In the brick-and-mortar world offline, better BI also drives revenue. Independent grocery stores, for example, must keep up with large national chain supermarkets to survive, particularly in a consolidating market. With millions of weekly transactions, feeding fresh point of sale data to a data warehouse in real time reduces delays and risk of transmission errors. The independent grocery also can make real-time decisions based on sales by store or by department for any given item. Relatively small changes based on this information, such as marking an item up or down, can significantly affect revenue and allow stores to retain customers in a competitive market.
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The central data warehouse, operational data store, or dedicated reporting server should enable business intelligence software access to current, accurate data. While ideally all users would query the same central repository, in many cases this information still resides in multiple systems, creating redundant copies of the same data. It's important to ensure that business information is consistent, regardless of when, where (which system), how, and by whom it is queried. Data integrity and the ability to reconcile information is a key part to a sound BI strategy and fundamental to maximizing the value of your investment.
The Diversity Challenge: From Many to One ... Achieving the Single View
Many growing businesses face IT diversity, which could be the result of system consolidation or acquisitions, creating new challenges for data management. To achieve data integration, an organization needs to define the rules of coexistence for the source and reporting assets -- logically and physically.
For example, a finance team may keep customer information in one system, while sales has a separate repository with data about the same customer. The challenge with redundancy is that reporting from both systems can produce two very different answers. Enabling these systems to "talk to one another" is a challenge that most organizations face regardless of size.
Added to this challenge is the speed at which business moves and changes. A major success factor is to create an effective integration strategy across a diverse technology portfolio. Developing custom code to enable data to move from one environment to another is often a less expensive approach, but only initially. As that environment changes with new versions and functionality, the integration code needs to change with it, adding layers of complexity, and tying up expensive IT resources.
In a tight budget environment, many smaller businesses sensibly standardize on one product or approach to integration across different systems. There are numerous infrastructure technologies that can be easily deployed to show a fast ROI without consuming a large number of existing IT resources. The "Big Bang" theory of everyone standardizing on one infrastructure platform may not appear feasible, but if you rationalize on a targeted basis, you will be better positioned to define the right level of standardization for your enterprise.
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