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Datawarehouse, datamarts, business intelligence, datawarehousing and ABC costing

Datawarehouse is a subject-oriented database where data are associated to a single organisational process (such as Product Sales), often called entity. A Datawarehouse is integrated with various source databases (part of ERPs or other systems) and datawarehousing has enormous strategic implications for business intelligence and ABC costing.

ERP Abbate's datawarehouse consultants will model a powerful knowledge management tool to organise enterprise organisational processes. We call datawarehouse or datamart enterprise organisational processes entities. A datawarehouse or datamarts give a subject oriented view of one particular entity. This view may give to the enterprise a competitive advantage. There are different type of datawarehousing architecture:

• Complex datawarehouse systems, often called Open Warehouse Solution Framework, made for large corporations and meant for processing large amount of historical data
• Datamarts, miniature datawarehouses or partitioned subsets of larger datawarehouse systems, often called department databases (a sales division may build its own datamarts by using sales related data)
• Operational Data Stores (ODSs), small OLAP datamarts, with a very much reduced amount of historical data, which may be useful for single individuals within the organisation

Datawarehousing
Datawarehousing creates supporting structures for knowledge management and business intelligence. Datawarehousing contributes to solve very complex IT problems such as developing an ABC costing model with profitability analysis of a:

• Client
• Region
• Marketing campaign

A total quality datamart, which cross-references products and client data with production, process, and quality control information, is a further example of datawarehousing.

Datawarehouse systems belong to On-Line Analytical Processing world. They make you:

• Analyse situations and scenarios, giving decisional support
• Forecast developments and spot dangerous situations in advance

Datawarehouse systems and datamarts are ERP's eyes: without them your ERP is blind. ERPs are very much aimed to develop an efficient OLTP platform.
Datawarehouse systems and datamarts are instead much more OLAP-oriented. They are used to give complex analytical pictures to the management. They use data contained in various information silos. Therefore, they are likely to use an ERP (and something else) "...to make sense of it all...", by providing essential entity control functions and business intelligence.

ERP Abbate's datawarehousing consultants know very well how to align business requirements with IT departments and how to merge the 4 fundamental components of a datawarehousing strategy:

• People (remember human organisational framework and competence issues)
• Process
• Strategy
• Technology

These four components are often called the 4 pillars of business and IT alignment in a datawarehousing project.

Datawarehouse or datamarts development must be based upon a rigorous management consulting strategy. ERP Abbate's datawarehousing consultants will develop for your organisation a comprehensive program, which will include:

• Business and IT alignment (essential for business intelligence)
• Capacity management and resource planning to introduce, build, and operate a datawarehouse
• Change management
• Datawarehouse and datamarts problem management
• Datawarehousing software selection
• Datawarehousing consultancies
• Business intelligence and ABC costing models

ERP Abbate's datawarehousing consultants add to your IPE and B2B architectures additional strength, thus greatly improving your customer relationship management. CRM itself is based upon datawarehousing concepts. Datawarehouse systems or datamarts are perfect examples of system integration.

Datawarehousing and JAD (Joint Application Development) team-centric methodology are very much linked to each other. ERP Abbate's datawarehousing consultants always keep in mind the most important HR factors for a successful consultancy:

• Positive communications and relationships
• Achievement of project objectives
• Datawarehouse systems or datamarts timely delivery

Development of datawarehouse systems, datamarts, and ABC costing models is greatly supported by JAD approach. JAD means exploit human tendency to take care of one problem at a time. Projecting a datawarehouse with a top down approach can be a very difficult task. Human beings are not very good at completing large and complex tasks the first time. Humans being are great at learning as they go. We know how to use human iteration to build datawarehouse systems, datamarts, and ABC costing models in a timely and efficient manner.

Datawarehousing means:

• Analysing business requirements
• Identifying subject-entities to which datawarehouse systems and datamarts must be oriented
• Designing the structure of datawarehouse systems and datamarts to create a subject-oriented view with business intelligence implications
• Providing the client with a path to deal with key-issues, such as:
1. Entity mapping
2. Integration issues
3. Business intelligence
4. Knowledge management
5. Data mining

ERP Abbate's datawarehousing consultants know how to project the most common applications of a datawarehouse system, such as:

• Risk analysis
• Relationship marketing
• Asset management
• Call behaviour analysis
• Quality control analysis datamarts