Analytical work would not be possible without data that is reliable and organized. Data Management includes data warehouses and data preparation to join, structure and clean data.
A data warehouse is a central repository of integrated data from one or many sources and is the link between the underlying data and the BI application being used to perform analyses and create reports. A well-structured data warehouse is essential for carrying out analyses and producing reports with short lead times.
A data warehouse can accumulate information from several source systems, link it together, perform calculations, clean data and assure the quality in a structured way before it is consumed in a BI solution, for example.
In our experience there are two ways of setting up a proper data warehouse. Both have advantages depending on the individual situation and circumstances:
As the number of external data sources increases, many enterprises need a seamless way of importing, merging and preparing different kinds of data sources. The field of self-service data preparation has experienced strong growth in recent years. Examples of applications include combining sales data from the ERP system with population statistics per geographical area or scanning weather data to plan retail campaigns. Advectas uses Alteryx for data preparation, one of the leading platforms in the field. After the data is prepared, Alteryx has ready-to-use connections to the most common BI systems for further analysis.
