Enterprise Data

Data, Operational Data Stores and Data Warehouses are the heart of the strategic reporting systems used to support Enterprise Decision Management, and therefore the business.

Where the capture and storage of data was once seen as a major cost center, it is now viewed by intelligent organisations as the key to their competitive future.

Enterprise data warehousing projects are highly strategic, highly complex and can be risky.

Projects fail almost as often as they succeed, largely due to:

• Long development cycles
• Poor data quality
• Inability to adapt quickly to changing business conditions or requirements.

Before a data warehouse, and business intelligence applications can be deployed, data issues need to be addressed. Unfortunately, data is something most corporate executives don't want to know about - it is just magically supposed to appear at their finger tips, be reliable, consistent across the organisation and never cause a problem.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. With years of cumulative, often hidden data issues, deploying new applications without addressing data issues is a recipe for failure, not only of the application, but of the business.

Regulatory mandates such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA, highlight the need for more attention to data issues.

A data management program MUST be a joint initiative of both the business and IT. This includes:

1. Setting a Data Governance Policy
2. Introducing Master Data Management [MDM] in accordance with the Data Governance Policy
3. Implementing Data Quality Programs to ensure Master Data is correctly maintained.

And, importantly, it needs to be done in that order.

NEXT: Data Governance

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