Can't See the Wood for the Trees

Many companies we have dealt with decide to implement a full MIS solution after many years of neglect, however, where on earth do they start? After all there are loads of technologies out there with snazzy front-ends, dashboards, scorecards - you name it.

To me the critical thing is designing the data warehouse correctly, in a well designed star or snowflake schema. So very often these projects are split onto phases whereby the datawarehouse is designed and built first. Some power users may even be given read access to this database to implement their own queries - this needs to be controlled carefully.

The next phase would take into consideration how the data should be presented, what reports should be deliverded and how, and also what KPIs will be displayed and to whom. My next blog will discuss current technologies and best practice for presenting an MIS solution.