October 20, 1998
The Intranet Data Warehouse:
A Cultural Revolution
By Rick Tanler
"The key characteristic of predators is that they do not think like the established competitors."Information Advantage's Rick Tanler
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What is the information culture of your enterprise? Is now the time to
change your information culture? Who is responsible for changing the
information culture? These are the important questions as organizations
begin to make data warehouse content available on their intranet.
When information services managers talk about data warehousing, the
focus is on the management of alpha-numeric content stored in databases
and the application software for user-initiated reporting and analysis
of this data. But consider this: The World Wide Web is the largest data
warehouse on earth. It informs millions of users every day. The
Internet has been successful, in part, because the emphasis has shifted
from personal computing to global information sharing—from delivering
application features to delivering content. This is the most valuable
lesson of the Internet and it alters the information culture of the
Enterprise.
The adoption of Internet technologies, to build secure Intra/Extranets,
provides organizations with a remarkably efficient and highly capable
means of informing everyone—employees, affiliates, customers, and
prospects. Arguably, the most valuable sources of internal business
intelligence are contained in the data warehouses.
The discussions of three technologies—data warehousing, online
analytic processing (OLAP) and intranets—have become intertwined. The
result is a powerful blending of technologies that offers new ways to
support the information needs of users. How will your organization
seize the opportunity? The answer may lie in changing the information
culture of your enterprise.
Virtually every company has an information culture. It is reflected in the priorities established and the
methods used to manage, distribute, and use information. The most common part of the information culture is the spectator. The spectator views information as being essential to monitoring every change that impacts business
operation from a transaction perspective. Spectators describe their data warehouses as 'the source of the data for reporting and analysis.' To them, the focus of information services is on meeting users' requirements for
reports. Every organization starts by being a spectator.
The more interesting segment of the information culture occurs in the organization that recognizes that
substantial rewards go to the best competitors, not to spectators. These "competitors" view the data warehouse as a catalyst for changing business-management processes in order to become a market leader. The
competitor talks about information in terms of how it supports the decision process. Rather than being better at observing what happened, the competitor is intent on making things happen. He recognizes that access to information initiates change.
In The Intranet Data Warehouse (John Wiley & Sons), I differentiated
these two cultures—spectators and competitors—by suggesting that one focused on meeting users'
decision support requirements while the other focused on the
requirements to improve decision implementation. This separation worked
until I began to recognize that there is a third kind of information culture: predators.
Predators occur in an organization that changes the
fundamental rules of competition. The predator establishes a new market
in its attack on existing markets. Amazon.com is a predator. By
creating a virtual bookstore, Amazon found a way to avoid the capital
intensive "brick and mortar" retail business model. The key
characteristic of predators is that they do not think like the
established competitors.
Ultimately, the secret to Amazon's success may not be simply lower operating costs. Amazon.com's key asset is their data warehouse, which contains information on people that are shopping online. Amazon is developing a relationship with these people. Not surprisingly, Amazon is expanding into selling music CDs. Will Amazon become the largest retailer on Earth? Predators are not easily satisfied.
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