BI Optimization Overview

Competing in today’s dynamic economy demands that data across enterprise is shared, integrated, of high quality, and can be easily accessed and manipulated by all who require it.  The focus will be providing data for analysis purposes (e.g., to analyze business performance), often referred to as OLAP (On Line Analytical Processing) vs. data to support business transactions, often referred to as OLTP (On Line Transaction Processing).   Such analytical data and support tools will provide capabilities to meet a company’s business intelligence (BI) needs.   Our services focus on developing a BI architecture that defines standard technologies and support processes that will serve as a consistent platform for data management and analytics across the enterprise.

While most managers are in a rush to reap the benefits of BI, there are numerous foundational steps that must first be taken to ensure that quality information is delivered.  We assist in streamlining, rationalizing and integrating all existing data warehousing and reporting systems.   We will identify any existing data warehouses that the new enterprise data warehouse (EDW) will replace, those that will remain as-is, and those that may be replaced by other core systems.  We review the technologies that are in place and define the best method of integration: via data extract, transform, load (ETL) or real-time, messaging based solutions.  We also define the role of enterprise-wide Master Data Management solution (MDM) to identify and define core enterprise data, establish a plan to standardize and rationalize all relevant data elements and propose an operational owner and governance structure to ensure sustainable data quality.

Business Intelligence Optimization

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The chart below describes interdependencies among essential BI components:

BI Optimization Approach

We first define the scope of enterprise data that the program will focus on by prioritizing the core data that is required to support the collective information needs for the enterprise and the missions.  We establish a phased approach to populate the data in the EDW.

The next area of focus is Enterprise Master Data Management to start defining the shared data meanings and source of record for all core enterprise data.  

We also assist in defining consolidated requirements for business intelligence solutions, and select technologies that best support our needs.

From the above decisions we will develop a BI architecture that is supported by our enterprise data architecture and supporting standards.