Case 3: Henry Schein Inc.: The Business Value of a Data Warehouse

1. What are some of the key requirements for building a good data warehouse? Use Henry Schein Inc. as an example.

Key requirements would include:


• Ensuring data availability
• Involving key users throughout the whole project
• Ensure data quality.
• Relying on a pragmatic governance framework
• Determine on the front-end the information the potential business users need access to and the reports they want to see.
• Analyze the old paper reports and the condition of the data housed in the company’s core transaction system.
• Standardize transactional codes in order to produce reports needed.
• Developing and testing summary tables to make queries work faster.


2. What are the key software tools needed to construct and use a data warehouse?

• Data extraction software.
• User query and reporting software.
• Data transformation and loading software.




3. What is the business value of a data warehouse to Henry Schein? To any company?

• choose best customer.
• Determine which customers to target with special promotion offers.
• Determine which customers should be included in specific direct marketing efforts.
• Ability of a user to add more fields to reports as they are using the system.