Articles

"Geocoding" aids decision-making in underwriting and marketing. Advances in database technology, the advent of universal access to the Internet, and the existence of geographical data have combined to create a rapidly growing industry in "geocoding", the automated processing of geographic information for specific locations.

Business Intelligence (BI) is a complex activity that requires organisations to master multiple technical and management disciplines. At the same time BI solutions enable companies to measurably impact their business by implementing highly successful customer relationship and financial management initiatives, says Susan Andre, MD for Sagent Technology in SA.

Susan Andre is MD of Sagent SA, the e-analytics company. With extensive experience as a business consultant and business intelligence and data warehousing practitioner, she comments on the increasing storage challenges of the digital economy.

A single metadata repository can remove much of the complexity associated with business intelligence. Susan Andre, MD of Sagent SA, says this is because of the requirement in most business intelligence deployments to reconcile the metadata associated with their extraction, transformation and transport (ETT) tools with that of their business intelligence platform.

By establishing a security strategy framework, organisations can ensure that data warehoused information is managed and accessed securely, but still effectively shared throughout the organisation. "The strategic nature of a data warehouse places it at risk of security breaches, making it a desired target for hackers and disgruntled employees," says Susan Andre, MD of Sagent SA.

The growth of the Web has reset expectations for end-users' access to corporate data. "Broad new communities of end-users with diverse needs are now putting pressure on IT to deliver high-performance access to corporate information over the Web," says Susan Andre, MD of local data mart solutions provider Sagent SA.