One of the principle questions that we get asked by organisations is what is the best solution to support its information and data management needs. A data warehouse is an integrated collection of data that offers various levels of detail for decision analysis, management reporting, and decision support. Data warehouses are introduced to supply detail operating data rather than just provide summary financial information however a shortcoming of many data warehouses is that they overlook the strategic needs of the enterprise.

​

Performance Management can be used to tie the goals and strategy of the organisation to the data warehouse approach. Performance Management is used to define the information requirements of the organisation. These requirements, in addition to tactical business unit and business functional requirements, are the drivers of the data warehouse design.

​

Performance Management explicitly articulates the organisation's strategy. The information needed to support that strategy is identified through Balanced Scorecard measures. The data warehouse serves as the infrastructure to collect, filter, analyse, and disseminate the relevant metrics to the appropriate managers.

 

The data warehouse serves as a technology enabler in providing sources to calculate measures on an ongoing basis.

The data warehouse addresses the information needs of senior level executives.

Performance Management serves as a filter of information allowing managers to focus on information relevant to their decision making while reducing information overload.

Integrating Performance Management with data warehouse design ensures enterprise information needs are considered.

The data warehouse provides consolidated financial and non-financial information across the entire enterprise, with a focus on both strategic and tactical needs.

Performance Management process has identified important and valuable decision support information. This information can be stored in the data warehouse rather than in numerous and various disparate systems and/or in volumes of paper.

The data warehouse will contain meaningful information, provide “what-if” analysis, and will be easy to use through ad-hoc and “canned” queries managers can analyse information without I/S involvement.

The data warehouse helps enable the Performance Management process in reducing the time / effort required to access, assemble, and report enterprise performance.

The data warehouse provides comprehensive enterprise operational information at a detail level. Availability of information at different levels provides different decision makers access to information for extensive analysis.