Data Warehouse Design
This is the centralisation of the various information scattered all over the company. It is a collection of “data marts” in which all information is kept in a conformed and standardised way. Moreover, it can keep track of historical situations of the company by archiving the changes of the data.
The data are kept in several star-scheme models, this is called the dimensional star-scheme approach. For each star, there is one (sometimes more) central table with facts (numerical data like sales, inventory and purchase information) that is surrounded by several dimension tables (holding e.g. customer records, employee information, general ledger accounts, etc...).
Extraction, Transformation and Loading
Data is transferred from source (or legacy) systems to the central data warehouse. These source systems can be ERP systems (like SAP and Oracle Applications), CRM applications (like SIEBEL), or any other application that was written for the company and that is held in databases, spreadsheets or other.
The ETL (Extraction, Load and Transformation) process takes out the data from the sources, transforms it into the needed format, removes the dirty data and loads it into the data warehouse. This is done with ETL tools, or by tailored code that is written by ETL experts. These loads happen in batches, overnight. If there's a need for data exchange between databases on the moment data is created, it's called EAI, a messaging service that propagates the data on the moment it appears.
CPM products
BinMotion can build on many experienced developers in a variety of CPM products like Cognos, Business Objects, Microsoft and others. Typically, these are reporting, analysis, dashboard and planning tools.