Amazon ElastiCache effectively addresses read-heavy workloads by enabling in-memory caching, which reduces the number of direct read operations to the database and hence significantly decreases response times for data retrieval. While RDS Read Replicas improve scalability by distributing the read load, they may not be optimal for real-time data requirements due to potential replication lag. Amazon Aurora's automatic scaling is powerful for overall performance and scalability but does not specifically target the low latency access needed for a real-time reporting dashboard. DAX is specific to Amazon DynamoDB which wasn't specified as the service in use, and thus, doesn't hold as the best answer to the use case presented.