A data warehouse is a big project for many organisations and can benefit your company in numerous ways once implemented into your business intelligence framework.
Saves time
Because a data warehouse standardises, preserves and presents data from multiple sources it inevitably saves time accessing data needed. Thanks to user friendly interfaces, users can access the data themselves without the need for support from IT, saving yet more time and money.
Enhances data quality and consistency
Bringing data together from across an organisation in a standardised manner reduces inter-departmental variances and leads to more accurate data. This is done during the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) phase of the data warehouse process, where data is converted from multiple sources into a consistent format.
Provides a competitive advantage
Competitive advantage comes from being able to take a holistic view of your organisations current standing whilst also evaluating opportunities and risk which, with a data warehouse can now be spotted thanks to having the data centrally stored.
Having a data warehouse also allows you to undertake data mining, whereby algorithms are used to find hidden patterns present in your data. Imagine having the ability to not only react to trends but to predict and act upon market changes with confidence.
The most overlooked way to gain an advantage over your competitors is by being more efficient. Data warehouses are widely used for operations and marketing, especially in the retail and telecommunication sectors. Identifying customer buying patterns, promotions and effectiveness of pricing policies will enable your marketing and operations teams to be much more efficient with their spend.
Enables forecasting with confidence
Often forecasting can feel too much like guesswork. However, data warehouses can help organisations to analyse business data to identify potential KPIs and make market forecasts more accurately. In turn, this allows key personnel to be able to plan resource and strategy effectively, moving your organisation from being reactive to preparing in advance.
Improves the decision-making process
The reports and insights generated from a data warehouse will be more up-to-date, functional, accurate and reliable. This naturally will allow decision makers to spot trends based on reliable data and make informed decisions.
All of the above points contribute towards an expected increase in revenues and decrease in costs. Some research suggests that a typical data warehouse project produces a positive return on investment of over 100% over 5 years.
This value comes from a combination of areas. In addition to helping make reporting processes less laborious, the real value comes from improvements in resource management, market analysis and sales decisions.
