Continuous Intelligence

What it means, why it matters, and best practices

  1. What is continuous intelligence (CI)?
  2. Benefits of continuous intelligence
  3. Examples of continuous intelligence
  4. Key capabilities of CI
  5. Our approach to continuous intelligence

What is Continuous Intelligence (CI)? A definition:

Continuous intelligence is the use of tools and processes that integrate real-time analytics into business operations, perform automated calculations and recommend specific actions to be taken. The rise of augmented analytics and real-time data pipelines is reshaping how people and machines can respond to rapidly changing conditions, bringing insights and triggering actions when it matters most – right now.

So what does this mean for BI as we’ve known it?

In practical terms, continuous intelligence brings real-time situational awareness and drives actions so people, processes, and machines respond more effectively to important business events, as they happen. It is a shift from traditional, passive BI – based on preconfigured, curated sets of historical data, and designed to inform but not necessarily drive action – to Active Intelligence, based on continuous intelligence derived from real-time, up-to-date information, and designed to take or trigger immediate actions.

An effective CI strategy requires an end-to-end approach built on an optimized data supply chain and augmented analytics that allows a data literate workforce to stay informed and take action in near real-time.

How can continuous intelligence benefit your organization?

Operating a business with the latest, most accurate information holds major potential within any industry and most business models. Continuous intelligence can be operationalized at many levels – from supply chain, fraud detection, customer experience, and IoT enabled manufacturing to any time-sensitive process enhanced by the ability to respond to what’s happening right now. Here are several ways CI can accelerate business value in your organization:

Transform any process with the most current, relevant data.

Unlike traditional BI that relies on historical data analysis alone, continuous intelligence makes the most up-to-date, accurate information available. Whether delivered through active metrics and personalized insights within dashboards and reports or embedded directly into machine-driven processes, this real-time, situational awareness drives better decisions and outcomes.

Guide and automate actions at the right moment.

At the heart of CI are augmented analytics woven directly into operational processes that can take or trigger actions when specific conditions are met. This ranges from time-sensitive alerts that guide people on what to do next, to fully automated processes that trigger downstream actions without human intervention. This ensures that the right actions are taken at the right moment as events unfold.

Accelerate business outcomes. Predict more accurately.

Continuous intelligence closes the gap between what is happening in your operations now and the information and insights available. This accelerates how effectively people and processes respond to rapidly changing conditions, brings greater clarity to predictive algorithms so the upstream insights are as accurate as the data can allow, and builds trust in the insights and actions taken.

Examples of continuous intelligence in action

Organizations today are using embedded, AI-powered analytics with real-time data to optimize time-sensitive processes and increase business value in powerful new ways. Here are just a few examples:

  • Operational Monitoring

    Bringing real-time contextual data and AI/ML-powered analytics offer many ways to optimize operations. Monitor performance, predict risks and opportunities, and proactively respond to business events with alerting and triggered actions across lines of business.

  • Supply Chain Optimization

    Supply chain analytics will deliver far more value when managed based on current conditions. Combining the latest sales, economic and seasonal data with inventory, logistics, and other supply-side dynamics can drive just-in-time decisions that move with the market.

  • Predictive Maintenance with IoT

    IoT data and 5G technologies enable a powerful CI use case in manufacturing, utilities, and beyond. Real-time and historical data and AI/ML processing can predict and trigger proactive maintenance, driving peak performance and business continuity.

  • Value-based Healthcare

    Combining personal health and medical conditions data could power a CI application that instantly processes risk factors against a patient’s medical history and conditions, personalizing complex diagnostics and guiding value-based actions like early intervention.

  • Fraud Detection and Mitigation

    The rise in fraudulent financial activities demands a CI-driven approach. Monitoring in-progress transactions to spot anomalies, alert personnel, or block transactions as they happen is one way continuous intelligence is making a big impact in the industry.

  • Emergency Planning and Logistics

    Emergencies are, by definition, real-time, dynamic events. Government and private sector organizations can use current weather and disaster information with operational data to predict and adjust personnel, equipment, and processes as emergencies evolve.

How can continuous intelligence transform your operations?

These real-world examples are just a starting point. Continuous intelligence invites organizations to re-architect any process that can benefit by using what’s happening right now. Applying a real-time context to immediate business moments or to predict and proactively respond to what’s likely to happen next opens near-limitless possibilities.

Key capabilities of continuous intelligence

Creating an effective continuous intelligence solution requires the right tech stack and finely tuned business processes. An end-to-end approach built around the following core capabilities are essential to success:

  • Augmented analytics

    The best CI-enabled data analytics are designed to enhance human intuition, using AI and ML algorithms to constantly process data and surface real-time events and predictions for deeper analysis and collaboration or to drive immediate actions.

  • Real-time data supply chain

    Delivering continuously updated, business ready information is essential. Real-time data pipelines must break down the silos in the data supply chain, combining current and historical data to create dynamic data sets that are easily discoverable and accessible.

  • Dynamic alerting and event triggering

    Turning emerging business moments into dynamic real-time alerts or to power automated or semi-automated processes that use business rules and optimization logic to trigger downstream actions operationalizes a dynamic CI strategy.

  • Embedded, always-on intelligence

    Because continuous intelligence is executed moment to moment, the most effective data analytics platforms support a full range of analytics use cases that can be embedded directly into business processes, available any time, from any device.

Continuous Intelligence with Qlik

Go beyond continuous intelligence to achieve a state of Active Intelligence, empowering your organization to take action in the moment, in real time. With Qlik Cloud®, you can shift from a passive set of tools to an active system that delivers information in real-time and compels action.

  • Data Integration to turn all your raw data into analytics ready information in real-time.
  • Modern Cloud Analytics to help your users understand their data and make data actionable, enhancing human intuition with AI-powered insights. It’s an open, easy to embed platform supporting the full range of analytics use cases.

Close the gap between data and action with the only cloud platform built for Active Intelligence.

Want to learn more about continuous intelligence with Qlik?