A data warehouse stores data. Its purpose is that the data can be consulted by the organization to extract useful information. Therefore, unlike a database, which is a mere data entry warehouse, a data warehouse is specially structured to favor the understanding and analysis of the data by the right person at the right time using business analysis tools such as Power BI.
The data stored in a data warehouse come from various origins, internal departments or even external sources to the organization, and have different structures so you must perform an integration process to incorporate them into the data warehouse, and in many cases also a process of standardization and data quality.
A data warehouse integrates the data in a consistent, non-volatile structure and organizes them by topics according to the needs of the users. Thinking of facilitating the tasks of analysis and dissemination, the information is structured in processes, views, dimensions and metrics following schemes such as those of star or snowflake. In addition, the data is linked to time, allowing historical and trend analysis.
Data warehouses can be hosted on enterprise servers or in the cloud.
Why do I want to have a data warehouse?
To make better business decisions that generate more revenue, cut costs, and provide better service to our customers.
It seems obvious, but let's break it down a bit: data warehouse transforms a large amount of operational data into something easy to understand, updated and correct that allows us to use business intelligence solutions to analyze short- and long-term trends, receive alerts and opportunities, substantiate our decisions and visualize a continuous feedback of them.
How do I know when to implement it?
- If I need to integrate many different sources of data almost in real time.
- If I have a large amount of historical data to process or I must maintain historical records, even if the source transaction systems don't do it.
- If I need to restructure the data, consolidate it and/or change table and field names.
- If I need to clean up or improve the quality of the data for analysis.
- If I have performance problems because users query production systems directly.
- If I am at risk of users causing errors or data loss during their queries.
- If I have users from different departments with different versions of the truth.
- If I need to offer my users guarantees and simplicity for a self-service BI.
What do we do at Bismart and why choose us?
At Bismart we offer data warehousing services that are totally adapted to your specific needs. Our proposal differs from others by the following factors:
- Best practices and market standards: Bismart is Microsoft's preferred partner in Business Intelligence and Big Data, having been awarded twice as the best partner worldwide in these areas.
- Kimball Methodology: our project managers have extensive experience in the creation and deployment of BI platforms applying the Kimball methodology, created specifically for this type of project.
- Focus on data quality: in our projects it is a priority to guarantee data quality and it is always included in the data ingestion process.
- Meticulous in the creation of the data model: we strive to make the data models simple and that entities and fields are easily understandable for the users and don't lead to any confusion about their meaning and purpose.
- We take care of the aspect of the reports: we use usability criteria so that in addition to being visually nice, the reports are interactive, simple and accessible. We create themes and visual objects adapted to the style of the company and its corporate image.
- We take into account the future operation of the system: in all our projects we take into account the technological and functional evolution of the platform and how it should be managed.
- Constant updating of our solutions: Bismart provides BI solutions to companies and is one of the first to apply the novelties of the sector. This has led us to have extensive experience in big data and Modern Data Warehouse solutions which, unlike the traditional one, combine all types of data, structured, unstructured and semi-structured (sensor records, IoT and media transmission) using Microsoft Azure Data Factory for Microsoft Azure Data Lake or Azure Blob Storage.
At Bismart, we believe that strategic decisions should be based on data, not assumptions. For this, a Data Warehouse is a great ally and Bismart is the ideal company to help you implement it.
