Does your way of providing data have business value?

Narrator: Okay, where to begin?First, let us start with some real-life user stories. And for those who are unfamiliar with user stories, they are one of the most effective ways that business has of telling IT people what they want. Think of them as micro-stories that convey a problem, facets of the problem and potential ways to address those problems.  Such as, “as a consumer of wine I would like to be able to add wine to fruit, ice and lemonade in order to create a refreshing summer drink”.

To be a little more focused on the subject of data, here are some example data and analytics user stories:

• As a sales and marketing person, I want to access reliable data that helps me viably upsell and cross-sell my financial products and services.
• As an airline operator, I want to be able to access date to be able to – dynamically, accurately and efficiently, – price my offers in order to maximise revenue on the flights that I offer.
• As a telco person, I want to be able to measure calls and messaging and to be able to optimise my offers in line with sales and operating data and an analysis of data that includes aspects of behavioural economics and qualitative and quantitative analytics in order to maximise revenue and encourage use in periods of least demand.
• As a retailer, I want to be able to analyse data in order to offer occasional discounts on products and services that a customer occasionally buys and two offer products that customers with a certain buying profile tend to purchase.
• As a mass manufacturer of high value integrated circuits (IC), I want to be able to capture and analyse the data from IC testing and to be able to spot production anomalies at the earliest possible moment in order to halt the production of faulty ICs, to identify immediately the points of failure and to remediate them, fast.
• As an asset custodian with assets under management of over one trillion euros, I want to offer my highest value clients all of the performance, cost and profitability stats and analytics related to their accounts, trades and positions.
• As a telco company professional, I want to anticipate customer churn risk and customer life-time profitability so that I can retain the customers I want and spend less time on low value customers.
• As a corporate real estate professional, I want to be able to identify quickly all the required resources and assets required to accommodate two hundred people who will be working on a corporate stealth project.

These are user stories, ones implemented and in use today. No vapour-ware boloney. They are real life examples of where data warehousing is adding business value. Yet wilfully ignorant people and the unscrupulous with an agenda, amongst others, will insist that data warehousing adds no business value whatsoever and that data warehousing in fact stands in the way of “good data landscapes” which will be along any minute now along with the data mesh.