Business Intelligence: A need for transaction processing systems Why is Business Intelligence required? In short: transaction processing systems do not provide adequately for the analytical and reporting requirements of business people. There is often a lack of ways to analyze and report on all the valuable data that is embedded in our everyday applications (also referred to as transactional processing …
A Badge for the Biggest Data Warehouse
The effectiveness of the measurement portfolio of a company either in terms of timeliness, historical depth or quality could be greatly enhanced by assembling a consolidated base of information commonly referred to as a Data Warehouse. However, simply storing terabytes of data does not necessarily contribute to this end. One essential function of a data warehouse is to integrate and …
The very short version of: Why, What and How of Data Warehousing
Why a Data Warehouse: To enable Business Users to answer their business questions faster, easier and accurately in order to improve business decisions based on information. What is a Data Warehouse? It is a consolidated, integrated and central point of information. Usually it consists of data that is integrated, cleaned, de-duplicated and structured in such a way that makes it …
Business Intelligence: A necessity for transaction processing systems
Why is Business Intelligence required? In short: transaction processing systems do not provide adequately for the analytical and reporting requirements of business people. There is often a lack of ways to analyze and report on all the valuable data that is embedded in our everyday applications (also referred to as transactional processing systems or OLTP). It is true that without …
Big Data or Big Hype?
If “big data” is the catalyst for businesses to finally only now start engaging in BI initiatives, it comes as a late wake-up call! Large, mid-size and small businesses are all deserving of Business Intelligence benefits. Business Intelligence has been around for ages and it has always been supposed to be a business issue. Sadly though BI is often driven …
Real-Time Data Warehousing – Don’t Believe the Hype, Until Now
Real-time or near-zero latency has been a hot topic in data warehousing since 2002. In our industry, that’s a rather long time to be a hot topic. According to the annual predictions, by now we should all be refreshing some part of our data warehouse as often as we possibly can, but few of us do.
Corporate Information Factory (1997 -2004) R.I.P.
Lawrence Corr of DecisionOne Consulting visits South Africa again this November to run a Data Warehouse Design and Development Master Class, hosted by Alicornio Africa. In this article he questions the corporate information factory approach to data warehousing.
Features of a Future Intelligent Business Part 2
In our last edition, Susan shared her views on the state of information integration. She took us through an historical perspective of data warehousing and the current approach to the challenges of EII. In this edition, she shares her thoughts on where she sees the future of the Real-Time Enterprise.
Features of a Future Intelligent Business Part 1
The problems of information diversity and the benefits of integration The “single version of the truth” has become such an over-used term and also one that is heavily punted by those who can only talk about it however they often have very little understanding of the complexities in, for example, building a Data Warehouse to support this statement. (One of …
Document Management From a Customer Communications Management Perspective
Introduction Creating effective customer communications is a core business process within the any enterprise. Efficiency, flexibility, usability and power are absolutely essential when composing dynamic, mission-critical documents for print and Web. The design and composition of dynamic documents should enable organisations to fully and successfully respond to dynamic market forces and a rapidly expanding technical landscape changes.