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of which constituted a third source of data. Volunteers who came to our events often
signed up for our email list; the signup sheet was on paper, and if we were lucky it was
entered eventually into a spreadsheet somewhere.
Answering a question such as “Were any of our online donors at last night's fund-
raising event?” or “Which of our donors who live nearby are on our email list?” was a
huge challenge, simply because the data we needed to access was sharded across many
silos. Even when we could easily run queries over these separate data stores, it wasn't
always clear if various records were referring to the same person. Are Mike Jones and
Michael Jones the same person? This donor didn't list the state he is from; is it Pasa-
dena, California, or Pasadena, Texas?
If a small nonprofit organization can have so much trouble with these problems,
imagine what happens with larger organizations. In the enterprise world, the various
databases and systems used to collect transactional data generated from users and pur-
chases are known as
operational systems
. These systems are responsible for the day-
to-day activity of dealing with customer and purchase data, financial transactions, and
just about anything for which data state is important. These types of systems are often
designed to ensure that their data is correct and up to date, but they are not necessarily
ideal for data reporting and analysis.
Planning for Data Compliance and Security
Back in 2000, the Enron Corporation was riding high on investor confidence, with a
60 billion dollar market capitalization. Although Enron was becoming a Wall Street
darling, the veneer of success was a charade. As Enron's profile grew, the business
world, and especially journalists, began to realize that the company's financial reporting
practices were not always clear to shareholders. In reality, the company was employing
faulty accounting practices to hide the fact that the numbers just weren't adding up. In
order to conceal and keep the stock price high, the company formed limited offshore
partnerships to buy up debt from poorly performing units. Eventually, Enron's house of
cards toppled, taking the consulting firm Arthur Andersen down with it.
As a result of the Enron scandal, it wasn't difficult for the United States Congress
to pass the Sarbanes and Oxley Act (Sarbox, or SOX), which mandated an unprec-
edented level of regulation around financial reporting. Sarbox requires that U.S.
companies implement a number of data compliance policies. SOX compliance is just
one example of financial regulation that requires good control and understanding of
data f low through an organization, forcing businesses to learn how to deal with data
silos effectively. The impulse to merge organizational data from different sources into
a single, unified repository can sometimes help with the need to maintain proper data
governance strategies.
Enter the Data Warehouse
A
data warehouse
, often referred to using the more professional-sounding title
“enterprise data warehouse,” or EDW, is a type of system designed to be a repository
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