Retail brands have come a long way since the days of personalized emails, and today customers demand even deeper personalization tailored to their individual preferences, purchase history, and online behavior. Recent advancements in data technology have made it possible for retail brands to collect, unify, and activate vast amounts of data in real-time, empowering them to make decisions and deliver customer experiences with unprecedented speed and accuracy. This has led to the emergence of a modern retail data stack that includes cloud data warehouses, data lakes, and Data Activation tools, which can be used to power real-time use cases such as inventory management, push notifications, customer loyalty, geo-targeted campaigns, and cart abandonment recovery. The key is to identify areas where lower latency can create a tangible return on investment, and to understand that speed is king, proactive decision-making is essential, and enhanced customer experience is the ultimate goal of real-time data adoption.