DBM 460 Week 2 Part One Business and Management Scenario issue New

Business and Management Scenario

Scenario

The infrastructure at Lafleur Trading Company and business is not able to uphold the business environment for the company. Many of Laflelur’sdepartment’s problems are not being fixed because of the business’s current business infrastructure. These problems have affected the business process more often that is resulting in losses to the company. The problems have created one obstacle after another and have prevented the company to move forward on business ideas that would make them more competitive. The most impact these problems is having on is their ability to “increase sales” which is a common problem across all the department of the company; this prevents them from coordinating the ability for business growth.

Sales

The sale’s activity lacks consistency for any of Lafleur’s departments. This is all dependent on the market demand and the quality of their product the company maintains. At times the demand will be high during special occasions and season. When these high demands happen, the company will have to increase their production to meet these demands and to make their product available in a timely manner. All departments are included in the business process and are mobilized to assist in increasing production to fulfill the demands of the market. But one negative factor that affects the increasing of sales is that the departments are not able keep a constant relationship when it comes to sales. With the increase of sales, it is difficult for all the departments to hold a consistency of the sales data with the current infrastructure. The current infrastructure has supported some level of maintenance of the sales data but it’s effectiveness of the maintenance level of the sales data is less than acceptable.

Data Warehouse

In order to overcome the problem of the increasing of sales, an implementation plan of a data warehouse technology can be put in place to handle the data in a more efficient manner. A data warehouse is a mature technology for databases that utilizes the data to analyses and reporting based on the results of analysis. In is simplest terms, it’s a depository system that integrates all the data from several sources.

Additionally, a data warehouse can also store historical for analysis as well as current (operational) data that can be used for management to monitor at any given time. The data can be uploaded to the data warehouse system from any operational system of the company. Data warehouse technology can rectify the problem Lafleur is having of increasing sales by segmenting the data.

Architecture

Data warehousing architecture creates two data storage places, historical storage and current storage (Coronel, Morris, & Rob, 2011). Historical storage data is archived and saved for analysis and won’t be used in the production environment. Should management ever need historical data to make any business decisions based on the results of the analysis, the data will be available at any time. Current (operational) data storage stores data related to the business operation side of the house. Current data records operational or immediate transaction that is occurring during a sale.

Historical data and current data will be integrated to other operation systems of the company to enable it to compare the data before retrieving the data and adding it to the data warehouse storage device. Data can possibly be passed through other operational database from additional operation systems to benefit a much more reliable output for the user. Additionally, data federation and/or data visualization methodologies can be used to collect data from other departments and merge them with the sales data to integrate and create a relationship between the department’s data.

Project Planning

A key role to the success of the project will be project planning. Project planning is a discipline that governs how the project will be completed within a certain time, phases, and what resources are used. In order to make the project successful, a well-defined project plan must be put in place and adhered to. To implement the data warehouse architecture project, various activities need to be included in the project plan. Four elements will be included in the project planning, setting objectives, identifying deliverables, scheduling, and making supporting plans.

Objective

An implementation of a successful data warehouse system for the sales department of the companyis the objective of the project. Additionally, this avoids data integrity loss during the peak when increased sales are at its highest in the company.

Deliverables

Deliverables must be identified by the project team for each phase of the project. Members of the team must fully understand what the final outcome of the projects should be. Each member’s goal should be the same and that is to successfully implement a data warehouse for the sales department of the company.

Scheduling

Scheduling will be the most challenging in the project because of the necessary requirements of the project. The thumb of rule is that a set time period will be allocated for each phase of the data warehouse project. With these set time period slots each team member must ensure that their assigned tasks are completed according to their time slot.

Supporting Plans

The supporting plans will be introduced during the implementation phase. This will help increase the work efficiency of the project team which will result in a well delivered data warehouse implementation plan. Supporting plans are usually made by the more seasoned and expert members of the team so they can provide their expertise and guide lines to the members of the company.

Project Management

Managing a project and its activities is a task that can be challenging for Lafleur Trading Company. The data warehouse project should include an efficient project manager who can coordinate tasks across the whole workflow of the project that accommodates the different business requirements of the project (Coronel, Morris, & Rob, 2011).

The project manager has the responsibility of capturing all the business requirements of the project and guides the team effectively to achieve a successful project outcome. During all phases of the project, the project manager needs to check team member’s skill level capability and efficiency to ensure proper skill sets are being used appropriately. Additionally, the project manager must focus on the all work activities of the project to ensure that the business requirements of the data warehouse project are being met.

One of the most important tasks for a project manager is time schedule. The project manager needs to have a time schedule for each phase of the project by analyzing the business requirements. Most important, the project manager must manage each team member’s time to ensure deadlines of the project are met.

Dimensional Model

The goal of the data warehouse architecture is to provide the user a good experience with all the requirements that was placed on the project from the sales department. The data warehouse will function without the interference of OLTP systems. More importantly, the architecture will allow the repository of consistent data. Any complex query will be answered quickly and efficiently by the system. This architecture is completely based on dimensional modeling which in turn provides the efficient functionality of the data. The architecture is mainly focused on the sales activity of the company by opening the historical data storage facility to the sales department. The dimensional model is an important element in the design of the warehouse architecture so it is essential that all of the requirements are gathered beforehand. It is also important to identify the number of users who will participate in the sales process of the company. Another key point is that the company should give a clear and concise idea of the type of data that is going to be used for the sales activity in the company.

Communication is essential with the users and should not be an option. This will avoid any type of confusion or miscommunication in regards to the usage process. Using the requirements described, the dimensional model can be implemented and confront the basic needs of the sales department which will alsogive a basic idea that includes dimensions and facts. The dimension model will satisfy the requirements of the users and provide a simple access means.

The dimension model design of the data warehouse is architected to allow and support future additions easily. Additionally, the model design results in a relational database that supports OLAP cubes to efficiently give instant query results (Daniel,2011). In order to minimize data redundancy an OLTP system will be used, this will provide an effective validation mechanism for data that is inputted and efficiently support high volume transactions. The dimension model design can be picked based on the business requirements of the company as well of the volume of data usage.

Conclusion

In order to be competitive in the market Lafleur Trading Company must not only be competitive in the industry but must also stay abreast of how internal business processes are functioning. Without an efficient means of internal departments sharing information this can lead to slow business decision making which affects the business as a whole.

References

Coronel, C., Morris, S., & Rob, P. (2011). Database Systems: Design, Implementation, and

Management (9thed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning

Coronel, C., Morris, S., & Rob, P. (2011). Database Systems: Design, Implementation, and

Management (9thed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning

Daniel, H. (2011). Benefits Of OLAP Cubes. Retrieved from

http://benefitof.net/benefits-of-

olap-cubes/