Can you name the major health insurer saved over $250,000 and reduced the mortality rate from 4% to 1% for heart-bypass patients using their network providers by using data warehousing?

Can you guess what major provider of communications equipment just about paid for their data warehouse the first time they used it because it allowed them to spot a $10 Million billing error? Decision support systems offer significant business value and demonstrable return on investment. You need to know the answers to these and other. Plus, you'll receive insights into what to ask when buying a data warehousing system and other critical success factors for these very large database systems, which are used to support business critical decision support. Decision support systems have been around for a long time, but data warehousing is a relatively new term to many. Because a well-implemented data warehouse provides significant strategic advantages, all vendors are claiming they can support data warehousing. The truth, though, is that many of them are supporting only rudimentary decision support systems, and many of them are having trouble with this relatively straightforward task. While it appears a daunting task, a properly executed Data Warehouse offers the best of all worlds. It allows business users to fully exploit all available information, it allows them to adapt and survive. It provides the lowest support costs and the lowest long-term hardware costs. Data Basements and Data Junkyards, however, are extremely tactical and shortsighted implementation methods. While they will provide some immediate relief, they will quickly demonstrate severe limitations. Flexibility will be limited: Only specific questions can be addressed. Timeliness will be lost: All new lines of questioning will require entire new systems be architected and built. They will be costly: The cost of additional hardware, software, infrastructure, and support will quickly strip away the initial gains. They will ultimately be impossible to support.

Building an effective Data Warehouse is no job for a novice. Find an experienced vendor, with a solid, mature, proven platform, and work closely with them. Especially if you're just starting your first data warehouse project, be careful; there are a lot of unsupportable claims being made. There have been a lot of failures out there. By checking references closely, you can help ensure that you are the next success. This talk will include examples of the kinds of questions you'll need to ask (or wish you had!).

Mark is currently at NCR Government Systems where he is a Senior Industry Consultant and Systems Architect on a variety of Treasury and related projects. These include the new IRS Electronic Management System and various IRS data warehousing projects. Mark also holds a number of patents and patents pending in the areas of imaging, recognition, and other technologies.