All too frequently, we are lured into the fantasy that technology will solve the seemingly intractable data problems business are experiencing. Rash promises are made that we can expect data related challenges to vanish when we acquire and implement the latest and greatest tools. Yet our confidence in the silver bullet is often shattered when it becomes obvious that in reality “technology” alone cannot satisfy these overstated expectations without a significant injection of hard work, planning and expert knowledge to formulate the organisation as well as deploy the solution.
Business Intelligence Science – It is a Business issue
While effective Business Intelligence or masterly crafted Data Warehouses may contribute to improved business value, such initiative alone does not guarantee business benefit. For example, better customer data will help in understanding the many ways that a customer interacts with the company, but there must be good business processes exploiting a combination of customer visibility, behavior profiling, predictive analytics, and most importantly, operational integration of the above to forestall attrition and thereby improve customer retention. All the analytics and even the most perfect Data Warehouse in the world is worthless if the call center representative is not trained in how to engage the customer.
Learn about Stars – Educate the DW team
Get with the program and get educated on the concepts of data warehousing before embarking on a data warehouse journey. Knowledge is power and we should learn how to be part of the “democratization age” of strategic information usage.
Instead of being the business intelligence gatekeepers we should strive to be masters of our own information universe. Education is at the center of this DW cosmos and sharing knowledge is the heart of it all.
Attend the ever popular course presented by Alicornio Africa Concepts, Design and Modelling for Extended Data Warehousing that teaches sound DW design principles no matter what technology is used.