This automation enables DWLM to empower IT to become more closely aligned to the changing needs of the business. In practice, this speeds up financial reporting and gives executives the information they need to enhance the performance management of key business elements, such as sales, marketing, supply, and logistics.

Even as the business changes, DWLM can be the means for obtaining reliable financial data – so allowing executives to better manage all aspects of their company. Should the company acquire and dispose of businesses, or reorganize product lines, its data warehouse as operated through DWLM can continue to evolve and adapt to the changes taking place.

DWLM can enable IT and the business to improve production of detailed market and customer segmentation, manage complex business models and product hierarchies, and manage products throughout their lifecycle. It gives both global and local views of business performance and profitability of key measures such as brands, customers, and channels.

In short, DWLM gives users a host of different views on their business - whether historical, current, or projected. And owing to the relative speed and simplicity of DWLM, it lowers the total cost of creating and managing the data warehouse.

To understand the leap forward that DWLM represents, some explanation of data warehouses is useful. As computing is so pervasive throughout a company’s operations, a huge mass of data is collected in various operational and IT systems. But it’s a tough task to obtain a coherent view of activity across these systems in order to see how the business is doing, because of the great variety involved.

Data warehouses were created to help overcome the constraints of single reporting from multiple operational systems. They work by copying data from these different systems, ironing out the inconsistencies, and creating an ‘information repository’ which can answer questions about the company - across the different processes, divisions, and even countries involved.