Masterclass on the side!

Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Madrid, Saturday 31st January 2026

Martyn: The Enterprise Data Warehouse should be driven by business demand and nothing else.

Ed: What does that mean in practice?

Selene: Martyn’s statement emphasises a key principle in effective data management. “The Enterprise Data Warehouse should be driven by business demand and nothing else.” The EDW exists to address genuine, prioritised business needs. It is meant to deliver clear value. The EDW should not be guided by IT preferences. It should not follow technical ideals or vendor suggestions. It also should not rely on assumptions about what might be useful in the future.

In practical terms, this approach involves the following:

• Begin with business priorities, not technical choices. Before selecting platforms or data modelling methods, the team engages thoroughly with business stakeholders. This includes those from finance, sales, operations, marketing, and senior leadership. They determine the essential questions that need to be answered. They identify the key performance indicators that require reliable tracking. They also identify the cross-functional inconsistencies causing the most difficulty (for example, mismatched revenue figures). They assess what strategic or regulatory objectives demand consolidated data. They also focus on identifying the insights that would directly improve revenue, cut costs or enhance customer satisfaction. Technical decisions are then made solely to support those clearly defined requirements.
• Avoid speculative or overly ambitious builds. Resist the urge to construct a vast, all-encompassing single source of truth just because you anticipate future use. Instead, deliver value in stages. Start with the most urgent and impactful use cases. For example, combine customer and sales data to produce accurate profitability analysis. Capabilities like real-time data processing or advanced analytics integration are added only with explicit business justification. Complete historical archives are added when there is current justification and allocated funding. They are never added simply because the technology permits it or because it aligns with abstract best practice.
• Judge success by business outcomes alone: Evaluate progress and continued investment with measures important to the business. These include shorter times to produce dependable reports. There are fewer manual reconciliations in spreadsheets. Forecasts are more accurate for smarter inventory management. It also includes quicker detection of revenue leaks and greater uptake among decision makers. Technical measures like query speed, storage efficiency, or system availability matter only if they enable those business results. They are not pursued as standalone goals.
• Maintain tight control over scope and priorities. Ensure every data source, table, transformation, or governance process incorporated into the EDW is linked to a documented business requirement. This requirement must be prioritised and endorsed by business representatives. Endorsement often occurs through a data governance forum or demand prioritisation process. Requests driven purely by IT convenience, architectural consistency, speculative compliance needs, or vague future possibilities are deferred or excluded. This approach prevents unnecessary complexity, escalates costs, and delays the delivery of real value.
• Keep the warehouse aligned through ongoing business involvement. Put in place simple, business-led mechanisms. Use regular demand reviews. Implement prioritised backlogs managed with business product owner roles. Track the realised value. These actions ensure the EDW adapts promptly as priorities evolve due to new market conditions. They also respond to regulatory shifts, competitive pressures, or changes in strategy. They remain closely connected to what the organisation actually requires at any given time.

By consistently applying this business demand-driven focus, organisations avoid many common shortcomings of enterprise data warehouse initiatives. These shortcomings include projects that exceed budgets. Timelines are often surpassed. Additionally, systems with low user adoption fail to address the right issues. Warehouses can also become costly legacy burdens rather than powerful strategic tools. In the end, it positions the EDW as a genuine enabler of sharper decision-making. It strengthens competitive positioning. It also provides demonstrable financial returns.

Many thanks for reading.

_😺  Click for the last 100 Good Strat articles _😺