Summary: When a CEO or other C-level exec wants answers, he or she typically wants them yesterday. Since we can’t change the properties of space or time, the next-best-solution, so many of us believe, is to develop real-time analytics tools, such as real-time dashboards, to keep executives and other VIPs up-to-date on how the business is performing. This way, executives don’t even have to ask. The data required is displayed on their laptops, whizzing by at real-time speed. But are such real-time analytics tools really the best way to provide executives and others with actionable intelligence? How much information can someone absorb by watching a stream of high-velocity data? Executives say they want real-time analytics, but they may be better served by, for example, event-oriented insights that surface only when action is required. In fact, there are a number of considerations to real-time analytics - including just defining what the business means by “real-time.” In this episode of Pivotal Insights, Jeff Kelly and Dormain Drewitz grapple with the thorny issue of real-time analytics and how to make the right business and architectural decisions to support your organization's analytics needs.
