Monday, January 22, 2001		Article

Data warehousing in nascent stage
By Sumesh Raizada

IT would not be wrong if we describe IT as Internet and Telecommunication. These two words, in recent years, have contributed to the phenomenal growth of many organisations and have also affected the lifestyle. Today there is a need to remain competitive and profitable. This has also been necessitated by the entry of several multinational companies. In order to remain ahead of the competitors, each enterprise, public or private, is in the process of automation.

Each day, new concept in IT is evolved and the same is implemented by the organisations for making themselves more efficient and productive. Most careers in this field are based on and around the Web, in software and hardware industry. However, there are certain careers in IT applications, which are highly relevant in the engineering, finance or marketing organisations. Data warehousing is one such application, which is applied in almost every industry, whether banking, consumer goods, media, service or health care.

Data warehousing has helped several leading companies in taking effective decisions regarding their product or service, pricing, promotion as well as distribution. It has also been utilised successfully by some governments in departments like power, irrigation, transport and civil supplies. In view of competition, companies are now adopting this for improving their services by gathering maximum possible data on customer profile and factors that influence their buying behaviour. Data warehousing is a systematic collection of information and data, which is usually permanent in nature. Data warehouse is an electronic data storage that collects information from several distinct sources, and then filter those information to the user-specific requirement. The data is usually in different formats and is converted automatically into uniform and consistent formats. One can most commonly define data warehouse as subject-oriented, integrated, non-volatile, time variant, collection of data that is used in the support of management’s decision process. In insurance, banking or healthcare, information is stored on the basis of individual customer or patients’ profiles. This helps banks and insurance companies to immediately find out their most successful schemes and policies among the customers. Their data warehouse compiles data on policies, schemes, loan transactions, various accounts, premiums paid and then segregate these in terms of subjects and customers. This classified information helps management in understanding data demographically and geographically. Similarly, data warehouse from different health centres and hospitals on patient profiles, helps management in arranging medicines and other equipment in advance. In pharmaceutical firms, it is applied in planning their optimum production, pricing and supply of their medicines.

In data warehouse, current and past data is stored for the purpose of understanding past trends and forecasting demand for the particular product or service. Even if some data is generated in different applications at various locations, it automatically gets integrated into a single common format. Data warehousing provides management and executives with relevant financial as well as business information and timely decisions so made helps improving productivity and quality. Data warehousing is extremely useful in organizations, which have business or services spread over vast geographical locations.

A data warehouse application is broadly classified into three stages:

For designing a data warehouse model, a subject is defined specific to a particular department like finance, marketing, personnel or specific to a product, customer and service. For data acquisition and transformation, several leading companies like Microsoft, Oracle, etc have developed software that is applied for transformation of data into user-specific module. Finally, just like in a library, as we have a catalogue giving quick information on a particular book or a subject, the data warehouse has metadata which gives details of how an information is stored in it. Finally, data warehouse provides exploitation tools so that the information compiled in it is properly analysed by the user. OLAP or On line Analytical Processing is one such tool which is widely used in data warehousing

There are, at present, more than two-dozen consultants and software providers in our country, who are undertaking data warehousing projects in varied fields. These are DSS consultants, Wipro, Cognos (IIS Infotech), TCS, C-DAC, NIIT, NIC, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP India, besides others. Data warehousing is also utilised in areas like fraud detection or supply chain management. Almost every industry, including petroleum, consumer goods, telecommunication, fertilisers, readymade garments, is applying data warehousing to streamline their operations.

Some companies, which are bearing fruits of successfully implementing it are Star TV, C-Marc India, a pharma research firm, SmithKline Beecham, Citibank, ACC, Pepsi, Godrej-GE, etc. Besides above, many government and semi-government enterprises like RBI, SBI, IDBI, ICICI Bank and the National Stock Exchange have also joined the race keeping in view the increased competition. The Andhra Pradesh Government, by implementing the data warehousing in its several departments has proved beyond doubts the importance and benefits, it provides for decision makers.

For prospective candidates, a vast career scope exists considering that the data warehousing is still in its evolutionary stage in our country. Those who are pursuing business management and have proficiency in computer programming or MCA, or software engineers are best suited for job opportunities in different functional area of data warehousing. With several software companies also providing certified courses on data warehousing solutions, one can get a lucrative career in various companies after passing out these courses. The consultants also employ persons and train them in-house on their packages. These trained professionals are then required to work on implementation projects in the client organisations. Those having experience in a particular data warehousing package can get employment in the companies, banks or departments where those packages are in operation. Salaries earned by these professionals are enormous considering their wide application in almost every industry and the shortage of trained professionals. Once experienced, a data warehousing professional can get rewarding opportunities throughout the world.

Professionals in this field can be employed as data warehouse architect, who is accountable for the design, development and implementation of data warehouse package. They also work as data warehouse analyst, software engineer, etc. The job, however, requires continuous travelling and long working hours, as it is mainly project based.