how to create a data warehouse success strategy

8/8/2019 How to Create a Data Warehouse Success Strategy

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How to Create a Data Warehouse Success Strategy

A benefit-based approach to a data warehouse project can be boiled downto a list of bullet points

InfoManagement Direct, October 29, 2009

Rafiq RasulSuccess with a data warehouse project is a challenge due to the size, complexity and diverserequirements. The quality-driven success strategies outlined here address and resolve this challenge.

y Determine data warehouse project objectives:

y Deliver significant benefits on time.

y Minimize defect, fault, rework and avoid disaster.

y Measure and manage performance, and improve benefits.

Find DW quality drivers:

y Prevent defect or fault, and save after-the-fact costly rework.

y Identify and mitigate risk before the fact.

y Address or eliminate issues, and avoid costly after-the-fact resolution.

y Reduce the need to change and use change control.

Seek quality-driven DW benefits:

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y Improve customer service and increase customer satisfaction.

y Boost marketing and selling capabilities and increase competitive advantage.

y Reduce cost, effort and resource utilization.

y Streamline processes and develop more efficient management tools.

y Make jobs easier, less stressful and raise employee productivity.

Establish DW project success strategies:

y Help sponsors be informed, accepting of problems, and willing to devote time to the project and

make quick decisions.y Prepare to articulate and execute deliverables in very complicated, multi-faceted environments

involving diverse skills.

y Map project objectives to the enterprise mission and get buy-in from stakeholders.

y Complete due-diligence in all areas: scoping, estimating, budgeting, scheduling, staffing, skills-adequacy, dirty data, DW design, architecture, infrastructure and project governance.

Set DW project management success strategies:

y Adhere to a discipline project management approach.

y Plan with participation, inspire ownership and execute in pieces.

y Time-box activities, assign ownership, track delivery and recognize good performance.

y Run parallel activity tracks while coordinating teams and deliverables.

y Deep-dive in all areas of the project and ensure quality delivery.

Ensure success through active DW project manager roles:

y Plan, execute and monitor budget.

y Get access to sponsors, stakeholders, team members, users, customers and service providers.

y Communicate the truth in a timely manner and be persuasive.

y Take a key role in scoping, estimating, staffing, assessing skills-adequacy, cleansing dirty dataand establishing the DW design, architecture and infrastructure.

y Establish strong and direct control procedures and track performance.

y Review work in progress daily, adjust tasks and deliverables, assign new tasks, run teaminterfaces and organize stakeholder review sessions.


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y Do cost-benefit analysis of data cleansing and impact analysis on requested changes.

y Deep-dive in all areas of the project and change directions to succeed when facing roadblocks.

Capitalize on strengths of the DW project manager he/she must:

y Earn support from stakeholders, respects technologists and inspires quality delivery.

y Be skilled in quality and process, defect/fault reduction, risk mitigation and issue resolution.

Avoids operational disasters.

y Understand business value of data, analysis, reporting and impact on decision-making.

y Understand data warehouse architecture and customer service.

y Understand data technically, and knows when data is correct, accurate, consistent, complete,integrated and follows business rules.

y Understands the cost of data cleansing and metadata. (Note: 70 to 80 percent of the effort may bein data cleansing and transforming from source to target.)

y Envision from 50 feet up, be experienced to work 100 feet wide, and be skilled to deep-dive 10feet in the trenches with technologists.

y Deep-dive in all areas of the project: requirements, data, source, target, data modeling, DWdesign, architecture, database, data, ETL (extract, transform and load), testing, end-user training,implementation, infrastructure support, continuity of business to performance metrics andcustomer satisfaction surveys.

Review the DW benefits:

1. Increase number of customers:

y Recruit and retain more customers enabled by information available on relationships, accounts,activities, channel utilization and demographics.

y Identify marketing opportunities for products and services by analyzing existing and potentialcustomers.

y Enroll and retain more customers by giving them access to information on accounts, products andservices

2. Increase revenue:

y Cross-sell to customers by relationships, accounts, activities, channel utilization, demographics,revenue and fees.

y Market to potential customers by measuring revenue, profit, channels available and customerdemographics.

y Collect on loans and generate more loans enabled by information on customers.

3. Increase productivity:

y Increase productivity by enabling analysts and users to create their own reports.

y Save time producing reports for government or other agencies.

y Save 50 to 90 percent of analysts time in gathering data, now available from one source.

4. Control cost:

y Understand and control service and customer costs by account type, channel and activities.

y Control inventory and negotiate with suppliers and vendors on services, outsourcing and capitalexpenditures.

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Detect fraud by searching internally and externally and analyzing better HR information.5. Intangible benefits:

y Store accepted, consistent data definitions and make them available to users.

y Produce consistent reports and answers to queries.

y Set up effective reporting procedures with more data and better quality of information.

y Boost decision-making capabilities, both operational and strategic.

y Reduce reluctance to make decisions with timely information available on demand.

y Improve morale as employees are more comfortable with their decisions, take greater pride intheir work and have the tools to do a better job.


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y Provide better service from the customers perspective using enhanced information.

y Analyze alternative business strategies by running what-if scenarios.

y Save time and effort with one easy-to-access data source.

Rafiq Rasul Rafiq Rasul, PhD, PMP, is an independent consultant. Contact at [email protected] or call

(614)638-2686.For more information on related topics, visit the following channels:

y DW Basics

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