At one time, I was the CIO for a nation-wide retail chain. All of our systems were real-time and we had the ability to see sales as they happened. A lot of com

At one time, I was the CIO for a nation-wide retail chain. All of our systems were real-time and we had the ability to see sales as they happened. A lot of companies use local servers in store locations that dial home and upload data nightly. In the brick retail environment, that's pretty close to real-time.