The previous material has introduced some basic BI concepts. The following list briefly summarizes what we’ve discussed over the past month or so.
1. BI data have a distinct lifecycle that consists of Capture, Processing, Consumption, and Archival.
2. The more accurately and precisely data are captured at the beginning of the lifecycle, the less work will need to be done in processing later.
3. BI data should be maintained separately from daily transaction data if at all possible.
4. Data integration and governance processes are critical to getting the most out of your firm’s business intelligence. These processes may be formal or informal, but ignore them at your peril.
5. The key to ensuring that steps 3 and 4 are executed properly is extraction, transformation, and loading of data (ETL) from the transaction system where the data are captured to the data warehouse or other data store where they will be consumed.
6. Your choices for consuming data are conditioned on the kinds of questions you want to ask and how you want to interact with the data.
7. Humans interact with data in one or more of five ways: producing, reviewing, investigating, monitoring, and extrapolating (PRIME).
8. Archival policy for BI data may be driven mainly by legal or tax considerations, but one may also wish to consider the strategic and time value (“freshness”) of the data.
Moving forward we'll be examining a number of business intelligence concepts and trends in more detail. Also, I'll be updating this blog a bit less frequently. I hope to post two to three times per week instead of Monday through Friday.
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