Business Intelligence Data Warehouse

Business intelligence data warehouse is the combination of two terms frequently used in the data mining and analysis field. When used together, vendors are trying to emphasize that they offer more services than just data warehousing alone. Because business intelligence can encapsulate a wide variety of services and tools, combining the terms into business intelligence data warehouse reflects that the vendor offers everything an organization needs, including the basics of data warehousing. Business intelligence data warehouse is the entire package- the systems and tools that allows organizations to harvest critical information about their customers and business practices (business intelligence) and also the necessary infrastructure and existing data from which to run those systems and tools (data warehouse). Many organizations prefer to purchase business intelligence tools and data warehousing as a combined business intelligence data warehouse system in order to increase the efficiency of the integrated system.

What Business Intelligence Data Warehouse Provides

A business intelligence data warehouse is crucial to decision making, because it is a single, fully integrated source of information - providing reliable, clean and consistent data that will be used to make any business decision.  A business intelligence data warehouse provides a significant amount of value to the executives of an organization and its analysts, allowing them to perform a variety of business analysis including variance analysis, budget analysis and a host of other forms.  A business intelligence data warehouse allows a company to improve customer/vendor relationships, increase the profitability of their marketed products, generate new market entries, more effectively manage risk, and reduce costs- all of which impact the potential for higher profits of a company. In order to do this, a business intelligence data warehouse must be business focused and deliver increased functionality. At its core, a business intelligence data warehouse project is the consolidating of multiple systems that facilitates data sharing and advanced analysis options among the systems.

Why Do Business Intelligence Data Warehouses Exist?

Business intelligence data warehouse systems are created to satisfy the need for information in the modern business. With the vast amount of data most businesses have, reporting on that data can be daunting. A business intelligence data warehouse system must provide support for this reporting need by giving access to a number of queries- efficient queries, structured queries and ad hoc queries. Business intelligence data warehouse systems also allow for a wide range of flexibility, especially in terms of spreadsheet abilities, data discovery and OLAP applications.

The amount of data available to the average business is increasing each year, with some experts estimating the growth to as high as 50% per year.  While in the past business data was typically stored in a single, central system that was easily accessible to reporting, modern businesses have de-centralized data storage and the business intelligence data warehouse has become a critical component in re-centralizing the vital information needed to make better decisions.

Challenges to Business Intelligence Data Warehouse Projects

Implementing a business intelligence data warehouse comes with its own set of challenges.  Most important is to have a realistic set of expectations.  Your business intelligence data warehouse can provide a lot of insight into your business, but the business intelligence data warehouse cannot be a quick fix to a problem that may be systemic, or provide the perfect answers to your business questions.  Deploying a business intelligence data warehouse can be a daunting project and is always associated with addressing a contingency of data storage and analysis needs- not just one problem. Therefore, it’s crucial to determine the core business reason for creating the business intelligence data warehouse. This is not different than in any other major project- questions always need to be addressed before, and not after, the project is initiated.