Real-Time Streaming Architecture: A Game-Changer For Sales

What is the common thread among ride-sharing apps, latest shows or music recommendations on media services, cybersecurity, digital advertising, or stock trading?

It’s Real-Time Data Streaming.

In today's data-driven landscape, real-time streaming architecture has become an important requirement for organizations looking to make well-informed decisions based on the most recent data. The ability of this architecture to process and analyze data as soon as it is generated allows for more prompt action to be taken, keeping the organization ahead of the curve.

In this blog post, we will delve into the intricacies of a real-time streaming architecture and examine how Aviso’s real-time processing of sales and customer data helps organizations drive revenue growth and improves the overall experience for our users.

What is Real-Time Streaming Architecture?

A real-time streaming architecture, also called streaming data architecture, is a framework for processing data in real-time as it is produced. It treats extract-transform-load (ETL) batch processing as just one more event in a continuous stream of events and thus differs from traditional data solutions that focus on batch writing and reading.

For example, Netflix uses Flink and Kafka streams to support its recommendation engines by combining streamed data with machine learning. In this case, the streaming architecture ingests data in real time and applies various transformations, enrichment, and data cleansing before passing it to the machine learning model. This way, the recommendation engine can work on the most recent data and provide better recommendations to the users.

Real-time streaming architecture in a sales technology platform can provide sales teams with real-time insights, metrics, and predictions, allowing them to make data-driven decisions. This includes forecasting, pipeline projections, automated lead scoring, buyer behavior insights, and real-time sales reps' performance analysis. It enables teams to plan activities better, set realistic targets, identify bottlenecks, prioritize leads, understand customer needs, and optimize sales approach.

Aviso’s Real-Time Streaming Architecture for Sales

Aviso’s real-time streaming architecture is event-driven, meaning that it is triggered by events that occur in external systems. Instead of periodically pulling data from various systems or data sources, as is the case with batch processing, Aviso's architecture receives a constant stream of events as they happen and processes them as they arrive. Here are the key features of our framework.

1) Real-time sync of data changes across sales & customer systems: Aviso's architecture is designed to automatically sync changes made in external systems, such as CRMs, email, calendars, meetings, customer success, and support platforms, in real-time.

For example, when a sales rep updates a customer's information in any CRM like Salesforce, the changes will be immediately reflected in Aviso's system.
Similarly, if a sales representative schedules a meeting with a customer in their calendar, the information will be automatically synced with Aviso's system, allowing the sales team to see the latest schedule and plan accordingly.

2) Faster real-time data processing: Aviso's real-time streaming architecture allows for faster processing of data by processing it as it is generated, rather than waiting for a period of time to pass before collecting and processing data in batches. This means that updates take effect in seconds rather than minutes, providing a more immediate response to changes in the data.

For e.g., if a sales manager needs to make a decision quickly or a customer success manager needs up-to-date information, such as addressing customer issues in real-time, Aviso provides instant responses

3) Scalable best-in-class technology: Aviso's real-time streaming architecture is built using the same technology that is designed to handle large-scale platforms processing millions of events per second, such as Netflix or Spotify. This feature ensures that the architecture can handle a high volume and frequency of data that is expected to be processed in real-time. Furthermore, this technology allows the platform to handle many parallel streams of data, enabling it to handle many inputs and outputs simultaneously.

The Technology Behind Aviso’s Streaming Data Architecture

A key challenge with real-time streaming architecture is the ability to reliably process bursty events, where large numbers of messages are received at roughly the same time. This can significantly strain the system, causing delays and potentially resulting in the loss of messages.

Aviso's real-time streaming architecture is designed to overcome these challenges by utilizing proven open-source technologies such as Kafka and Spark.

These technologies are designed to handle high-volume and real-time event processing and have been successfully implemented in other large-scale systems. The choice of these technologies allows Aviso to handle high burst events, automatically scale up or down to handle the traffic, and process messages quickly without any delays.

Aviso's real-time streaming architecture is composed of three components:

1) Real-time message ingestion: Aviso captures data through Kafka, which is a highly scalable message broker. We use Salesforce listeners or Webhooks deployed in our backend to listen to events coming from different external systems. Once received, the events are queued, inserted into Kafka, and then processed in the order in which they were queued.

2) Stream processing: Aviso uses Spark to process the data that is ingested in real-time. Spark, with its in-memory computing capabilities, allows us to perform complex data processing and transformations on real-time data streams.

3) Data storage: The processed real-time data is stored in MongoDB, a NoSQL database that stores data in a flexible, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)-like format, which allows for efficient queries and indexing. This allows Aviso to store and retrieve large amounts of data quickly and easily and also provides a durable storage system for the processed data.

Benefits of Aviso’s Real-Time Data Processing for Sellers

Aviso’s real-time streaming architecture empowers sales teams to make data-driven decisions by providing them with real-time insights, metrics, and predictions.

A real-time streaming architecture like Aviso allows for near-instant processing and updates, which provides more accurate and up-to-date information to the sales user, leading to faster response time and improved efficiency.

1) Faster response time: Aviso’s real-time streaming architecture helps sales users manage accounts more efficiently by providing them with real-time information on customer interactions, account history, and open cases.

For example, when a customer calls in with a question or complaint, Aviso users can see the customer's previous interactions, open cases, and history, allowing them to provide a more personalized and efficient service, improving customer satisfaction and reducing the time it takes to resolve customer issues.

2) Improved efficiency: Aviso’s real-time streaming architecture helps sales users automate repetitive tasks, such as data entry, and streamline their workflow.

For example, Aviso’s contact auto-population helps sellers automatically log contact information in the CRM system as soon as it is received, eliminating the need for manual data entry.
Similarly, with Aviso’s AI-guided lead-scoring models, sales reps can automatically prioritize leads based on their likelihood of converting to a sale, allowing them to focus their efforts on the most promising leads and reducing the amount of time they spend on unqualified leads.

3) Quick and informed decision-making: Aviso’s real-time streaming architecture provides sales users with real-time data on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as sales pipeline, conversion rate, and customer behavior. Aviso's real-time streaming architecture allows sales users to access the most up-to-date forecasting data in real time, which is crucial for making informed decisions.

For example, Aviso’s real-time call guidance listens to sales calls in real time and provides them with checklists and recommended responses based on real-time event captures. This empowers reps to say the right thing on every call and handle any objections confidently. Sales reps can also use real-time data on customer behavior to identify patterns and trends that can inform decisions on which products and services to upsell or cross-sell, how to target different customer segments, and how to adjust their sales approach.

Conclusion

Real-time streaming architecture enables quick decision-making, and improved efficiency and gives businesses the ability to detect and respond to events as they happen. This can have a game-changing impact on businesses looking to gain a competitive edge in the market.

Aviso's streaming data architecture is designed to provide real-time insights and updates, syncing changes made in external systems in seconds. Additionally, this capability is built on proven technology, making Aviso a reliable and robust choice for companies.