PayPal, the global leader in online payment systems, decided to migrate from Oracle to an enterprise data warehouse from Teradata, which sped up the closing process from three days to one, far surpassing the company’s goals.
But rather than forklifting its financial performance management data model to the new platform, PayPal decided to completely re-engineer the model and focus on data quality. "I'm absolutely convinced that the right strategy for PayPal was to go with re-engineering the data model," says Clay Stanley, PayPal's Director of Information Management and Delivery (IMD). "We are able to respond to ... market needs much faster than we ever could have had we forklifted that data model."
Another benefit of the project is the ongoing partnership between IMD and the financial side of the business. "They've helped us improve our domain knowledge in the business (so we can) meet the needs of the rest of the business," Stanley says.
