But sometimes it just means making sense and acting the same minute, the same hour or the same day.  If the data you are collecting is about how people who get your catalog go online once they receive it and the decision you want to make sense of is how to change the next batch of catalogs being sent out, then "real-time sensemaking" might not need to be all that fast. If you are working in a weekly or monthly schedule that is imposed on you, it might mean deciding before the next cycle. If you are making a decision that impacts compensation plans or legal contracts or service level agreements, you probably have quite a while because the implementation of your decision is not instant.

Regardless of the timeframe, you must do several things though:

• Capture, clean and integrate the data quickly enough that you don't use up precious decision-making time


• Analyze and predict using the data so your decision is being made in the light of what you think will be true when the decision gets implemented, not what used to be true


• Define how you want to act based on those predictions in a way that lets those who understand the business participate, not just math or IT geeks

Jeff says, you need to decide

Fast enough to do something smart as the transaction is happening, not minutes, hours, or days later.

But not all transactions happen every second so sometimes you have a little but of wiggle room.