Business Intelligence Data Warehouse
Business intelligence data warehouse is the combination of two terms
frequently used in the data mining and analysis field. When used together,
vendors are trying to emphasize that they offer more services than
just data warehousing alone. Because business intelligence can encapsulate
a wide variety of services and tools, combining the terms into business
intelligence data warehouse reflects that the vendor offers everything
an organization needs, including the basics of data warehousing. Business
intelligence data warehouse is the entire package- the systems and
tools that allows organizations to harvest critical information about
their customers and business practices (business intelligence) and
also the necessary infrastructure and existing data from which to run
those systems and tools (data warehouse). Many organizations prefer
to purchase business intelligence tools and data warehousing as a combined
business intelligence data warehouse system in order to increase the
efficiency of the integrated system.
What Business Intelligence Data Warehouse Provides
A business intelligence data warehouse is crucial to decision making,
because it is a single, fully integrated source of information - providing
reliable, clean and consistent data that will be used to make any business
decision. A business intelligence data warehouse provides a significant
amount of value to the executives of an organization and its analysts,
allowing them to perform a variety of business analysis including variance
analysis, budget analysis and a host of other forms. A business
intelligence data warehouse allows a company to improve customer/vendor
relationships, increase the profitability of their marketed products,
generate new market entries, more effectively manage risk, and reduce
costs- all of which impact the potential for higher profits of a company.
In order to do this, a business intelligence data warehouse must be
business focused and deliver increased functionality. At its core,
a business intelligence data warehouse project is the consolidating
of multiple systems that facilitates data sharing and advanced analysis
options among the systems.
Why Do Business Intelligence Data Warehouses Exist?
Business intelligence data warehouse systems are created to satisfy
the need for information in the modern business. With the vast amount
of data most businesses have, reporting on that data can be daunting.
A business intelligence data warehouse system must provide support
for this reporting need by giving access to a number of queries- efficient
queries, structured queries and ad hoc queries. Business intelligence
data warehouse systems also allow for a wide range of flexibility,
especially in terms of spreadsheet abilities, data discovery and OLAP
applications.
The amount of data available to the average business is increasing
each year, with some experts estimating the growth
to as high as 50% per year. While
in the past business data was typically stored in
a single, central system that was easily accessible
to reporting, modern businesses have de-centralized data storage and
the business intelligence data warehouse has become a critical component
in re-centralizing the vital information needed to make better decisions.
Challenges to Business Intelligence Data Warehouse Projects
Implementing a business intelligence data warehouse comes with its
own set of challenges. Most important is to have a realistic
set of expectations. Your business intelligence data warehouse
can provide a lot of insight into your business,
but the business intelligence data warehouse cannot be a quick fix
to a problem that may be systemic, or provide the perfect answers to
your business questions. Deploying
a business intelligence data warehouse can be a daunting
project and is always associated with addressing a contingency of data
storage and analysis needs- not just one problem. Therefore, it’s
crucial to determine the core business reason for creating the business
intelligence data warehouse. This is not different than in any other
major project- questions always need to be addressed before, and not
after, the project is initiated.
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