Why Build a Data Warehouse?
For decades, companies have been spending millions of $$$’s on systems to streamline and automate the execution of the business plan. Over time, these systems have become more and more integrated within a companies operations and between business partners. However, due to the granularity of the data stored in these systems, management has difficulty accurately monitoring how well the business plan is being executed. The alternative to making decisions based on feelings or assumptions is often spending hours each month “summarizing reports” to get a macro view of their environment. Often the job of monitoring the success of business practices is so tedious that managers often fore-go the process altogether and try to rely on their gut feelings or “biggest daily headaches” to drive their decision making process. When a manager does need hard data to back up their assumptions, they have to wait for weeks for the backlogged IT department to give them a report (hopefully the right one). Dim
