What are some of the factors that influence an organization's satisfaction with its data warehouse?

What are some of the factors that influence an organization's satisfaction with its data warehouse?

Evan Levy's Answer:

1. User self-sufficiency with data. The ability of business users to answer questions (and take actions) without IT support (i.e., user self sufficiency)
2. Supporting business action. The ability for an organization to take action to address a business situation knowing there is data to support that decision.
3. Management's perception of the financial benefits. Ultimately, the data warehouse needs to support the business in one of two ways: generating new revenue or reducing costs. Specific business experiences or successes are always valuable.
   

Danette McGilvray's Answer: Let's define the phrase "organization's satisfaction" to mean "customer satisfaction." While an organization could be seen as the customer, the real customers of the data warehouse are the actual people who use the data from the warehouse to make decisions and do their jobs. The question becomes "how satisfied are those customers who use the data warehouse?" I use the word customers instead of users to focus attention on the fact that the individual knowledge workers have to be satisfied in order for the organization to be satisfied. So what factors influence the individual customer's satisfaction?

Usage - Who is actually using the data warehouse? How many? How often? For what purposes?
Understanding - Do the knowledge workers know how to use the warehouse? Do they know what data is available to them? Do they have a correct understanding of the data available to them? Do they know how to use the data in their jobs?
Relevance - Does the data warehouse contain the information the knowledge workers need to do their jobs?
Accessibility - Is the data easy to access? Do they know how to access the data? Timeliness - Is the data updated in a timely manner that meets the needs of the data warehouse customers?
Quality - Do the knowledge workers trust the data? Does the quality of the data in the warehouse meet their requirements? Is the data in the warehouse an accurate reflection of the real world and transactions that are feeding the warehouse?
Training and Documentation - Were the knowledge workers trained in all factors of the data warehouse discussed above? Do they need follow-up training? Is documentation accessible, up to date and easy to understand? The bottom line factor is
Usefulness - Does the data warehouse help the knowledge workers make better decisions and do their jobs more effectively? Is it meeting their requirements and expectations?

Keep in mind that there are several types of customer who use the data warehouse: They could fall into the following broad categories: power users - technically sophisticated analysts, business analysts and casual users who use the data warehouse only occasionally. Other customers may never access the data directly themselves, but use the data that others have accessed for them. Different types of customers may have different levels of satisfaction. There is another aspect of satisfaction and that is from the support point of view - those who obtain data, load data, support the hardware and software, etc. Are those who are supporting the data warehouse satisfied with how the data warehouse is operating? Are those receiving support satisfied? Go back to the original project charter - Is the data warehouse fulfilling the original requirements? Did the requirements change and did the data warehouse change to meet the new requirements?

Les Barbusinski's Answer: The key factors to user and management satisfaction with any data warehousing or business intelligence solution are as follows (in order of importance):

• Relevance
• Reliability
• Accuracy
• Performance
• Ease of Use
• Flexibility
• Cost Effectiveness

Relevance means that the data warehouse, data mart, dashboard or BI application performs a significant service for the target department, business unit or enterprise (i.e. it fulfills a business need). Reliability means that the DW/BI application is regularly available during normal business hours, and behaves in a predictable manner (i.e., it does not exhibit frequent aborts or experience serious and/or chronic downtime). Accuracy means that the application presents a complete and correct picture of whatever portions of the enterprise it measures (i.e., users feel comfortable making serious business decisions based on the information contained in the data warehouse). Performance means that the application's ETL and reporting processes perform their tasks in a timely and efficient manner (i.e., it does not keep the users waiting). Ease of use means that the online interface to the data warehouse (usually a portal with embedded BI and reporting functions) is intuitive, easy to navigate and allows users to become productive quickly. Flexibility means that the information content and/or analytic capabilities of the data warehouse can be easily extended and/or modified to keep up with evolving business needs. And finally, cost effectiveness means that new releases of the DW/BI application exhibit a high-level of ROI, and on-going maintenance costs are reasonable and reflective of the business benefit provided by the application. Hope this helps.

Sid Adeleman's Answer: The factors are:

• Data quality
• Performance Availability
• User support
• Comfort with the BI tool
• Ability to respond to new requests

However, the most important factors relate to the organization's expectations and to the degree those expectations are fulfilled. This means that these expectations must be managed early and often.

It's important that you regularly measure satisfaction so you know what needs fixing. I suggest you measure three or four time each year. This is a user satisfaction survey taken from the book Data Warehouse Project Management by Sid Adelman and Larissa Moss.

Note: To increase the percentage of questionnaires returned, bribes and guilt can be useful. Movie passes, tickets to sports events or entry in a drawing will increase the number of responses. You can either clip the movie passes to the questionnaire (guilt approach) or send the passes when the questionnaires are returned. Some users will want to remain anonymous or they may nor be so condid if their identity is known and so clipping the bribe to the questionnaire is more appropriate.

This is an example of an assessment form.

Larissa Moss' Answer: A data warehouse is well received and continuously funded when the business community knows (has measured results) that the data warehouse has greatly increased the speed and quality of information used by the business community to make better and faster decisions about its business. That means that all data warehouse projects (and deliverables) must support the company's expressed business goals, and that data warehouse usage to achieve those goals is measurable and measured. It also means that data warehouse usage is deeply embedded into the business operations as a critical component to running and managing the business. This involves increased user participation before, during, and after the construction of the data warehouse deliverables. When users participate actively in building the data warehouse, they become intimately familiar with its components (data elements, data quality, ETL process, OLAP capabilities, etc.). This facilitates user ownership of the data warehouse, training of how to use the data warehouse, promoting the data warehouse. Bottom line, the two critical factors are: supporting a stated business goal and user participation in all aspects of each project.