Investing in data warehouses and business intelligence initiatives is an absolute necessity if you want to master your data.

Insights from data can be used to establish a competitive advantage if your organization has efficient tools and skills to learn, monitor, and adapt to this vast data. There are diverse and dynamic solutions available depending on the needs of your organization.

If you are on the lookout to invest in data warehousing and business intelligence initiatives, here are some important questions that you should ask before investing.

1. Have you performed your due diligence and research?
   No solution is right and perfect for your organization. Your due diligence, and prior research before you reach out to a vendor who will help you in this regard is an important prerequisite to have a basic understanding of whether the solution has the features and functions you are looking for.
2. Are your requirements, challenges, and opportunities defined?
   If you are looking forward to having data warehousing or a business intelligence solution in place, you will need to note the key requisites of the solution, along with a fair estimation of the challenges and opportunities you will face in the process. It is important to understand that the data warehouse does not guarantee immediate results and you are bound to face failure or challenges along the way, and that the need is to make the failure short and quick.
3. Do you have a value-driven vision and strategy roadmap?
   It will be difficult to proceed without hurdles in the journey of data warehouse in the absence of a roadmap based on your key vision statement. You need to have quality data and know-how to derive results from it. Jot down your challenges, define your objectives, determine your abilities, lay down your course of action, narrow down your key initiatives, and create a roadmap for your Credit Union which entails all these factors.
4. How are you defining and monitoring your measurements?
   Data warehouse drives value and impact. It is primary to know how to define such measures and how to monitor them. Some measures, for example, can involve questions like – Is your organization regulatory complied?, Have you been successful in reducing certain costs? What kinds of experiences are being delivered to the members?
   
5. How are you adjusting and adapting to your data insights and outputs?
   More important than having data warehouse and business intelligence solutions is knowing how to adjust and adapt the initiatives of your organization to these insights and outputs which have been derived from this data, as a value-driven approach as possible. Are you able to report and present these insights in a manner through which different departments can act on it?

Selecting a perfect data warehouse and business intelligence solution, direct you towards the end results of your initiatives. Join our upcoming free webinar around “Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence - Opportunities and Challenges” that will provide you perspectives from credit union leaders around different data warehouse technologies.