Previously, we introduced a model of the business intelligence (BI) life-cycle with four main stages: Capture, Process, Consume, and Archive. This article deals with the Process stage of the life-cycle.
Just as a factory processes raw material into items that consumers can use, the next step in our data life cycle processes the raw data we have captured into business intelligence data that business owners, managers and other knowledge workers can use. Depending on the size and complexity of the business, this may be as simple as getting the data from a print spool, reformatting it a little and loading it into something like a Microsoft Access database (think back to “Real-World Story #1”). Or it may require a much more industrial-strength solution, especially if the data are captured in many different places.
Why process the data in the first place? Remember the “integrated and coordinated” part of our definition of business intelligence. We want our data to be consistent and a major objective of the processing step is to make sure that we can compare apples to apples across every part of the business. And if you get that step right, it makes actually working with the data a lot easier down the line.
The next article introduces the heart of business intelligence, consuming the data.
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