Executives all want to gain insights and improve business decisions in their organizations. Companies across industries and geographies have similar but unique business intelligence (BI) challenges. Yet a common source of frustration all leaders face is not knowing what they don't know.

In fact, business intelligence—or just being intelligent about your business—is very hard to master. That's why an organization that is at the head of its field first builds a solid foundation based on an industry-leading data warehouse and engages experienced consultants to make it easier to implement the solution and grow it over time.

enlarge Enterprises need actionable information to make better strategic decisions. As your business grows and changes, so will the demands on your data warehouse. That's why it makes sense to start with a platform that can grow with your business.

Consider these initial stages of data warehousing: (See figure, right.)

	Stage 1: Reporting. Answers to reporting-type questions provide information about past business events, enabling analysts to make better decisions about future actions. To determine what happened, a retailer might ask "What were DVD sales this week versus last?" or "What were promo sales yesterday?"
	Stage 2: Analyzing the data to determine what factors contributed to the results. Doing ad hoc queries to discover why a business event happened is the second step in a maturing BI solution. For example, retailers might ask "In baskets with DVDs, what other items were purchased most?" or "Of the departments below plan in promo sales, what were the 10 worst sellers?"
	Stage 3: Predictive analytical modeling. As analysts become more and more familiar with the data and how it is used, they will naturally progress to more complex "what if" analyses and try to make predictions for better decisions. Illustrating this maturity are questions such as "What will happen to kids' DVD sales after a 6 percent price hike?" and "What percentage of customers will respond to a 20 percent discount versus those who hold out for 25 percent?"

These first three stages provide increasing degrees of strategic intelligence to an organization. Using different methods, such as reporting, data visualization, ad hoc queries and data mining, businesses can analyze data for improved business decisions. Each of these methods uses tools to access and manipulate the data stored in a data warehouse. And, as data from new areas is integrated, more in-depth analyses are possible and even greater business value can be achieved.

Of course, companies get started at different stages on the maturity curve. But no matter what the vision, the key to success is employing the right data warehouse technology and experts that can serve your needs now and well into the future. Effective BI solutions require the best technology and passionate people with business intelligence and industry knowledge. T

Starting right with Teradata Regardless of your situation and requirements, Teradata can help design an ideal solution environment that will enable you to answer your toughest business questions now and well into the future as your business needs change. Teradata's purpose-built data warehouse solutions are designed to deliver performance, simplicity and ease of management. Plus, Teradata allows you to take advantage of its industry consultants and data warehouse experts. The Teradata solution includes the Teradata Database and select Teradata software utilities for fast and easy data loading, querying and connectivity, coupled with purpose-built servers and storage. The entire package is integrated, tested and delivered to your door. This allows for rapid on-site installation and improves your time to value. It is not unusual for customers of other vendors to spend weeks, sometimes months, putting together their solutions or working with multiple vendors to assemble their data warehouse systems before defining databases and tables and starting to load data. Getting business users access to the data with consistent high performance is your priority. Teradata offers a range of modeling and load services, including a "Load N Go" service to get your data loaded and query-ready within 30 days of system delivery. Simple "Set & Go" indexing techniques are easily added with minimal effort. These techniques provide dramatic performance advantages for certain query types. Teradata has helped hundreds of companies start right and has the people, the processes and the experience to help you get where you want to go regardless of your size, industry or geography. So as you look to gain new insights and make better business decisions, consider how an enterprise data warehouse solution can help you achieve competitive advantage today and tomorrow. —R.J.

Robin Jessani has provided strategic product and marketing direction for the Teradata Warehouse solution for the last 15 years. Currently, in her role as a senior marketing manager, she focuses on new customer acquisitions and provides guidance to prospective customers during their decision-making process.

Teradata Magazine-September 2007