1. What is a data warehouse and why is REI building one?
A data warehouse is unique kind of a database where current and historical data about a certain group of people such as customers, is stored. Information from operational systems, such as transaction processing systems, is extracted and summarised then stored in in a data warehouse. This type of information includes records about customer interaction patens, customer purchasing history or trends and current customer records. The information in a data warehouse is used for management analysis and decision making.
REI needs data warehouse for the following benefits
• It will help REI’s management in decision making. Drawing trends about past and current customer buying patens
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Operational business applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Compressed data on disk to decrease disk space and storage infrastructure requirements becomes a cost effective strategy in terms of storage overheads. Easily measured and monitored financial and operational business performance, will mean predictable outcomes and planning becomes efficient.
Reduced risks and costs will make it easier for REI business expansion without fear of risks involved to a certain degree. All above strategic Practices cannot be dealt with without a data warehouse.
4. What are some of the ricks or concerns surrounding the creation of a data warehouse?
• Risks of warehousing involve: Lack of strong sponsor or sponsor not at high enough level to get people motivated.
• Lack of proper skills and experience. Most people have to go through at least one failure before they understand how different a data warehouse is from a transaction processing system or small data mart. You can have wonderful logical models, but turning those into an efficient, integrated, enterprise-wide physical design is a most difficult task.
• Not understanding what the organization needs from a data warehouse and how the data warehouse helps achieve the strategic objectives of the organization.
• Lack of a data quality project as an integral part of
As with any computer system, a concern regarding the data warehouse is the system crashing. If this happens, REI may possibly lose all of the important information they have retained from the consumer. In addition, if these systems are not kept up to date or if one system is updated, but another is not, information may be misdirected into the data warehouse. It is important to monitor the systems to ensure their
This data is collected and organized in order to process orders and maintain good customer service. The logical view of data would allow a knowledge worker to arrange and access information based on the needs of the business separating it from the physical view of how information is arranged and stored. The ability to do this allows for an employee to create detailed reports in order to determine information such as customer information and their order numbers and dates. This is imperative for a company like Comcast who has over 27 million customers in order to have a system to keep important data to analyze. Using a data warehouse allows them to gather from several databases and then the company can use the information to determine for example how many units of voice products are sold to create the necessary business intelligence to make future decisions and remain
According to Berson and Dubov (2011), there are four typical categories of drivers that explain the need for data management: Business Development, Sales and Marketing; Customer Service; Risk, Privacy, Compliance and Control; and Operational
One of the main functions of any business is to be able to use data to leverage a strategic competitive advantage. The use of relational databases is a necessity for contemporary organizations; however, data warehousing has become a strategic priority due to the enormous amounts of data that must be analyzed along with the varying sources from which data comes. Company gathers data by using Web analytics and operational systems, we must design a solution overview that incorporates data warehousing. The executive team needs to be clear about what data warehousing can provide the company.
North American Tax Agency saw potential benefits of data warehouse. Hence the wanted to execute it and submitted their proposal with an estimation of three to five years and costs ranging from $25-30 million. The proposal was approved but very soon the executive sponsor lost interest in the project because they didn’t understand the need of the time and amount that the project would take. [1]
In order to reach his goal, there are many issues that need to be addressed. The first issue is that in order to ensure that the data in the data warehouse is correct, there needs to be strong data governance by all users. The 2nd concern is that users of the current systems will not
What information is accessible? The data warehouse offers possibilities to define what’s offered through metadata, published information, and parameterized analytic applications. Is the data of high value? Data warehouse patrons assume reliability and value. The presentation area’s data must be correctly organized and harmless to consume. In terms of design, the presentation area would be planned for the luxury of its consumers. It must be planned based on the preferences articulated by the data warehouse diners, not the staging supervisors. Service is also serious in the data warehouse. Data must be transported, as ordered, promptly in a technique that is pleasing to the business handler or reporting/delivery application designer. Lastly, cost is a feature for the data
One crucial thing that organizations need to consider in today’s unstructured data world is to successfully integrate data warehouses. For this, the companies need to re-consider their enterprise data architecture and classify the governance strategy that can be talented through such efforts. There lies a need for data managers
A data warehouse is a large databased organized for reporting. It preserves history, integrates data from multiple sources, and is typically not updated in real time. The key components of data warehousing is the ability to access data of the operational systems, data staging area, data presentation area, and data access tools (HIMSS, 2009). The goal of the data warehouse platform is to improve the decision-making for clinical, financial, and operational purposes.
Article, www.coppereye.com/data_warehousing, states the aspects of return on investment of data warehouse is "the architectures have typically placed a premium on storing large volumes of data, and being able to execute queries very rapidly against this data." Real-time, with current information, is what is available with all the new data warehouse technology. Also, the article states, "it is common practice that loading the data is done overnight, and in many cases taken much longer with the growing success of data warehouse projects." Another aspect is, "business owners are no longer willing to accept reporting on last week's or even yesterday's performance, but want immediate access to data and reports about what is happening in the business to make ever more time-critical decisions.":
Data warehouse are multiple databases that work together. In other words, data warehouse integrates data from other databases. This will provide a better understanding to the data. Its primary goal is not to just store data, but to enhance the business, in this case, higher education institute, a means to make decisions that can influence their success. This is accomplished, by the data warehouse providing architecture and tools which organizes and understands the
For examples, from a retail company perspective, they can allocate resources based on the customers’ purchase history, buying behaviour, and even local weather and events directly from the data warehouse, adjust product price based on current buying patterns, inventory levels,
It is also essential to convince the employees and the individual business units to share their knowledge with other units, but in particular when each business unit is responsible for showing a profit. The managerial concerns relate to the concern over embedding a value for the data warehouse and the need for measuring value and rewarding the individuals and business units that appear to be adding value.