Data Warehouse Design Solutions

KEY BUSINESS TERMS

Account. An account is a defined entity of financial importance to a business. Transactions are recorded against accounts. Examples of accounts include a corporate checking account, line of credit, salaries, vacation, and taxes. The chart of accounts for any business is the current set of valid accounts against which transactions may be recorded. Accounts are categorized as either balance sheet accounts or income statement accounts.

Anonymous Transaction. An anonymous transaction is a sale that cannot be associated with an individual, named customer. Despite the efforts of many businesses to improve the collection of customer information, a majority of retail transactions are still anonymous.

The anonymous transaction has important implications in any business attempting to measure customer activity. For example, a grocery store may be able to identify buying habits for customers using credit/debit cards. Should the store make decisions about marketing, pricing, or promotions based on this information? What if these customers only represent 20 percent of register tickets and 25 percent of total sales?

Basic Product. The lowest commonly shared instance of a product offered by a company, with an agreed identifier and a common set of attributes. For a book publisher, the basic product is a book by an author in a specific form, like hardcover, paperback, tape, or CD-ROM. This is a different concept than the combination of author and title. For the Editorial department, ...