CH 3 - Do You Really Need Data Warehouse?

http://www.customerthink.com/article/you_dont_need_a_data_warehouse_to_have_bi

As an accountant, I've been accused of being a paid cynic. I'm really just an asset protector whether it's cash, profits, or any other asset - my job is to keep what we have and ultimately contribute to it. Or stop the bleeding if we sever a limb. But anyway, data warehouses are invaluable to reporting and especially management reporting. I was fortuate to work for a company that utilized a data warehouse and the amount of information we had accessible to measure historical trends, variances, and practically anything we wanted to was incredible. Like most data warehouse reporting, it didn't always come back pretty but it came back fast and accurate. Cleaning it up was the easy part.

Now that I've moved on I can't stroll down the hall and plop down in our data warehouse manager's office to let him know my latest and greatest customized report that I need him to write. But frankly, we don't need a data warehouse and would be foolish to even consider it and I tend to think most companies, especially smaller ones would be too. All companies want to retain as much historical data and they want it easily accessible but there are many alternatives to data warehouses that most companies would find equally effective and considerably less expensive.

I'll be the first to admit that I have a tendency to oversimply things but maybe I'm just not smart enough to make them difficult. As far as I'm concerned data is data regardless of where it is and in today's corporate reporting environment if it's in there it was designed to extracted, or exported. Data can easily be transported from one platform to another using ODBC, JDBC or XML and there have been numerous hardware and software advances enabling PC's to perform functions previously capable only by mainframes. Oftentimes a simple Excel query can access your accouting platform and 'pull out' the data you want isolated for reporting. This costs nothing unless you have to retain the services of someone to write the query. Once the query is written, it can be saved and used as often as needed to continually provide updated and accurate reporting.

So if you find yourself in position to make a business intelligence gathering decision, don't get all caught up in what the 'big boys' are doing. There's often a simple solution that's equally effective and won't cripple your business with a tremendous capital outlay for something that simply stores and consolidates your existing data. This article lists some good alternatives for anyone that might be considering data warehouse to improve their reporting capabilities.