Signs it is time to revisit reporting latency

It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. A few signals that reporting latency is due some attention.

Most data problems are ownership problems that turned into technical ones. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• Decide how fresh reports genuinely need to be
• Real-time costs several times more than hourly

Where to start

Most decisions do not need same-minute data. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

The short version

Numbers get quoted in meetings long after anyone remembers how they were calculated. Three things worth confirming about reporting latency before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Decide how fresh reports genuinely need to be — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.