Data Management
Data Management can loosely be defined as collecting, organizing, storing, and analyzing data with the purpose of delivering intelligence to the business. Accurate information plays an important role in the success of any company. Given that information is encapsulated in data itself, effective data management offers any organization an inherent competitive advantage. Organizations are, therefore, developing resources and systems to optimally manage their corporate data.
Company implement their data management processes by deploying various software applications, each designed to accomplish one (or more) part of the process, and integrating them to provide a seamless user experience across the data lifecycle.
The Data Management Process
The data management process begins with data collection: first, transactions are recorded in operational OLTP systems updated in real-time, and then the source data is cleaned and moved into a data warehouse using ETL tools (such as Informatica). Database vendors (such Teradata and Oracle) provide data warehouses for data storage. Data modeling is the process by which the data warehouse is organized. The architecture of the data creates a data model and serves as the foundation for reporting and analysis software; reporting tools are built on top of this holistic view of the business. Finally, this organized data is used by reporting and analysis tools (such as MicroStrategy) to extract critical insights (or business intelligence) and deliver them to business users for further action.
Data management requires many different processes and functions to be applied to the data so that an organization can maximize the value of the information contained within that data. In addition to data collection, ETL, and data modeling, a database management system provides ongoing data management at the database level. The database management system enables the development and adjustment of data models and data structures, the application of data integrity checking, data governance, and data security, and optimization of data loading, storage, moving and retrieval.
MicroStrategy software is a critical component of a data management process.
Of the number of topics that fall under the umbrella of data management, MicroStrategy software specializes in the subject area of reporting and analysis. MicroStrategy’s business intelligence reporting and analysis software is used by a number of Fortune 500 companies as a part of their data management system. Customers such as Lowe’s Companies use MicroStrategy to conduct sophisticated data analysis and make critical business decisions. As a company moves towards unifying data analysis across the enterprise, MicroStrategy software provides a sophisticated and an integrated platform to achieve this unified data management goal. MicroStrategy software participates in the reporting and analysis phase of the data management process, and partners with a number of vendors who provides tools that address other components of the data management process. Such partnerships improve the overall deployment and integration experience in establishing a company’s data management experience.
MicroStrategy software is designed to seamlessly handle analysis across an organizations large volumes of ever expanding data. Advanced technologies such as report caching and object re-use reduce report development and IT maintenance time drastically. Reports can be accessed from an interactive and intuitive WYSIWYG Web interface and are available for consumption anytime, anywhere from the Internet. Build advanced metrics using the software’s rich library of statistical and analytical functions to conduct sophisticated reporting and analysis. Get rich and full functionality software designed specifically towards the analysis part of a company’s data management system.