"A collection of data designed to support management decision making. Data warehouses contain a wide variety of data that present a coherent picture of business conditions at a single point in time."

At Influential we know that at the heart, of any successful Business Intelligence solution, exists a high performing, resilient and up to date Data Warehouse.

A Data Warehouse stores an organisation's historical data, such as sales, product or other information gathered from the day-to-day running of the business. Data can be gathered real-time, every night, week or month so that those performing management type functions can analyse the data without interrupting the operational cycle.

The highest level of data integrity must be achieved and must be verifiable regardless of the number of data feeds, duplicate, mismatched or out of date data items. Without this level of confidence then the money spent on any solution might well be wasted as spurious information will skew the results of any data analysis. If the data quality is not at a sufficient level for the client’s key decision makers to have confidence in the information being presented by e.g. their Business Intelligence layer, then what use is a Data Warehouse?

Apologies for stating the obvious, but the foundation of a Data Warehouse is, as the name suggests, Data. And fast reliable access to it.

Influential always trys to build a strong business relationship with the client so that we are able to identify all the organisation’s key information and all the relationships between the different data items. If this stage is successful it can allow, with careful database design, companies to gain a competitive edge. Information is key. Knowing how to use it, makes information come alive.

One unfortunate side effect of having a successful Data Warehouse is that it has a tendency to grow at an enormous rate often having a knock-on effect on performance.

At Influential we never forget that a sound approach to archiving of data that is no longer needed is paramount to the long term success of any solution. The consequences of not spending enough time on this aspect will mean the warehouse eventually collapsing under its own weight.

If you would be interested in discussing Data Warehousing with us and how it might benefit your business please do not hesitate to contact us.