A business that makes intelligent decisions with its data stands apart in the marketplace.© Opportunity Assessment This service gives you a business-level assessment of the opportunity to use Business Intelligence (BI) analytics and Data Warehouse (DW) methods. Conducted by a Data Warehouse Architect, the outputs of the service include: Definition of business problem or opportunity Benefits of deploying a BI/DW solution and the metrics     for measuring those benefits Business risks, IT risks and risk-mitigation options High-level plan outlining time, resources and costs Back Data Warehouse Strategy This service can be targeted at producing a new Data Warehouse (DW) strategy or for working within your company's existing DW strategy. Both business and IT management will be interviewed by the Data Warehouse Architect to develop a well-grounded strategy for the long-term and short-term. We assess your data warehouse and business intelligence needs. Then we develop a prioritized, high level plan on how to reach your goals. Back Business Analysis Working from the results of the Opportunity Assessment, and using the Data Warehouse Strategy as a framework, the Senior Business Analyst identifies the detailed requirements for the solution. The Senior Business Analyst works with end users to capture their intended use of the information for business growth, determine what information they need to see, and how they need to see it: Specific business objectives. Identify the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which will be used to track objectives . Online analysis processing requirements (analytics) . Security requirements . Review current reporting systems that report on related data . Describe reports that need to be provided . Span of history to be kept in the data mart . Facts and Dimensions required to support the analysis and reports . Frequency of generating analytics reports . Frequency of refreshing the data mart . Geographic location of users . Method of distributing reports . Estimate how much data will be processed and stored for facts,    dimensions, summaries and indexes. Outputs from this service include: Documentation of objectives, KPIs, requirements, reports,    estimates, assumptions and findings High level Logical Data Model Scenarios describing how the analytics and reports will be used     in the business context Back Data Assessment - Sources, Quality and Cleansing Based on findings from the Business Analysis service, the Data Warehouse Architect works with the company's Data Administrator to determine the data sources that are required to support the business needs, and the quality of the data in those sources. Sources may be internal or external. Internal data sources typically belong to the company and reside in operational databases such as an order processing database. External data sources may be acquired from outside the organization, and often are used for demographic analyses or database marketing. If similar data exists in more than one source, we work with the Data Administrator and business user to determine the single authoritative source. Data quality issues may include: Redundant data sources Duplicate rows within a data source Dirty data (invalid values) Data Integrity problems (inconsistent meanings and usage of fields) Referential Integrity problems (missing links, invalid links) We will recommend solutions for addressing data quality issues. It is imperative that the best quality data be used to drive your analytics. Data quality improvement may involve one-time and ongoing activities such as removing duplicates, standardizing names and addresses, deriving implied values, and improving data validation or logic in the operational system which generates the data. Back Data Warehouse Architecture Conducted by the Data Warehouse Architect, this service spells out the architectural components best suited to delivering on the needs identified in the Opportunity Assessment, Business Analysis and Data Assessment services. Architectural components include the Technology Architecture, Data Architecture, Security Architecture and Data Warehouse Architecture. The Technology Architecture specifies the technologies to be used, and will be influenced by the company's existing technology standards, such as intranet/web, client/server, middleware and ETL software, RDBMS software, security software, and hardware The Data Architecture specifies which data sources will be used, how they will be accessed by middleware or ETL (Extract Transform Load) software, how they will be loaded to the data warehouse. The Security Architecture specifies how the security requirements will be met, whether through LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) or other method, and how tightly the security will be integrated with the company's existing security methods. The Data Warehouse Architecture specifies the structure of the data warehouse and/or data marts, including the handling of metadata. Typically the architecture consists of staging tables for data loading and preparation (Entity-Relationship schema), and production tables (star schema) to house the read-only data which will be made available for analysis. Often this production data will be further distributed to conformed data marts for high-performance access by local applications. Back Data Warehouse Design Using requirements gathered in Opportunity Assessment and Business Analysis, the Data Warehouse Architect creates detailed data models for the data warehouse and/or data mart(s) and creates the physical database definitions. Facts, dimensions, summaries, indexes, loading tables, staging tables and public tables are defined. Sizing estimates are refined. Database ids and security are implemented. The Data Warehouse Architect works with your company's Database Administrator (DBA) throughout this process to ensure compatibility with corporate standards and to ensure the DBA will be comfortable supporting the databases into the future. Back Data Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) This service is delivered by an ETL Specialist with assistance from IT and user staff who are very familiar with the data sources and the business rules. The ETL products are configured to deliver the data from the legacy sources to the data warehouse environment. Wherever possible, the ETL rules will be stored in a single repository for consistency of definition and ease of maintenance. This is best accomplished with an ETL software tool. In some cases, it may be necessary to use custom business logic, that should be implemented as Stored Procedures and Triggers in the RDBMS. As a last resort, unique requirements may have to be met using a programming language such as C++. Back Business Intelligence Analysis The Business Intelligence Architect will use the results of the Business Analysis service and work with the business users to produce fully defined specifications for the business intelligence (BI) deliverables. Specifications produced would include: Analytics      - Define the analyses to be conducted by the user           - For example - Customer Segmentation, Customer              Interaction ROI, Website Effectiveness      - Will they require drill-through from summary-level data to detail-level data Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Scorecards      - Which KPIs are to be tracked      - What are the report thresholds (red-yellow-green lights)      - Who needs to see each KPI, at what level of detail      - How is the KPI obtained or calculated What PowerPlay cubes and reports are required What Impromptu reports are required Which tables will be used from the data warehouse or    data mart to support the reports and cubes How will reports and cubes be secured How will reports and cubes be distributed Back Business Intelligence Design/Build/Deploy This service delivers the data mart, analysis and reports to meet the specifications identified in the Business Intelligence Analysis. It is conducted by a Business Intelligence Specialist. Your selected BI vendor software is installed and configured. OLAP cubes and reports are developed and tested. List-style reports are developed and tested. Security structures are defined and tested. Server administration is carried out as needed. All objects are deployed to production. Backup and restore procedures are defined for the data mart and all cubes, reports and metadata. Operations documentation is produced. Back User Training and Knowledge Transfer to IT The Business Intelligence Specialist will deliver basic custom training to end users and will transfer operational support knowledge to IT. Early on in the project we recommend that key users and IT staff attend the software vendor's public training courses. This will foster stronger collaboration throughout the project for staff involved in requirements definition, acceptance testing, end user training, or technical support. Our custom training normally focuses on how to use the custom solution and would be oriented toward achieving business results, not simply demonstrating the technical how-to's. This training is delivered at the completion of the project. Depending on the number of users involved, we may recommend a train-the-trainer approach. The Business Intelligence Specialist will also work with IT staff responsible for ongoing support, to transfer specific knowledge of operating and troubleshooting the solution. Back Ongoing Support We offer ongoing support services for organizations that may not have the technical staff to support the implemented solution. These services are intended as troubleshooting and technical assistance for your customer solution and do not include solution enhancements. Support of the vendor software tools is typically provided by the vendor through their published support plans. We can help you identify the right support plan for your needs. Back