Custom Data Warehouse Reporting

Businesses need to make good decisions. And they can’t make good decisions unless they have the necessary data.

A data warehouse is a key tool for giving you access to the data you need to make good business decisions.

A data warehouse is, in essence, a database. But it’s not just any database. It’s a centralized database that stores all of a company’s data – from both the past and present – so it can be used for making key business decisions.

The key consideration here is the breadth and depth of this data. Data warehouses are designed to store enough information so that businesses can recognize patterns and identify efficiencies. To do this, you need as much historical data as possible. Otherwise you risk losing an insight that might otherwise be made apparent.

For example: An existing database for an organization might have information on all of a company’s current customers. A data warehouse might have information on every customer a company has ever had.

Many companies think existing databases can do double duty for business intelligence, but cases like this are rare. A data warehouse becomes essential when the need to acquire and process data overwhelms the capacity of your transactional or operational database.

A data warehouse differs from day-to-day databases because they are structured for complex queries. Databases need to enter a temporary fixed state whenever you run queries on them, which is at odds with the need to update transactional databases on a regular and ongoing basis.

Think about it like this: Using a transactional database for business intelligence would be like a grocery store chain storing all its important business data on the scanner at its checkout line. This would really slow down the speed with which a cashier can check out its customers. But, since the checkout computer is likely a simple device, it would also make it difficult to get any sort of complex information from it.

Data warehouses, by contrast, are regularly updated with information from source systems. This then becomes the source for report generation and any other data analysis that needs to take place.

A dashboard pulls the data from your data warehouse and transforms it into a series of charts, graphs and other visualizations that update in real time so you can use them to make key business decisions.

It allows you to run regular, ongoing queries on your data warehouse data so that you can get an at-a-glance update on the metrics and key performance indicators that matter most to your business.

Ever had trouble predicting trends, discovering insights or recognizing patterns just from looking at a pile of numbers?

Then a data warehouse dashboard is for you.

A data warehouse dashboard is not that different from another dashboard with which most of us are familiar: The dashboard on a car.

The dashboard on your car gives you nearly everything you need to get a quick, at-a-glance view of how your car is performing. Think about it: Does the dashboard on your car include absolutely everything you need to assess your car’s performance? Not at all. It just includes the key metrics – speed, revolutions per minute, gas left in the tank – to help you operate it safely. You are driving, after all. It would get really confusing (and probably be a huge safety hazard) if you had 50 different metrics on your car’s dashboard. The beauty of your car’s dashboard is also that it tells you, using the check engine light and other indicators, when you need to take a look under the hood and maybe take it in to mechanic.

Data warehouse dashboards are similar. You don’t have the time or, frankly, the ability to just look at a data warehouse and instantly glean what you need to know about your business – no more than you would be able to look under the hood of a car and tell why the RPMs are redlining all the time.

A data warehouse dashboard pulls in all the relevant information to allow you to assess the health of your business and make key decisions to help it stay on top.