Implementing a data warehouse at Inglis Innovative Services.

Data warehouses, data marts, and data mining have been hot topics in the 1990s, offering the promise of a vault of corporate data ripe for decision making. As is true with all promising technologies, the key issue is how to get started. Implementation of a corporate data warehouse involves a lot more than spending a huge amount of money on hardware, software, and consultants. Successful implementation of a data warehouse involves a corporate treasure hunt--identifying and cataloging data. It involves data ownership, data integrity, and business process analysis to determine what the data are, who owns them, how reliable they are, and how they are processed. Finally, implementation of the warehouse drives the issue of how good the decisions are that are based on the information in the warehouse. This article presents a case study of how one healthcare facility dealt with the challenges of implementing a data warehouse.