Data warehousing realises its potential

Citation

(1999), "Data warehousing realises its potential", Work Study, Vol. 48 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.1999.07948baf.002

Data warehousing realises its potential

Data warehousing realises its potential

Many UK companies are on the verge of reaping commercial benefits from use of information that they are gathering and storing in ever larger data warehouses, according to a survey conducted by MicroStrategy, a specialist in technology used to explore, analyse and distribute information held in central data warehouses.

The findings are based on a survey of 163 senior business and IT managers of a broad cross-section of both national and multinational companies who attended MicroStrategy's annual Data Warehousing Congress.

In the UK financial services industry specifically, 10 per cent of companies surveyed are already using information from their data for significant commercial gain. Ultimately this is to turn their data warehouse from a cost centre into a profit centre, and use information to explore new channels to market, such as e-commerce.

A third of UK financial services companies in the sample have reached the production stages of data warehousing allowing large numbers of users to carry out complex analyses of information to achieve specific business goals.

The market for data warehousing solutions is increasingly being driven by a demand for analytically sophisticated applications focused around specific market or business needs. Over 50 per cent of companies surveyed were setting up data warehousing projects in order to carry out analysis specific to their own business. For the financial services industry these include applications like "risk analysis", "churn analysis" and "one-to-one marketing".

A possible reason for the successful uptake of data warehousing is the increasing involvement of business sponsors. Board directors and divisional heads are heavily involved in defining the scope of the data warehousing project at outset. Of all respondents surveyed for the research, 82 per cent confirmed that board level approval was important or very important, while 87 per cent of respondents felt that sponsorship by business heads was very important to the success of the project. The ideal for successful data warehousing projects is formation of solid partnerships between business and IT management, so that it delivers true business benefits, the research reveals.

It is clear from the survey that data warehouses are set to grow in size significantly in the coming year. Amongst the financial services companies surveyed, the ratio between small (<100 Gigabytes) and large (>100 Gigabytes) volume is set to shift from 11:9 to 8:12. A significant contributor to this trend is the increasing interest in using the data warehouse to understand the customer so that companies gain competitive advantage and market themselves more effectively. This inherently requires analysing data at the level at which the customer interacts with an organisation ­ at the transaction level.

The survey also reveals the accelerating up-take of Internet or Web-based infrastructures. Of financial services companies surveyed, 43 per cent cited that this was the direction they were heading in. This finding suggests that the dominance of traditional platforms such as Windows is being gradually eroded. Web-based systems enable information to be extracted from the data warehouse and communicated to people across and beyond the organisation, via their PCs or through information broadcasting infrastructures to their mobile communications devices (including mobile phones, pagers, PDAs and palmtops).

Stewart Holness, UK managing director, MicroStrategy, explained the findings:

Companies are truly beginning to exploit the power of the information assets. On the evidence of this research we believe that for those companies with the vision to take the next steps forward, the road to reaping commercial benefits from information is now in sight.

MicroStrategy is the one of the world's leading providers of enterprise decision-support systems (DSS) software and related services. MicroStrategy's suite of products (DSS Suite) enables both active and passive delivery of information from large-scale databases, providing Global 2000 enterprise user communities with timely answers to mission-critical questions. The decision support platform enables users to query and analyse the most detailed, transaction-level databases, turning data into business intelligence. In addition to supporting internal enterprise users, MicroStrategy's products extend beyond corporate boundaries to customers, partners and supply chain constituencies through a broad range of pull and push technology such as the Internet, e-mail, telephone, pagers and other wireless communications devices. Customers include many household names: Littlewoods Stores, B&Q, Bank of Scotland, Frontline, Marks & Spencer, ASDA, Mirror Group Newspapers, AXA Provincial, MCI, Glaxo Wellcome, Sprint, AT&T, American Express, USAA, United Airlines and Hallmark. In addition, MicroStrategy has developed strategic partnerships with leading software and hardware companies to develop solutions for specific markets and industry requirements. More information can be found on MicroStrategy's Website: www.strategy.com