Best Practice for Implementing a Data Warehouse: A Review for Strategic Alignment

A review of literature pertaining to data warehouse implementations over the last eight years has been undertaken. It was found that the views of data warehouse practitioners in particular have changed over the period’s pre and post 2000, to the extent that fewer authors place any emphasis on the need for a clear business purpose before embarking on a data warehouse project. Notably, pre 2000, there was no reference to the need to deliver a return on data warehouse investment, but today it appears to be critical that data warehouses prove their financial value. However, data warehouses do have strategic and therefore long term value for an organization. The case study review in this paper supports the notion of strategic alignment but it is the mapping of their experiences to the configuration school of strategic management that explains the degree of success.