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DW Strategy Question 1
- Thread starter sweetleaf
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johnherman
MIS
The first obvious question would be "Why are they everywhere?" Was it haphazard decentralized development with no Enterprise Architecture Strategy?
Was it political? Was it due to business acquisition?
An Enterprise Architecture Strategy is needed. Each data element needs to have an owner (Steward) and a system of record. The format of that element (data type, precision, etc) is specified also. Data Elements with identical meanings and different names are combined.
ETC. good luck.
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The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright
Was it political? Was it due to business acquisition?
An Enterprise Architecture Strategy is needed. Each data element needs to have an owner (Steward) and a system of record. The format of that element (data type, precision, etc) is specified also. Data Elements with identical meanings and different names are combined.
ETC. good luck.
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The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright
johnherman
MIS
Sorry, Enterprise *Data* Architecture Strategy or if you want to be fancy, Information Integration.
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The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright
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The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright
- Thread starter
- #4
There is a DW for each major line of business. For example, Retail banking, Commercial banking, Insurance lines of business (LOBs) have their own DW's (some DW's following a hub and spoke model others not).
It evolved this way for a few reasons: a)political b)seperate budgets c)90% of data is not shareable across LOBs (different products/customers/business processes) d)different dbms platforms and tools. The company is working towards an enterprise architecture in light of the physical disparity by trying to get new projects for each of the DW's to begin following common standards. This will take time.
There is one DW belonging to no one particular LOB: the shared services DW. This DW houses clickstream data for the company's website for all LOBs. It also houses the integrated customer information. I'm wondering what you folks would recommend in way of a data sharing strategy for this "shared services" data? How, if Retail banking wants massive amounts of clickstream and customer data to be loaded from this "shared services" DW into its own Retail banking DW, would you suggest this be handled seeing as there are issues around duplicating all this data into several DW's. The idea is that the LOBs sometimes really want this data siphoned into their own DW's for very customized reporting. The concern here is if you do this for one LOB you'd be setting a precedent and may have to do this heavy duty duplicating for all LOBs! Somehow this seems more like a quick fix then it does a strategic use of a "shared services" DA and yet the LOBs may continue to have very real needs to mix/match/merge all this data on their own "soil".
So, my question to the folks on this forum is mainly around the sharing of data between a company's exisitng DW's, and what best practices could one use to form an enterprise strategy?
Thanks
It evolved this way for a few reasons: a)political b)seperate budgets c)90% of data is not shareable across LOBs (different products/customers/business processes) d)different dbms platforms and tools. The company is working towards an enterprise architecture in light of the physical disparity by trying to get new projects for each of the DW's to begin following common standards. This will take time.
There is one DW belonging to no one particular LOB: the shared services DW. This DW houses clickstream data for the company's website for all LOBs. It also houses the integrated customer information. I'm wondering what you folks would recommend in way of a data sharing strategy for this "shared services" data? How, if Retail banking wants massive amounts of clickstream and customer data to be loaded from this "shared services" DW into its own Retail banking DW, would you suggest this be handled seeing as there are issues around duplicating all this data into several DW's. The idea is that the LOBs sometimes really want this data siphoned into their own DW's for very customized reporting. The concern here is if you do this for one LOB you'd be setting a precedent and may have to do this heavy duty duplicating for all LOBs! Somehow this seems more like a quick fix then it does a strategic use of a "shared services" DA and yet the LOBs may continue to have very real needs to mix/match/merge all this data on their own "soil".
So, my question to the folks on this forum is mainly around the sharing of data between a company's exisitng DW's, and what best practices could one use to form an enterprise strategy?
Thanks
johnherman
MIS
Here at my company, we also have a "shared services" atmosphere as well as feircely competitive separate revenue producing companies each having a DW in various phases of completion. However, we have succeeded in unifying the hardware, database, ETL tool, and end-user tools with a corporate standard.
I work for shared services, and we have unified claims transaction and warehouse systems. Policies differ across products and companies, and some companies work through agencies while others are mass marketed like credit cards.
Other places I have worked had worse situations, similar to yours, for instance. At one large financial corporation, the only shared data was customer information, and that was standardized due to the need to apply customer privacy preferences across the enterprise as well as by Marketing's desire to cross-sell.
I think you may find that you will have significant ROI for shared customer info, but may be better suited to give the clickstream data directly to each division for their own preparation and digestion.
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The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright
I work for shared services, and we have unified claims transaction and warehouse systems. Policies differ across products and companies, and some companies work through agencies while others are mass marketed like credit cards.
Other places I have worked had worse situations, similar to yours, for instance. At one large financial corporation, the only shared data was customer information, and that was standardized due to the need to apply customer privacy preferences across the enterprise as well as by Marketing's desire to cross-sell.
I think you may find that you will have significant ROI for shared customer info, but may be better suited to give the clickstream data directly to each division for their own preparation and digestion.
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The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright
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