the data warehouse

In many cases all related information is first centralised and cleansed in a central data storage, the data warehouse. This is not a mandatory process but it helps the development of centralised reporting tremendously. By centralising the information, only one version of the truth exists on which all reporting is based. DWH is also characterised by the option it holds for reporting on historical data, thus recreating situations that existed in the past like an inventory status at a certain point in time.

Integration

The goal of the integration process is to combine related information from all data sources and departments within the entire organisation. This standardisation will lead to for example one customer list, one employees list and one single view on the global inventory. A crucial step that will guarantee people looking at one single version of the truth.

Transformation

This is the process of extracting the data from the sources and transforming this into the required form, format and quality. One major activity is the data cleansing that will improve the quality of the data. The quality of the data is crucial for the success of BI projects and needs great attention in order to meet user expectations.