Data Warehousing For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Chapter 21. The View from the Executive Boardroom

In This Chapter

• Telling top management what they need to hear

• Analyzing data warehousing business trends

• Deciding whether data warehousing in a cross-company setting can work

• Getting your organization connected from executive to front line worker

I'll try to say this gently and not upset you too much (it has to be said): Executive management doesn't care one iota about data warehousing.

You might think, "This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Why, just last week, both our chief operating officer and chief financial officer said that the two data warehousing projects that are under way are two of the most important IT initiatives in the corporation. How could anyone have the audacity to say that executive management doesn't care about data warehousing?"

They don't. It's that simple. They do care about the business value a successful data warehousing project delivers. To be blunt, if your company had done a better job in the past of implementing and managing its information systems and applications, it wouldn't need data warehousing projects, at least the way you're probably doing them or are about to do them (such as copying massive amounts of — mostly — poor-quality data into another database, trying your best to clean up that data, or handling ridiculous situations such as product codes sorted alphabetically in one application and numerically in another).

Just try to pontificate to executive management about the wonders of data ...