Business Intelligence Solutions
Data Environment Review
While companies may differ widely on their IT investments and priorities, there is one area that all agree is highly important: integrity of the data environment. After all, if the data can’t be trusted or accessed, what good is it?
By engaging PLA to perform a Data Environment Review at your site, you will have specific recommendations on how your environment can be improved. We will work with your team to perform a comprehensive assessment of your environment to pinpoint the location of any data quality issues, identify and define problems of data distribution and publication, highlight areas where excessive time is spent manually gathering data from multiple systems, and provide recommendations for improvement. The review can be focused on known problem areas or to proactively identify issues before they impact your organization.
PLA's comprehensive approach includes
Your Data Architecture, Technical Architecture, Operations and Procedures, and Business Requirements. For each of these areas, we will gather and analyze information and propose alternative solutions, including tactical, quick-hit improvements and long-term, strategic initiatives. From there, your organization can directly initiate projects to close any gaps in your environment.
Master Data Management
Many large organizations today, especially those growing through mergers and acquisitions, have their critical data assets spread across numerous disparate source systems with no means to uniquely identify their master data dimensions. Critical business questions like, “which products are the most profitable?”, “who are our top customers?”, “which vendors do we spend the most money with?” cannot be answered because there is no cleansed and consolidated enterprise view of master data like products, customers, vendors, etc. They exist within each of their respective, sometimes redundant, source systems but there is no easy way for the business to tie this master data together with the corresponding transactions (invoices, purchase orders, inventory, orders, etc) for analysis.
The goal of PLA’s Master Data Management (MDM) solution is to provide immediate value to the business by combining each master dimension rollout with a corresponding reporting solution, at the same time building the underlying MDM architecture to support long term goals. The MDM architecture can be integrated with an existing Data Warehouse (DW) environment or designed to include both DW and MDM.
We begin by partnering with the business and IT to define the organization’s MDM strategy. This strategy identifies the dimensional data that is spread across multiple source systems and would provide the most business value if there was a single, enterprise-wide view. These master dimensions are then prioritized by the business and organized into a phased implementation plan. PLA’s vast experience in Data, ETL/EAI and Reporting Architectures ensures your MDM project will not only provide value to the business but support the long term master data needs of your organization.
For more information regarding any of these solutions, please contact Steve Taeyaerts.