Case Study Chapter6 : Foundation of Business Intelligence : Database and information management

1. Discuss the role of information policy, data administration, and efforts to ensure data quality in improving data management at American Water.
 

• Developing a database environment requires policies and procedures.
• Maintenance, distribution, and use information in improving data management at American Water.
• Data administration - responsible for information policies, as well as for data planning, data dictionary development, and monitoring data usage.
• Identifying, incorrect, inaccurate and irrelevant pieces of data. 

2. Describe roles played by information systems specialists and end users in American Water’s systems transformation project.

• To determine precisely which pieces of data from the old system will be used in the new system and which data do not need to be brought over.
• Support an enterprise wide business intelligence program based on a single view of the business.
• Migrate the data from American Water’s old systems to the new platform.
• SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence enables business users to view, sort and analyze business intelligence data.
• It includes generating queries, reports and interactive dashboards.

 3. Why was the participation of business users so important? If they didn’t play this role, what would have happened?
 

• They (American Water) want to expand the business to the next level.
• To achieve that goal.
• The data cleansing processes also would be worthless.

  
4. How did implementing a data warehouse help American Water move toward a more centralized organization?

• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system designed to replace disparate systems with a single integrated software platform.
• Migrate the data from American Water’s old systems to the new platform.
• Data migration entails much more than just transferring data between old and new systems.
• SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence.
• Data cleansing required.  

 
5. Give some examples of problems that would have occurred at American Water if its data were not “clean”?
 
- Difficult to manage. 
- Software system could not handle the required regulatory controls

 6. How would American Water’s data warehouse improve operations and management decision making?
 

• SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence, set of tools that enables business users to view, sort, and analyse business intelligence data. It also include tools for generating queries, reports and interactive dashboards.

• IBM Operational Decision Manager, a full-featured, easy-to-use platform for capturing, automating and governing frequent, repeatable business decisions.