SAS Warehouse Administrator
A Corporate Checklist for Data Warehousing Success
Data Warehousing is indispensable for business management, since
this strategy supports the creativity and individuality of decision
makers throughout your enterprise.
As a business leader, you never stop optimizing and improving different
areas of your business, both to increase competitiveness and assure
profitability. The successful approach to data warehousing follows
this same approach: identifying the business areas or processes that
have the most positive impact on the strategic long-term goals and
vision of your organization...and then optimizing their effective use.
SAS Institute suggests that this be the first objective in your corporate
data warehousing project. Each point on the following Corporate Checklist
is designed to assist you in meeting this objective.
- State your corporate goals.
- State your corporate vision.
- List the business areas, processes, and units within your organization.
- List the subset that is MOST subject to creativity and individuality and LEAST geared toward automation.
- Prioritize these business areas in terms of the desired positive impact and contribution to corporate goals and vision.
- List your top business priority area.
- List the key topics/subjects that best represent this business area (product, customer, quality, sales, marketing, manpower, etc.).
- List those competitors, suppliers, or targeted companies that excel in this area.
- Evaluate why they excel in this area. This is to provide further foundation for your data warehousing measures of success.
You have now selected the business area, the topics, and areas of
comparison for your initial data warehousing project. This information
will also assist you in gaining commitment within your organization
for the data warehousing project.
- Gain widespread support for a data warehousing project through constant reinforcement of the project's objectives and its contribution to the success of your organization. This should be based on the practical information above to ensure the project stays relevant to your organization.
- Choose the highest corporate sponsor possible for the data warehousing project. This person should have a vested interest in the success of the project.
- Choose a high-level interdepartmental project team that includes both decision makers and IT specialists. All should be highly motivated towards the project and have a reputation for working effectively in mixed project teams.
The process of growing and extending a data warehouse is never ending,
just as your organization never stops growing and changing. It is
very important, however, to choose an initial list of items for your
first data warehousing project that can show immediate benefit for your company.
- Gain commitment to invest the manpower necessary for project success.
- Agree on ownership of the project.
- Agree on measures of success both for the project and for each team member.
- Ensure that both the Business and the IT sides of your organization are unified in their efforts to ensure project success.
- Select reliable and competent partners that can provide a complete data warehousing solution to ensure the success of the project.
- 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 your organization's goals and vision.
- Return to your business area/process list and re-prioritize, then choose the next project to extend your data warehouse.