Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
In addition to general business themes, data-related issues often arise. These
are often the impetus behind building a data warehouse. These are important
and should be noted, but are not sufficient alone. The other business challenges
facing the organization are what provide the project team with what is needed
to build a successful, sustainable data warehouse.
SAMPLE DATA-RELATED BUSINESS THEMES
Data Accuracy
There are concerns about the accuracy of data that is used for decision-making.
There are some issues related to how data is captured. More work is needed to
specifically identify these problems and to develop recommendations to
tighten controls at the point of data entry. In other cases, errors can be
introduced during the processes of manually extracting and integrating data
from multiple sources. Because this is often done for each analysis, there is
also the possibility for variations to occur in handling the data during this
manual process. As a result of the data quality concerns, the organization must
spend a significant amount of time auditing and verifying the accuracy of
informationtobeusedinreportsandanalysis.
Single Source of Data
A complete integrated source of data is needed to support analysis across the
organization. Currently, data that needs to be integrated is often dispersed
throughout the company. The different data must be located and then
integrated. This is a difficult, time-consuming, and error-prone process.
Development of a single integrated database could serve as the consolidation
point for all divisional systems. A key to successful implementation of a single
database is developing and maintaining consistent definitions of each data
element. This would result in a one-time effort required to integrate and clean
the data. The resulting database could then be made available to everyone. The
single database would help ensure consistency of answers.
Flexible Data Access
Flexible data access is critical to meeting the current and future demands on
the company. The current storage methods and data access tools are difficult to
use and require a great deal of technical expertise and knowledge about where
the data is physically located. Only a limited number of people are able to
access the data directly. Significant cost and lengthy turnaround times often
result from this method for accessing data.
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