DatatWare Housing

I have to admit the term "strategic decision making" can conjure up a lot of different meanings to a lot of people. And the first one that springs to mind, but probably not of the decision makers themselves, is that it is one that involves spending a lot of money hiring a lot of people who are going to cause a lot of pain to a lot of people until the next strategic decision is made.

Now you must appreciate that strategic decision making is not one of the primary uses of data warehouses, thankfully because strategic decision making is not done that often. Most data warehouses are used primarily for post decision monitoring of the effects of these decisions. However, some data warehouses do get involved in strategic decision making and are usually very effective.

So how would you use use a data warehouse in a decision making exercise. Before you start one thing to bear in mind is that the life-span of systems for strategic decision making tend to be relatively short and the creation of "special" databases, modelling and formal reporting are very time consuming tasks.

The days spent using these systems can be counted on one hand, though the payoff can be better than those reporting system that have been used for years.

The time-scale you are given to produce the system can be anything from a long afternoon to several weeks. And with no time for formal interviews you become the business analyst. Requirements are usually gleaned from "business" meeting minutes and are usually ambiguous. You will be required to aggregate data differently, and combine data that never been combined before.

You are doing this so the decision makers can see a point of view that is not the common view of the business. Basically to see the business in a different perspective.

Much of the use of data warehousing for making decisions ultimately involves the use of user maintained spreadsheets. Data cleanliness is much less of a concern in strategic decision making. Analysis is often done with highly summarized data and the need for speed lowers the need for extremely clean data.

The information generated by the data warehouse has to be understood by people who do not have direct access to the data warehouse. Most users will want to communicate the information in printed reports created using a word processor, presentation tool, spreadsheet, or generated directly from the database.

Do not try to design your warehouse for every contingency that could occur in a strategic decision making exercise. You cannot possibly foresee everything that will be needed in these exercises.