subject: Data Warehousing For Your Organization [print this page] An organization typically generates huge amounts of data every day. Over time, this data if left unorganized can grow into a gargantuan and unmanageable pile. Data if organized, processed and accessed at the right time can provide your organization with an advantage that will take you ahead of the competition.
What needs to be understood is that the information that a manager needs is right there within the huge pile, but it may either be poorly processed or it may be extremely difficult to extract. Having outdated information is of no use especially in todays highly competitive world where organizations need to run just to remain at the same place.
One way to effectively organize the huge amounts of data produced by your organization is by data warehousing. Data warehousing is about combining data from different sources into a comprehensive and easily manageable database. Data can be varied, in the form of printed material, receipts, customer identification, purchases, order numbers, details of successful product delivery and failures, complaints, telephone numbers, emails, letters, transaction details, employee payroll details, receivables, billing and several other kinds that are generated on a regular basis. Data warehousing creates a final single database, it accepts different kind of inputs but the final result is homogenous data in a database that can be easily accessed, modified and managed.
Organizations normally use data warehousing to extract data and analyze trends over time. The trends may be on profitability, sales, expenses or anything that is relevant to decision making and day to day operations. The most important function of data warehousing is to facilitate strategic planning by analyzing data that has been collected over a period of time in the past.
Data overviews can produce forecasts, business models, projections and reports that can be highly useful in the hands of the right people provided they get them at the right time. The data that is stored in the final database is constantly updated. This facilitates reporting and analysis that can be done with a long term view.
Data warehousing is not really all-encompassing; in the sense that it is not the ultimate repository for all of the data generated by the company. Data warehousing tends to be more selective when it comes to the data that is stored in the database, only those that are pertinent to analysis and business intelligence are taken as inputs. The data that is irrelevant to business intelligence may require different capacities in terms of data storage; here the requirement may be to have more data storing capability and less of managing and manipulating the database.
Larger companies are the ones that typically use data warehousing to their advantage. They have vast amounts of data that lend itself to data warehousing architecture and maybe manipulated elegantly to extract the relevant information as per requirement. If smaller companies wish to use data warehousing principles but do not require the great force of a complex data warehousing system, they can always opt for data marts. Data marts are usually smaller, and have data grouped specifically for some purpose. Even inside the data warehousing architecture of big companies, there maybe smaller data marts that serve smaller, more specific and more relevant purposes. This allows the users the flexibility to choose between the more complex data warehousing system or the smaller data mart according to the requirement at hand.
Organizing huge chunks of data that are generated on a second by second basis is very important for the success of any organization. The right information at the right time with the right people can make the difference between success and failure of a business
