The recession is here…
And the cost cutting season has begun. We know the drill: across the board budget cuts, new projects delayed, the organization chart de-layered, voluntary retirement packages and, of course, reduction in force and severance packages.
This is not just an exercise in reigning in escalating costs. The more agile organizations also take such opportunities to align their corporate workforce to the new realities of their business and acquire new employees with the skills that are more suited to their  core competencies and evolving business focus.
This brings into focus …

I presented at New England Oracle Applications User Group conference this month on how to build a flexible BI infrastructure if you have Oracle Applications and, have licenses for Daily Business Intelligence. I did the project using Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (erstwhile Siebel Analytics), but in reality, you can use this approach with virtually any BI tool from Business Objects, Cognos or any other. Financials, HR and the Distribution Modules (OM, Inventory, PO) are the easiest to implement.
If you want more details on all the fact and dimension tables for these modules, …

Years back, in an Oracle user conference, I saw this very pithy slide:
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Let’s admit it. Most of us who have been in this field for a while have had the sad experience of seeing the latter outcome some time during our careers. Failed projects are harsh realities that most organizations face. We, professionals, learn from these failed initiatives, and apply the knowledge to detect problems early and remedy them effectively.

I have earlier talked about the merits of an agile, customer-focused approach to a data warehouse greatly enhances the chances of success for the project. In this post, I will outline a plan to staff such a project and how to get things started.
Christening
Hopefully, before embarking on a data warehouse initiative, you have done ample due diligence to form the basis and business justification for such a project. You have probably identified the key benefits you want to derive and the most important business questions you want to answer. You …

Prove the numbers. No one in the enterprise is as concerned as Finance to prove the numbers correct. Disparities and inaccuracies in financial numbers not only present a distorted picture of organizational performance, they also carry the threat of huge regulatory consequences. That is why, even before Finance starts using the data warehouse for analysis, they validate and reconcile the details with the different sub-ledgers to prove that the summaries indeed tie to the details. This task is not trivial and if business rules are not vetted and understood well …