From passive to proactive
Based on the need to better manage business processes, in recent years most organizations unlocked their legacy administration and traded Excel reports for modern systems that allow the creation of all kinds of dashboards. By now, those too have become obsolete. Business intelligence is shifting from passive ("you open your dashboard") to proactive: systems continuously monitor, detect anomalies and send notifications or actions without anyone asking. Agentic AI or event-driven analytics allows technology to run its own analytics in the background and present relevant information with an alert when needed. AI agents search real-time or near-real-time data streams for answers to specific questions such as "Why hasn't this KPI been achieved?" or "In which segment of the business are most customers dropping out?
Up-to-date insights thus provide the ability to quickly jump in to changing market conditions. This does not mean, however, that monthly, quarterly and annual reports have become useless. They force executives to zoom out from the delusion of the day to trends in order to base a long-term strategy on them. Real-time analytics, however, allow them to turn that into a "rolling strategy . They can continuously recalibrate priorities and budgets, creating an ongoing feedback loop.
Governance is key
For reliable real-time insights, however, data must be properly available in an integrated data platform where there is only one version of the truth. Data quality and governance have become prerequisites for such a modern business. It must be clear what definitions are used (what is "stock," when is something "current?") and what roles are in place (who "owns" the data). The use of real-time views and the deployment of AI agents also means that data from more sources must come together and ensures that sensitive data is shared more often and more quickly. So as part of governance, strict access rights and security must be arranged, as must activity logging and regulatory compliance monitoring such as privacy laws.
Real-time is now the new normal with new requirements, without diminishing the importance of annual audits. Might this change also have helped prevent empty toilet paper shelves during the covid-19 crisis?
