Most companies have focused a lot of time and resources to ensure they are collecting as much data as they can about their business. But many have given little thought to the best way to store and use this data. A Data Warehousing strategy that lays the foundation for data integration and access is the key to getting business value out of this mountain of data.
Whether the need is a small data mart for a single department or an enterprise data warehouse to serve the entire organization, B2B Consultants leverage Microsoft SQL Server’s suite of tools to provide a strong foundation of data for business intelligence needs.
B2B can design an engagement that will best satisfy your needs and requirements and work within your budget constraints. Our engagement will be defined in part by answers to several questions.
Ø How many operational systems do you have that collect business data?
Ø Do you receive critical business data from third party systems?
Ø Do you have data duplicated in more than one system?
Ø Do you need to account for incorrect or incomplete data entry?
Ø Which data is shared across groups within your organization and which is unique to a single group?
Ø What is the geographic footprint of your information consumers?
Ø Is there data that is sensitive or needs additional security considerations?
In a data warehousing engagement, B2B consultants will work with IT and information consumers to define each data element and its source. The integration and storage of this data is then the focus as B2B works to define the warehouse architecture.
Figure 1: Hub-and-Spoke Enterprise Data Warehouse Architecture Figure 1: Hub-and-Spoke Enterprise Data Warehouse Architecture
Data Scope of Data
B2B’s experience across industries helps us to determine which pieces of data are critical to a data warehouse. Whether that data is test scores and grades for a School System or Sales Figures and Operational Costs for a commercial enterprise, our understanding of your information helps us to determine a strategy for migration into a data mart or data warehouse.
Data Cleansing and Integration
B2B employs SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) to perform the extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) of data from systems or third party sources into these data stores. Data may need to be extracted from a current; legacy or third party system and that data may be local or remotely located. Transformation is where data entry mistakes can be corrected and duplicate data can be eliminated. Although B2B consultants can develop ETL programs from a variety of data sources, we can also work with the client’s staff to economize on overall costs by directing their resources on how to extract the required information. This is just one example of how we work to minimize the financial impact on a project and make the budget go further.
Data Storage
The structure of how the data is stored is as critical as the location and format. B2B knows that an effective data structure is one that is readable by non-technical users and is one that delivers data that is timely and accurate. B2B also understands that an IT team must be comfortable with the platform, which is why, in addition to Microsoft’s SQL Server; we work with databases such as IBM DB2 and Oracle. B2B also understands that data delivery speeds are key to user adoption and works with your team to determine the right hardware for your data storage and usage needs.