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Charting the right course
Knowing where you want to go is
one thing. Knowing how to get there—that's the tricky part.
by Keith Ferrell
Getting a return on your IT investment—it's not only an idea
of economic necessity whose time has come, but it's also a need that
the data warehouse is ready to meet. How? As this issue's special
section shows, the specifics will differ from enterprise to enterprise,
modified by different business rules and conditions. But there is
one fundamental approach that can make ROI a reality. If you view
the data warehouse as part of a learning process as well as a working
process, then you'll be sure to grow the bottom line.
You could almost rephrase an old bit of folk wisdom: Give an enterprise
the information you've fished out of the data warehouse and you've
fed its immediate needs. But teach it to fish … well, you get the
idea.
Increasingly, the enterprise gets the idea as well. The dynamic growth
of business support for the data warehouse concept has, almost ironically,
come in the wake of the dot-com bubble-burst, when IT began attracting
a more wary eye from the business side. But data warehousing has always
built its potential and promise on a bedrock of practicality.
From the beginning, Teradata has designed data warehouses to work
with business, not just with business data.
To that end, the various approaches and configurations that the data
warehouse makes possible are the most powerful and basic elements
of a solid ROI case. But only if that case is made correctly to both
sides of the IT/business equation.
The absence of that balance was at the heart of the dot-com problem.
IT was seen as the panacea that would enable business to do anything
it dreamed of doing; the reality is the stacks of IPO literature filled
with all manner of empty yet sky-high promises now crowding our landfills.
It's different now, and those who understand the sheer potential waiting
to be unleashed from their data warehouse are thankful for the differences.
More than two decades of data warehouse experience and evolution have
prepared Teradata and its customers—not to make vague promises
based on those sky-high dreams, but to focus energy as much on the
business that the data warehouse serves as on the technical platform
itself. Only by doing so can the data warehouse live up to the promise
that prompted the investment in the first place.
When IT approaches the data warehouse with business rules, compliance
requirements and market conditions in hand, the vast potential of
the data warehouse becomes a resource that yields returns for the
company.
Indeed, when IT approaches the data warehouse hand-in-hand with business,
the most valuable return becomes evident—the IT/business divide
ceases to exist. The data warehouse, as you'll see, is not only a
pathway to profitable exploitation of enterprise data, but it's also
a bridge between two crucial elements of the enterprise. Working together
and, more importantly, learning together, IT and business transform
the data warehouse into a conduit through which the enterprise meets
the challenges of the future.
It's about time, don't you think?
Keith Ferrell, former editor of OMNI,
has written, spoken and consulted on governance and Web-enabled
corporations.
© Teradata Magazine-June 2004 |
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