On 7 September 2015, the South African rand hit a record low, trading at R14.01 to the dollar as business confidence dropped to its lowest level since 2011 and economists warned that the country could be headed for a recession.

There's enough keeping business leaders up at night without the added stress of wondering how they're going to keep their companies afloat in this fragile environment. But making smart business decisions – ones that save money, reduce risk and keep customers happy – shouldn't add to the load.

With tools like big data and advanced analytics, executives can make informed decisions in response to real-time information that give them the best chance of survival and success.

Consider this example:

A segment manager at a telecommunications company notices that a large portion of prepaid customers are not recharging their airtime as often as they used to. Before the company adopted advanced analytics, the manager would have pulled churn reports from his or her business intelligence (BI) environment.

He or she would possibly do some ad hoc analytical processing and then hand the problem to an analyst to find a solution. But this is reactive and time-consuming. Using advanced analytics tools, the manager can gather data on these particular customers to profile them. He or she can then establish, in seconds, that the reason they are not recharging is because this particular market segment can no longer afford the telco's increased rates.

Based on this information, a marketing campaign can be created, targeted specifically at this group, offering to double their airtime value each time they recharged.

Had he or she offered this promotion to his entire customer base, the telco would have lost a lot of money and would not have these valuable insights into its customers that ultimately informed decision-making. This proactive approach would reduce customer churn, increase customer loyalty and prevent lost revenue during an economic period in which every cent counts.

Using the same data, the manager can also do predictive modelling to determine if customers with a similar profile, but who are on different call plans, might default in future for the same reasons, and can implement solutions to prevent this.

This is the value of advanced analytics and data visualisation. By having immediate, visual access to real-time information, business leaders can make better-informed decisions. These decisions can save the organisation money, prevent customer churn and generate additional revenue.

Most C-level executives agree that using tools that can improve their company's competitive advantage and better prepare them for the future is a no-brainer. Yet there are three obstacles standing in the way of widespread advanced analytics adoption in South Africa.

1. Dabbling. While most organisations use analytics to a degree, this is mostly on the BI level, which means decisions are being made based on data from the past – understanding why things happened – rather than on using real-time data to predict what could happen. Once businesses understand why something went wrong, they can predict if the trend will continue, and what will happen if it does. In most businesses, analytics is typically only focused in one or two areas, such as sales vs revenue, but these businesses are only touching the surface of what's possible with advanced analytics.

2. Confusion. Businesses use the terms 'business intelligence' and 'data visualisation' interchangeably but they are vastly different. BI uses simple statistical techniques to analyse data and look for patterns. Data visualisation is essentially a crystal ball that allows businesses to see into the future, predict outcomes of decisions, and make changes before problems arise.

3. Cost concerns. There's a perception in the market that advanced analytics solutions are expensive. But when businesses consider the amount of money they can save when they uncover fraud and new revenue streams, the return on investment becomes clear – it's priceless.

While there is heightened awareness about advanced analytics in the local market due to media hype around big data and analytics in general, we need a mindset change in South Africa.

Businesses need to understand what can be achieved with advanced analytics and data visualisation.

Verticals such as banking and financial services are more mature in their adoption of advanced analytics because of regulatory compliance considerations, but it could provide massive value in non-traditional sectors. Rental agencies, for example, could run credit checks on tenants in minutes, rather than days, speeding up their approvals processes and possibly attracting more tenants and landlords.

The only way to achieve this is by operationalising advanced analytics into core business processes and changing mindsets around how people go about analysing problems.

* By Craig Stephens, principal solution manager at SAS