[higeorge13]

I work in a real time subscription analytics company (chartmogul.com). We fetch, normalize and aggregate various billing systems data and eventually visualize them into graphs and tables.

I had this discussion with key people and i would say it depends on multiple factors. Small companies really like and require real-time analytics: they want to see how a couple invoices translate into updated saas metrics or why they didn’t get a slack/email notification as soon asit happened. Larger ones will check their data less frequently per day or week, but again it depends on the people and their role. Most of them are happy with getting their data once per day into their mailboxes or warehouses.

But we try to make everyone happy so we aim for real time analytics.

[mrbungie]

I think GP's point is that is not about the perceived value of real time data/analytics, but rather, its actual value. Decision makers may ask for RT or NRT, but most of the time won't make a decision or action in a timeframe that actually justifies RT/NRT data/analytics.

For most operations RT/NRT data stuff normally is about novelty/vanity rather than a real existing business need.

[andrenotgiant]

The article is separating "operational" and "analytical" use-cases.

IIUC analytical = "what question are you trying to answer" and in analytics, RT/NRT is absolutely novelty/vanity. Operational = "what action are you trying to take" and it makes sense to want to have up-to-date data when, for example, running ML models, triggering notifications, etc...

[mrbungie]

Yeah, totally. I should've specified "analytical operations", as in, updating dashboards and other non-time-critical data processing that eventually feed into decision making. That's were devs or decision makers asking for RT/NRT makes no sense.