Data Warehousing
Benefits:
A well designed and maintained Data Warehouse offers the following benefits to the organisation:
- A single, reliable, accurate, source of data for all management reporting and analysis
- Data available when required, updated as often as required
- Integration of data from multiple sources, different sites, systems, countries, languages
- Traceability for reporting and decisions – data can be demonstrably compliant
- A solid foundation for analytic applications, reporting data, dashboards, KPI and so on.
- Typical ROI of over 100%.
- and more...
To discover how your business can benefit from a Data Warehouse/Mart contact Altimus for a free consultation.
In a Nutshell:
A data warehouse is a database designed specifically to enable fast response to queries, detailed analysis and rapid reporting of management or financial data. Where a company has multiple sites and ERP systems, the warehouse integrates the data from all of these into a single, consistent data source. It is used as the single source for all management reporting, analysis, and decision making across the company, and is built, tested and signed off with buy in from all departments.
Data is loaded into the warehouse periodically (typically each night). Data can be drawn from the operational systems, the CRM database, and other sources. The data is then transformed, cleaned and loaded into the warehouse. Because the warehouse is loaded overnight, the data is available during the day. Queries to the warehouse therefore do not impact on the operational systems.
This is very important because queries to the warehouse such as “show me the sales of product X as a percentage of product Y, each week over the past two years”, would slow down an operational system tremendously. With a well-designed warehouse, or an OLAP cube, the response would be almost instantaneous.
Depending on the application, end users may have a number of ways to access the data, including Dashboards, Excel Pivot Tables, Web-based reports and others. The data warehouse is often also used as the data source for OLAP cubes as well. (see the Analytics white paper)
Businesses that have implemented data warehouses typically report enormous benefits. These include faster decision making, much greater confidence in the figures used to make decisions and a better understanding of the business. Where the insights gained through such understanding are acted on, cost savings and revenue increases result.
|