One would assume that our fictitious! company has learnt from past mistakes and will now think before it reacts to market forces. But companies are lead by people and human psyche does not allow us to learn from past mistakes, however much the popular myths and clichés want us to believe otherwise. Most companies still miss considering the long term effects and will again focus on short term gains by implementing stand alone departmental data marts.

Once the company has grown sufficiently big, the management realized that none of the reports hitting their desks are consistent. At this junction, a successful organization, has amassed huge data volumes. The problem now is making sense of this data and turning it into useful information based upon which the management can make critical decisions.

When the management finally realizes the gap, they start thinking about issues of data management and architecture. Hopefully, it is not too late because, now the data has been duplicated and replicated across multiple systems and as almost every data management professional can attest, there are no documentations, and most key personnel involved with implementation of the original systems have left the company for greener pastures.

Now there is data everywhere from which no coherent information can be gleaned. All of this could have been avoided if the company invested a little time in implementing sound data architecture practices at the outset.

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