SAS Warehouse Administrator

A Business Checklist for Data Warehousing Success

Data Warehousing is aimed specifically at business experts and knowledge workers within your organization. Your business area, or process under your control, has been identified as the one with the most to gain from a successful data warehousing project.

The key to success is working closely with your IT department to ensure that all aspects of the data warehousing project, from management to organization to exploitation, are covered. Therefore, every point on the following business checklist is included to assist you in identifying, planning, and gaining immediate benefit from a data warehouse.

• Thoroughly review and document the reasons for choosing your business area as the target of the initial data warehousing project. Include your vision of the successful project.
• Investigate similar data warehousing successes at other companies to understand what is involved and what can be gained.
• Be comfortable with the project. Its success will bring greater productivity and flexibility to your business area, but the project itself is a form of business reengineering and will require your commitment and support.
• If you are not the corporate sponsor, make sure the sponsor is as comfortable with the project as you are. Remember, the aim is to provide you with immediate gain and to further the goals and vision of the company. Others in the organization will want to build on your success.
• Choose members for the project team who have expertise in the area, a desire to increase their own knowledge and productivity, and are comfortable working with IT.
• Review the "data audit" done by IT with the project team to list those existing applications and systems that generate operational data for the chosen business unit or process.
• Perform an "information wishlist" audit within the business area, then review with the project team to identify where new information and flexibility would be keys to success.
• Perform a "user audit" within the business area, then review with the project team to identify what types of knowledge workers will most clearly benefit from the system.
• Review the "IT audit" with the project team to determine the best mix of existing IT investment and additional IT requirements.
• Review the "solutions audit" with the project team to decide on additional application solutions and techniques that would be most useful to knowledge workers.
• Merge the lists and identify those few items where data warehousing success can be most quickly achieved, and that offer a maximum return on investment.
• Write a data warehousing mission statement that incorporates the goals for both the business and IT members of the project team, based on the targeted subset.
• Gain agreement on the time and priority commitment of each team member as well as an IT budget.
• Establish milestones of success for the project that directly relate both to goals and to a return on investment for your department.
• Have constant review meetings with members of the team. If the proper tool are chosen, members should be able to start presenting their progress via simple data warehousing exploitation applications very quickly.
• On completion of the first data warehousing project, make its success known to others in the organization. If implemented correctly, the success will be clearly visible to all involved since it directly relates to the company's goals and vision.
• Re-evaluate your situation and iteratively extend the data warehouse as needed.