By Martyn Richard Jones

Some people claim that strategy is primarily about building advantage[1]. My view is that this is not strictly accurate. Strategy is about overcoming significant challenges and achieving significant objectives; it is not intrinsically about building advantage, as if business operated in a perfectly symmetrical universe where commercial life played itself out as some perfect tinsel town idea of what business should be and what success should look like.

Unfortunately, far too many management consultants’ ideas of the world are delusional, and, even worse, some business organisations take them up as if they had an actual link to marketplace realities.

Contrary to some published opinions, using a data warehouse strategically means it contributes to the coherent actions that form a strategy.

Strategic data warehousing is not essentially about manoeuvring, planning, or manipulation as end goals; it’s about action, in which the strategic, tactical, and operational have their own spaces, and therefore they hold significance and meaning. They should not be relegated to the category of meaningless management consulting talismans, trinkets and lucky charms.

Some people in the past have defined Data Warehousing in strategic terms as a “rising tide strategy”. Seen from a particular perspective, the term “rising tide strategy” could perhaps be considered meaningless to all but a very small number of people in an even smaller technical niche. It is perhaps worse than meaningless in the context of strategy and enterprise data warehousing, because it is also a term that people may find misleading.

Some people also claim that strategy is a weapon, but I would also disagree. Strategy is not a weapon in any conventional sense. A weapon is an artefact, but strategy is about overcoming significant challenges and achieving significant objectives. In this respect, Data Warehousing is a strategic tool, a strategic weapon, and an essential enabler of strategy, but it is not an organisational strategy in and of itself[2].

[1] Accelerating Customer Relationships: Using CRM and Relationship Technologies [Taschenbuch]

[2] Its place is within an organisation’s Information Management strategy.

Many thanks for reading.

File under: Good Strat, Good Strategy, Martyn Richard Jones, Martyn Jones, Cambriano Energy, Iniciativa Consulting, Iniciativa para Data Warehouse, Tiki Taka Pro