The data warehouse is an architectural system used to collect and manage data from various sources to perform queries and analysis. It stores a large amount of historical data that can be used to discover meaningful business insights. The data warehouse is considered a core piece of Business Intelligence (BI), as it is built for business analysis and reporting.
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Why Does a Company Use Data Warehousing?
Data warehouses help companies to access information with a single press of a button and quickly analyze that data to support decision-making. These are some of the top company benefits of using a data warehouse:
Data Integration
The data warehouse supports data integration across multiple departments or sections in an organization and across a wide range of businesses. Data integration facilitates controls on data monitoring and usage and enhances customer relationship management (CRM).Â
Data Consistency
The data warehouse ensures data consistency while collecting and managing data from different sources. Companies don’t need to worry about the accessibility and reliability of the data, as they find all needed information in a single platform. It also saves time for users who typically spend time retrieving data from various sources.
Data Quality and Accuracy
The data warehouse provides a single data model for all required data regardless of source. The nature of implementing consistent models and fixing bad data improves the quality and accuracy of data managed by the data warehouse.Â
Historical Data Analytics
The historical data contained in a data warehouse enables businesses to perform analyses on past and present market trends and customer behavior. Companies can make business predictions and act accordingly.Â
Improved BI
The data warehouse supports BI activities by reducing the total turnaround time required for data analytics and reporting, as it consolidates a huge volume of data collected from multiple sources.Â
Trends in Data Warehousing
New trends and capabilities of the data warehouse can enhance company performance and provide them with competitive analytical knowledge. Here are some significant trends to watch related to data warehouses:
Data Warehouse Automation
Data warehouse automation (DWA) can simplify processes like planning, data modeling, data analysis and reporting, and data integration. It can also deliver results much faster through the efficient use of technology; DWA can perform BI activities within hours compared to the weeks and months taken by traditional data warehouses that depend on manual processing.
AI Operations
The implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in data warehousing can cost-effectively inform more accurate business decisions. It can optimize complex data queries for companies of all sizes and identify trends and patterns—along with problems—that businesses might encounter.
Cloud-Centric Data Warehouse
Cloud data warehouses enable companies to use their capital in more productive areas instead of investing in hardware and IT staff to manage data warehouses. The high performance of cloud data warehouses makes data warehousing processes cost-effective and provides a dynamic workflow for businesses.
Single Data Warehouses
Most companies use multiple data warehouses to manage their data and attain business goals, but it’s highly expensive and time-consuming. As an alternative, large-scale serverless data warehouses may help companies handle their data effectively and efficiently. The implementation of emerging data visualization technologies also makes available a single view of multiple data warehouses.
Learn about the Top Data Warehouse Tools & Software here.
