Data warehousing demands buy-ins

Data warehousing projects require top-level business buy-ins and are often costly to justify due to their indistinct long-term benefits.

In addition, the future of data warehousing will be governed by strict new legislation coming in next year, according to David Ives, director of BI and knowledge management at ISPartners, speaking at the ITWeb Data Warehousing 2010 event in Midrand this week, adding that organisations need to implement best practices into their data warehousing projects in order to drive business value.

After numerous delays, the Protection of Personal Information Bill is expected to be enacted next year.

Ives explained that the proposed law will force organisations to comply with certain governance issues to manage information and determine how certain information can be used.

The Bill seeks to make companies, which do not take adequate steps to protect confidential information, legally liable.

“The potential effect that the Protection of Personal Information Bill could have on organisations could be catastrophic. Data governance will become a lot more important, more so than the past. How businesses present information is potentially going to be a very critical piece to businesses going forward,” said Ives.

“The BI strategy, in context of a data warehouse, is not technology-driven and needs to focus on business benefits to drive efficiency and revenue growth. The fundamental reason why we build a data warehouse is to build business architecture.”

Speaking at the same event, Johannes Hamman, director of strategic business development at 2Quins Engineered Business Information, said the traditional model of data warehousing for 20 years has not worked.

In unison with Ives, Hamman explained that data warehousing needs to be a focused business strategy that requires buy-in from the top management. However, he indicated that this is easier said than done.

“The project needs complete buy-in from top management; however, this is difficult when the ROI of a data warehouse project is often difficult to calculate.

“From a business perspective, a data warehouse needs a methodology. Change management and leadership is a core element to design an integrated information platform. An intelligence competency centre is a business-led and business-driven initiative,” he concluded.