| A Business Intelligence tool will always be more | | | | for the company and identify the information they |
| effective with a powerful Data Warehouse. To be | | | | require in each business direction. Business Analysts |
| able to query, analyse and generate worthwhile | | | | need to analyse the organizational data sources so |
| reports, BI systems should have all relevant available | | | | they can build up the most effective Data |
| information to hand. Unfortunately information relating | | | | Warehouse which would help the new process. |
| to transactions such as sales data, human resources | | | | At the heart of the data warehousing process is the |
| data etc. are normally stored in different applications | | | | ETL (extract, transform, and load) process. |
| within the company, and physically held in different | | | | Implementation of this process is not just an IT |
| databases. | | | | concern but the business as a whole should be |
| This makes it very difficult to generate the type of | | | | involved in ensuring that it is able to satisfy the |
| intelligent information and level of reports expected | | | | business requirements. The ETL process is responsible |
| today by management today want to analyse data | | | | for connecting to and extracting data from one or |
| and relationships across the whole company. Having | | | | more sources, transforming it according to defined |
| the data coming from many different sources to one | | | | business rules and loading it into the data model. It is |
| location, a data warehouse has become crucial for | | | | here where data quality achieved. |
| the success of the Business Intelligence initiative. | | | | There are so many advantages of using this kind of |
| From a business viewpoint the investment, spread | | | | system. Information concerning customer scores, |
| over a few years, will turn into a high ROI. | | | | future campaigns and new product lines can all be |
| Investment costs for a Data Warehouse may look | | | | gleaned from the analysis that will be available. This |
| quite high in the short term, but it is important to | | | | will result in high customer retention and the creation |
| look at it as a long term investment. It will reduce | | | | of unique products. Information will be available to all |
| future development costs as any requested report | | | | managers across the company thereby stropping |
| or view can be easily facilitated. | | | | middle-managers effectively building their own mini |
| When considering implementing a Data Warehouse it | | | | empires at the expense of other departments. |
| should not be regarded as solely a computerisation | | | | These collaborative reports will increase the efficiency |
| process for a solitary part of the company. It should | | | | and accuracy of the company and the return on |
| be seen as a new strategy for the whole company. | | | | human investment will increase greatly. |
| Therefore management should build up a strategy | | | | |