As any good builder knows, having the right tool for the job is invaluable. Just ask someone who’s used a screwdriver to assemble a certain Swedish companies’ furniture how much they would pay for a power drill.
Hint – It's everything, and the same notion holds true for working with data.
Today, companies want to dive into buzzword-heavy data projects like machine learning, artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, with the goal of getting ahead of their competitors. But like the screwdriver-wielding assemblyperson, without the proper tools, guidance, or a solid understanding of what that data can do for their organization or how to effectively store and harness that data, their efforts may do more harm than good.
So, what is the right tool for a company looking to harness insights from its data? Simple – A data warehouse; is the most robust and sustainable tool to support reporting, analysis, and other advanced data projects.
What is an enterprise data warehouse? (EDW)
An enterprise data warehouse is the foundation of every successful data project. The concept of data warehousing is simple to understand – It is a central permanent storage space for the various disparate data sources needed by a company to support its integration, analysis, reporting, and other key data functions. EDW can be created on-prem or cloud-based with unique benefits for both ranging from scalability, security, and cost. Get in touch with our team below and let's discuss your best options.
Key takeaway – An EDW is a must-have for your business if you plan on implementing any data-heavy projects.
What are the benefits?
Most organizations have a common goal – to make better-informed business decisions and to stay ahead of the competition. A data warehouse, once implemented into your business intelligence framework, can allow your company to do both in numerous ways.
Here are the seven key benefits of a data warehouse:
1. Delivers enhanced business intelligence
By connecting data from various disparate sources, managers, and decision-makers will no longer need to make business decisions based on limited data analysis or intuition. Additionally, data warehouses can effortlessly be applied to a business’s processes, for instance, market segmentation, sales, risk, inventory, accounting, and financial management.
2. Saves time
A data warehouse standardizes, preserves, and stores data from all your sources, aiding the consolidation and integration of all the data. Allowing critical data to be available to all users, allows them to make informed decisions on key indicators. In addition, executives can query data with little to no IT support, allowing IT to focus on value-add activities saving time and money.
3. Enhance data quality and consistency
A data warehouse converts data from multiple sources into a consistent format. Since the data from across the organization is standardized, each department will produce results that are consistent. This will lead to more accurate data, quicker reporting, and better-informed decisions.
4. Provides a competitive advantage
Data warehouses help provide a holistic view of your company’s data allowing for improved data analysis and integration allowing you to and evaluate opportunities and risks, thus providing companies with a competitive advantage.
5. Improves decision-making
A data warehouse provides better insights to decision-makers by maintaining a cohesive database of current and historical data. Transforming data into purposeful information, decision-makers can perform more functional, precise, and reliable analysis and create more useful reports and dashboards.
6. Enables confident forecasting
Data professionals can analyze business data to make more accurate budgets and forecasts, identify potential KPIs, and gauge predicted outcomes, allowing key personnel to plan accordingly with accurate historical data.
7. Return on Investment (ROI)
Finally, the hook, line, and sinker – Return on investment (ROI). Companies that have implemented a data warehouse and/or complementary data analysis system have generated more revenue and saved more money than those that haven’t invested in a data analysis system or data warehouse.
Convinced you need to jump on the data warehouse bandwagon? Check out our data warehouse implementation services for Deltek Costpoint.
Final Thoughts
Organizations with a data warehousing solution can plan and move well ahead of their less data-driven competitors – from product development, marketing, pricing, production processes, and historical analysis, to forecasting, employee organization, and customer satisfaction. They can and will, thrive where others will fall short.
Discover and learn more about our data warehouse implementation services. We can provide a solid plan to implement and connect your disparate data sources creating a singular unified data warehouse for better analysis, improved decision making, and advanced reporting.