Chapter 6
Order Management
Order management consists of several critical business processes, including order, shipment, and invoice processing. These processes spawn metrics, such as sales volume and invoice reve*nue, that are key performance indicators for any organization that sells products or services to others. In fact, these foundation metrics are so crucial that DW/BI teams frequently tackle one of the order management processes for their initial implementation. Clearly, the topics in this case study transcend industry boundaries.
In this chapter we'll explore several different order management transactions, including the common characteristics and complications encountered when dimensionally modeling these transactions. We'll further develop the concept of an accumulating snapshot to analyze the order fulfillment pipeline from initial order to invoicing.
Chapter 6 discusses the following concepts:
- Bus matrix snippet for order management processes
- Orders transaction schema
- Fact table normalization considerations
- Role-playing dimensions
- Ship-to/bill-to customer dimension considerations
- Factors to determine if single or multiple dimensions
- Junk dimensions for miscellaneous flags and indicators versus alternative designs
- More on degenerate dimensions
- Multiple currencies and units of measure
- Handling of facts with different granularity
- Patterns to avoid with header and line item transactions
- Invoicing transaction schema with profit and loss facts
- Audit dimension
- Quantitative ...
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