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SERVICES
It's time to map your course
An EDW Roadmap can take you where you want to go
by Scott Steinberg
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but what about a picture that depicts correlations between disparate corporate data and strategic business goals? Its value can be measured in the millions—of dollars, that is.
Consider this the precise reason industry leaders shouldn't overlook Teradata's Enterprise Data Warehousing (EDW) Roadmap Modeling, a one-stop planning tool that aligns direction for executives' most pressing business needs. A visual guide to data warehousing and analytics, the patent-pending technology can help you quickly bring corporate goals and objectives in line with supporting facts.
The tool clearly displays informational relationships in such a manner that knowledge can be shared throughout an entire organization. The end result? Intelligence originally mined for use under a particular scenario can be modeled across multiple initiatives, minimizing redundancy and highlighting opportunities for strategic advantage.
"It's common sense," according to Todd Higginson, manager, Teradata Professional Services Marketing. "Once data is in the EDW, it can be used by many applications to answer many questions and thereby generate economies of scale. Why build redundant, separate data sets when you can easily add incremental elements to what you already have?"
A simple idea in practice, the roadmap itself models the ability to collect facts in one central location, then make them available for multiple uses.
From a cost vs. benefits standpoint, it's a win/win situation. At the same time expenditures are slashed (because data only has to be collected once), a single enterprise view begins to take shape. Corporations save money because extra resources don't have to be spent and new data marts don't have to be built.
As insights are amassed from various sources, that data can be related in previously unconsidered ways to glean additional wisdom.
This philosophy is reflected throughout the various roadmap structures. To date, models have been created for six industries—banking, communications, insurance, manufacturing, retail and transportation—all continually evolving; other industry EDW Roadmaps are planned.
Founded upon a fixed set of eight core subject areas comprised of more than 700 entities and 3,300 data attributes, the communications model, for example, is still completely adaptable throughout its life cycle. In short, support for virtually any business question, metric and key performance indicator (KPI) can be incorporated into the system's architecture as required.
"In the past, data warehouses were employed for one specific use or business case. It's an incredibly inefficient process," explains Al Schuetz, director, Teradata's EDW Roadmap Team. "By transitioning these systems into a single integrated model, we can start asking the kinds of questions people could only dream of years ago."
The model facilitates rapid understanding and alignment of the business needs and supports the "what if" analysis of the different approaches. As the data warehouse evolves, the roadmap assists in identifying the next most valuable data to source.
Before a roadmap is constructed, a company begins with a vision and a strategy that is broken into a quantifiable set of business improvement opportunities to pursue. For example, when a company has a strategic objective of profitable growth, then good actionable information is needed. Who are current profitable customers? What attributes do they share? Who are the potential customers with similar attributes?
Next, the company needs to figure
out how to capitalize on these business improvement opportunities. It can ask business questions and build KPIs to measure results. As questions are answered and the KPIs are built, a critical mass of information becomes available to assist in business growth.
The roadmap can not only model whether the necessary data is available but also identify what data is not available. To follow our example, the company now knows who its target customers are and where they are located. So now the company can attempt to reach them in some way. Once an action has been attempted, its performance is evaluated and results are measured.
At the very bottom of the chain is source data, which feeds the system. The whole process is called EDW Roadmap Modeling because it's just that—a visual model that lets companies find realistic and achievable solutions that allow them to achieve strategic plans. Every action a firm takes, therefore, generates increasing value, which becomes an invaluable asset in today's constantly changing commercial environment. As such, roadmaps represent a chance for internal investment that few companies would willingly choose to pass up.
"Data warehouses aren't slam dunks," emphasizes Schuetz. "Enterprises must evolve over time, and roadmap modeling is a tremendous step forward in their development. These models allow us to align the sourcing of data in the EDW to bear with a customer's ultimate goals. You can't put a price on that."
Scott Steinberg's business- and technology-oriented articles have appeared in Wired, Popular Science, Rolling Stone and other popular publications.
© Teradata Magazine-June 2004
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