WHY INVEST IN DATA WAREHOSUING?

Data warehousing is the process of gathering and managing data from different sources to provide important business insights.  It is an electronic storage of a large quantity of information by a business which is intended for query and analysis instead of transaction processing. It is a system that constructs information that provides users with current and past information that can’t be accessed traditionally.

A data warehousing system can be referred to as any of the following in the table below;

Data warehousing is a software that has enabled several organisations to understand their organisations better and improve them. Data ware housing according to Dremio is a system used to store and report on data. This system allows for different sections of an organisation to be able to gain access to the same information.

Data warehouses are essential because they provide companies with different services such as data compiled according to dates, past information stored in the archives and a single point of access connected to a number of users. The data system captures information and then analyses it from more systems. It extracts and transforms information and makes it easy to find information that has similar concepts attached to it.

The business intelligence of data warehousing is its ability to make business decisions for you. It enables one to ask questions and visualise results that may occur. The system can also help in making a presentation through using data to build information and illustrations on how and why a certain situation is and shows its trends too.

Data warehousing is invested in because it is a central repository that provides common data for various users.

Organisations should consider investing in data warehousing for several reasons such as being able to create a report in real time and as such enhances interaction in an organisation as well as efficiency which has a positive effect on returns.

The system further reduces human errors and in turn gives more time because one doesn’t have to spend so much time in moving documents around and reorganising them and it is safe because only certain people have access to it.

Data warehouses can be linked to business strategies in a company with several benefits. It can provide analytical tools that improve the flow of information and provides competitive advantage to businesses in the third millennium. To  create a  successful and  functioning data warehouse,  organizations  need  to  provide  management  support and  needed resources.

According to Abu-Shanab (2004), data warehousing has two types of strategies, that is, data mart and enterprise data warehousing. Data mart strategy which starts small with only a department and goes big by adding more. The  data  mart  strategy  advantages  are the speed  by  which  the  data  warehouse  becomes  operational,  the  data  used  need  not  to  be standardized  on  the  organizational  level,  the lower cost that can provide fast  return on investment and the easy addition  of  related departments with less investment risks.

Whereas, enterprise data warehousing builds a whole system for the whole company at a go. This strategy integrates the whole firm and provides a base for totally integrated data warehouse, where all  the departments,  customers and  suppliers are fully integrated in one data system (Abu-Shanab 2004).