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Data warehouse case study
A Fortune 500 corporation, with
Production facilities in the Southern Hemisphere and Marketing
operations in the Northern Hemisphere, needed to create a
complete picture of the business bringing together information
from many different sources. Partnering with Artech to achieve
this goal, implementation of the right information
infrastructure has generated both effectiveness credits in the
form of improved management control and oversight, and
efficiency credits through streamlined administrative support. Business
Challenge Loans, and other outlays made by
the Production units generated financial exposure that
was offset by trade credits in the Sales units.
Structural currency and timing risk was compounded by
the fact the transactions required for a complete
business picture were scattered on multiple systems and
platforms at many locations. Further, industry practice
to share Market price risk with the independent
producers required a liquidation of final sales results
back to the product source. Conceptual
Design Due to an aggressive market-share
focused growth strategy, the corporation had inherited a
variety of legacy systems with differing capabilities.
Rather than embark on a costly, multi-year project to
re-engineer global business practices and implement one
system; an architecture was identified that could leave
the legacy transaction systems intact and still achieve
the common dataset which gave a comprehensive business
view. Data timeliness and availability were deemed vital
to successfully managing the multiple risks implicit in
the basic business model. Validation of the proposed
information architecture required a detailed
understanding of all the reporting and analysis
“outputs” from current processes. Successful change
management must address all current deliverables valued
by the organization, as well as, stay alert for the
potential to eliminate existing process inefficiencies.
In-depth, multi-day sessions at three international
locations, and extensive teleconferencing with a half
dozen more, identified multiple instances of redundant
processing, reconciliation efforts, and other activities
that could be eliminated with a single source of data
that could be leveraged by the entire organization.
Folding these on-the-ground learnings into the original
approach, the data architecture was validated as solid
alternative to replacement of legacy systems. Artech’s Conceptual
Design methodology not only provided a blueprint for
the subsequent detail design of the necessary
information infrastructure, the credits necessary to
justify the project were documented as well.
Administrative infrastructure to accommodate the
processing requirement for many data streams in many
formats could be replaced by more cost-effective
automation. |
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Business Axiom
- The advantages offered by
automation go far beyond simple headcount
considerations. Many “data transforms” done in
spreadsheets by different people in different places
were required to support the base reporting capability
of the legacy system functionality .Not only did
different practices across locations trigger
inconsistency, job turnover at a given business
exacerbated the data volatility that can exist whenever
there is extensive spreadsheet support to provide
mission-critical reporting and analysis. The time,
effort, and experience necessary to convert raw data
into something acceptable to management translated to a
serious drain on organizational resources. The
“business rule” portion of the Conceptual Design
tackled all these issues head-on. Detail Design Having identified the necessary data “granularity” required for all reporting and analysis business process outputs, a Data Model was constructed to map the transactions from multiple legacy systems to one common data framework. Working backward, from the desired data outcomes toward the transactional sources, Artech’s Detail Design methodology documented each modules and component required for the data flow simultaneously ensuring the deliverables would be met when the infrastructure was placed in operations. This approach guarantees the single most common mistake with data warehousing projects is successfully avoided. When a project begins with the data sources, there is a strong temptation to include everything “just in case we need it”. Performance and related operational issues soon pop up as processing machinery is clogged with data of marginal value. With a focus on “need-to-have” deliverables, and an architecture tuned to deliver the corresponding information at the right level of detail and the correct frequency, the Detail Design maintains the necessary focus and discipline to deliver the project on time and budget. Business Solution Machinery was built to achieve all necessary linkages between the most important Production unit and the largest Marketing operation. Using this basic data “backbone” as a template, additional Production and Sales units were brought into the same structure. As another unit is brought into the framework, not only are the administrative benefits triggered at that location, the entire data architecture becomes more valuable as a corporate asset as another step is taken to a globally comprehensive view of the business built on a common set of business rules. With history being accumulated on a consistent basis for the first time, budgeting and forecasting will become much more rigorous going forward. Expectations can be set at the same level of detail as the actual business. Accountability can be quantitatively enforced as never before. Built on this framework, the key business metrics that provide mission-critical focus across the organization can be “front and center” in a way that never before was possible. |
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Artech is currently implementing Data Warehouse Solutions for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - Southeast Fisheries Science Center. If you would like to know more about Data Warehousing & Business Intelligence, and how it may help you, contact us at sales@artechgroup.com |
