In today’s fast-paced world of business, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to collect data. Think of data warehouses as a home for all the data relating to your business.
What information does a data warehouse hold?
Elements such as transaction details, customer information, and marketing intelligence are all interesting and important pieces of information that can help inform a business’s next steps.
What would the data be used for?
From the smallest decisions, such as which products to display on a business’s homepage, to high-level, strategic decisions such as branding, businesses need to be able to analyse their data to find out what is working well and what could be improved. This is where a data warehouse is worth its weight in gold.
A data warehouse is very much as it sounds – a digital log of all the data relating to a business. It may be on-premise, meaning all the data is stored on a physical server; alternatively, it might be a cloud-based data warehouse, meaning all the data is stored on the cloud. Either way, the data warehouse will hold a vast amount of detailed information relating to the business’s history.
According to Google, the data can be obtained from a range of sources but is typically populated using application log files or transaction applications.
Business intelligence
Once collated, this data can be used by business intelligence tools to analyse certain aspects of the business and inform staff to make decisions going forward. A data collection company, such as Shepper, can assist businesses with collecting, storing, and managing their data in a relational database. It can also provide business decision-makers with statistical analysis, reporting, and even client analysis tools that enable the data to be presented visually.
Data warehouses are extremely reliable systems. This means that once the data has been collected and stored, it is secure and the data can be analysed within. They are also very flexible, meaning the data warehouse can be designed with the individual business in mind and be tailored appropriately.
