. The best thing about Operational Intelligence is that you can use real-time data for making the most accurate decisions.

How does it work?

Most people think that OI is a protocol or architecture. However, it is actually an approach. There is no process flow that you should strictly flow. You should know about the core components of OI. Every OI system will have a dashboard, data collectors, and analytics.

Collector

Data is the most important thing for both OI and BI. You can’t do anything without collecting data first. Data collectors are simple tools that will help you in collecting useful data. You can collect this data from server logs, application events, and application logs. It is a good idea to set up multiple event loggers in your systems and applications. Make sure that you are collecting data in real-time. However, real-time doesn’t mean immediately or instantly. It is important to consider issues like data transmission and latency issues.

Analytics

All the data that you will collect will be in raw format. Your log files will contain hundreds of useless lines. It is impossible to use this data from making decisions. Thus, analytics is going to play a big role in OI. You can connect it with your data collector. All the data will be first sent to your analytics tools. These tools will analyze the data and visualize it for you. It will also filter out all the useless data that you don’t need. Data visualization will ensure that you know what is going on. You can create charts and graphs according to your business use cases.

Dashboard

The dashboard will help you in making your business decisions. Many trading companies are using OI for making trading decisions. Their system will collect all the data from online exchange sites. After that, it will process the data. You can decide if you want to sell stocks or buy stocks. The dashboard will help you in automating this entire process. You can use it for checking the data and making decisions. If you don’t want to make decisions manually, then you can also use AI for automating your decisions.

Advantages of Operational Intelligence:

Visibility

OI will help you in understanding your business data. It will ensure that you can quickly respond to new changes. This will help you in creating plans for the future.

Security

You can even use OI for improving your network security. It will help you in recording attack patterns. This will help you in understanding the products that are vulnerable. Most companies are combining OI with an IDS solution. This can help you in improving the security of your products.

VSM or Value Stream management simply means that you understand each component of your application. Every component will have a different value. You can divide your processes, applications, and systems into simpler parts. Every part will have a different value for your business. Some parts will add more value to your operations. Similarly, some parts will add less value to your business operations. You should know about the components that are wasting your resources. This will help you in optimizing your system, applications, and business. The main advantage of OI is that it deals with real-time data. Thus, you can use OI for VSM. It will help you in optimizing your systems and applications.

Using your data

OI will help you in using your logs and data. Most applications and systems are generating log files. However, these log files simply get ignored. If you are using OI, then you can use this data for improving your business operations. It will help you in fixing problems in your applications.

Conclusion

These are the main benefits of using OI. However, it is not easy to set up a BI or OI system. You need access to a great IT team. Most SMBs don’t have access to such IT expertise. Thus, they should consider working with a good IT MSP. Experienced MSPs like Bleuwire can help you in improving your business efficiency. They will use the latest tech tools for improving your business operations. Thus, many companies are shifting to MSPs. If you need more information regarding OI and BI, then you can contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™ services and solutions in how we can help your business.