Sherwin-Williams' Data Mart Strategy: Creating Intelligence Across the Supply Chain

Abstract

Companies can build a data warehouse using a top-down or a bottom-up approach, and each has its advantages and disadvantages. With the top-down approach, a project team creates an enterprise data warehouse that combines data from across the organisation, and end-user applications are developed after the warehouse is in place. This strategy is likely to result in a scaleable data warehouse, but like most large IT projects, it is time consuming, expensive, and may fail to deliver benefits within a reasonable timeframe. (continued)