In the Data 4.0 era where information is increasingly essential for business decision-making, modernized, agile and intelligent data management is essential. Along these lines, understanding what a data warehouse is and the different options that the company has when storing data implies having a clear data strategy and accepting that it is a key element to ensure normality and the smooth running of business operations.

Before entering the world of data warehouses, it is necessary to understand what a data warehouse is and why it is important for companies today.

A data warehouse is a unified repository for all the data collected by the various systems of a company that can be hosted in a data center or in the cloud. This data storage architecture enables business executives to organize, understand, and use their data to make strategic decisions.

You may be interested in continuing reading The future of the Data Warehouse is in the cloud

The future of the Data Warehouse is in the cloud

Data repository, efficient operations

The centralization of information combines historical records with current data and, in this way, the reporting function is enriched. Any report is made from data from different sources (marketing, sales, production or finance, for example) and, in addition, the business gains visibility, increasing its chances of discovering trends and developing agile and precise answers. Having a data warehouse reduces the time it takes to find and analyze important data, making operations more efficient.

¿How do you know when the business is ready?

The complexity of the operations is one of the determining factors when considering the construction of a warehouse of this type. When the volume of data to process and analyze is almost overwhelming, it is necessary to have a good information management plan, it cannot be improvised.

Minimizing risk depends on decisions like this. And it is that, traditional methods such as spreadsheets, are designed to work with a fixed amount of data that, if exceeded, begins to generate problems of agility, reliability or completeness.

It is much easier to control data quality in a centralized data warehouse than in multiple independent repositories. The appearance of duplication is one of the clearest evidence of this type of data quality issue. But it is also that not putting the necessary means to promote interdepartmental collaboration has its consequences. The lack of a data warehouse, coupled with reliance on spreadsheets, makes data governance difficult.

Imagine a situation that can be very familiar in many organizations:

• Spreadsheets used by almost every department in the company.

• Diverse business owners.

• Need to work based on data, of all kinds, historical and current.

• Generation of manual reports.

• Volume of information growing progressively.

In this scenario, where is the efficiency? Who controls the information? How can the time invested in each process be reduced? A centralized data warehouse does it.

Keep reading Cloud storage a green option?

 

Benefits of implementing a data warehouse

The results of implementing a data warehouse do not take long to be seen, promoting benefits such as the following:

• Reporting agility: optimizing the time required for reporting is one of the first signs of working with a data warehouse. It is no longer necessary to go to different sources to check if the data is updated, or to manually keep it updated. There is no longer any lost or isolated information. Everyone knows that all the data, in the best quality conditions, are in the central warehouse.

• Reduction of waiting times:eliminating inefficient processes and even tensions between departments. Sometimes users lack time to be able to deal with sharing certain information and, other times, the problem is that they do not even know where to find the data that solves the query they must manage. Implementing a data warehouse can help centralize data and make quality information available to all members of the organization more efficiently.
• Single version of the truth:how many times have discrepancies appeared between reports from different departments, and even between data and reports. What is the valid option? Which one can you trust? It takes a long time to resolve these types of conflicts, which, if undetected, lead to serious errors. However, by implementing a data warehouse, duplicate records are eliminated, errors and inconsistencies disappear, and the information used as the basis for reporting is accurate, complete and up-to-date. In short, data warehouses allow companies greater efficiency, reliability, accessibility and speed when it comes to storing and accessing information for making business decisions.

Source: blog.powerdata.es