Month 03: Enterprise Data Management
Goal: My goal is to receive familiarities with the programs and tools I need to start to master the task.
Strategies & Tactics: Lynda.com- Exploring databases and database management system
The month has ended and I’m finally finished with my third month Enterprise Data Management. My goal in the beginning of the course was to familiarize myself with programs and tools I need to know about, as I complete this course I can say I have accomplished this milestone. Each week discussion Professor Horn-Yeu Shiaw had us research different vendors, learn the prices of a few of them and compare them to each other. I enjoyed each week discussion, it made me get out of my comfort zone and search for vendors I never knew existed and that will support our Data Warehouse.
Each week assignments we were able to implement what we learn from the week and show how it will help the company we’ve chosen for our final capstone. Some of the information I learned in Enterprise Data Management was Business Requirements and Data Realities. This was an eye opener because this is the beginning of it all. You must sit down with the organization and conduct a detailed interview. This will set myself up for success as an analysis. Collecting the right information will help me focus on the right issues and problems the organizations are experiencing. Once this has been established, I can move forward to step two Dimensional Design Process. This gave me an opportunity to dig deep into the industry and come up with the four key decisions to create a dimensional model for Pottery Barn.
1. Select the business process
2. Declare the grain
3. Identify the dimensions
4. Identify the facts
This part of the course was interesting and I did enjoy it. I chose to do my capstone on Pottery Barn a retail store, so the time I was at work I would think about how Business Intelligence help this organization. When we had to work on creating a Fact Table and come up with dimensions to support the table it made me feel like an analysis. We learned about business processes and the steps a business have to grow through to accomplish a sale or transaction to increase revenue. This gave me a wide understanding on how business intelligence plays a huge part in retail stores when improving their system.
We had to focus on fact measurements and come up with an issue that a fact table will support decision makers to understand what the data is reflecting on. Declaring the grain helped me understand how it will support my creation of dimension I want to focus on. This month I've learned a couple of star schemas and OLAP Cubes and how they are important in the BI process and their responsibilities. All the hands on projects, tutorials and articles I’ve read has made me comfortable to talk about how BI process will work in an organization
As I finish this course I can definitely say I have a better understanding what business intelligence and the process it has to take to be effective for an organizations. I’ve learned the difference of BI and business analyst and how different they are from each other this will prepare me when I start looking for an intern or a sales position with a vendor (Oracle or SAP). My vocabulary and knowledge on the industry has improved and confident level has increased where I can confidently to talk about BI and how it can affect organization ROI and business growth.