Necessity of Data Warehousing and Fundamentals of Data Warehousing.
As Retail markets become increasingly competitive, the ability to react quickly and decisively to market trends and to tailor products and services to individual customers is more critical than ever. A data warehouse can be a very effective means of organizing and analyzing the vast amount of information generated in the business, and help to generate a more effective business model for keeping the business profitable. .
Overview.
Retail and Data Warehousing.
Successful retailers strive to accomplish three basic objectives:.
To align their business with customer needs.
To differentiate from competitors and.
To optimize product manufacturing and space utilization.
To achieve these goals, retailers must be able to successfully manage inventory, product mixes, promotions, supply chain dynamics, and a number of other factors. Furthermore, as sales markets become increasingly competitive, the ability to react quickly and decisively to market trends is more critical than ever. Lack of information is not the problem "data to assist in making these kinds of decisions is readily available from a variety of sources. On the contrary, the problem is that the volume and complexity of information available to organizations is overwhelming. Increasingly, successful retailers will be those that can effectively categorize and utilize these data for category management, customer loyalty programs, promotions, etc. and the solution is data warehousing.
Retail Data Sets.
Retail data is often placed into four basic categories. These are:.
Monitor customer orders, to ensure on-time deliveries and minimal returns .
Review category and product margins, particularly during special offers and promotions .
Integrate data from external sources, to ensure business 'views' of the data are flexible and independent of the data sources supplied by IT departments.