A lack of understanding regarding the role of data in decision-making is a reoccurring challenge for many organizations. However, with the increase in quantity and complexity of data, you need to do everything possible to help your people use data effectively.

Everybody knows that diabetic patients need to keep track of their sugar levels, and cardiac patients need to keep track of their cholesterol levels. And both of them need to keep track of their vitals such as BP, weight, etc. What happens if cardiac patients keep track of their sugar levels and diabetic patients keep track of their cholesterol levels? They will not see any impact on the doctor’s prescription, as they are tracking the wrong metrics.

Just like aeroplanes have different indicators that help the pilots determine the performance of the flight, such as an airspeed indicator, attitude indicator, altimeter, turn coordinator, heading indicator, and vertical speed indicator, businesses also need indicators that help the FP&A determine the business’s performance. These indicators are known as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). While we already know what KPIs are, let us refresh our memory.

Supply chain disruption. Pandemics and medical crises. Climate change. Events that were once “black swans” are now near-everyday occurrences for citizens worldwide—and governments are facing growing pressure to provide effective public services in response. In the past, the ability to access, process, and apply data to make informed decisions about complex issues was crucial to creating effective public services.

Confluent has been instrumental in enabling customers from various industries to develop real-time stream processing solutions using Apache Kafka. While many of these use cases demand low-latency and real-time processing, stream processing is also increasingly being utilized for ingesting logging and telemetry data. This type of data typically features a high ingest rate, but allows for a higher tolerance for end-to-end processing time.