Skydata specialises in various technologies to provide a fully comprehensive business intelligence service to both small and large businesses. We can also implement completely custom solutions to meet your project requirements.
Business Intelligence refers to the insights gained from analyzing the business information that organizations hold. Businesses hold vast quantities of data, all of which can potentially provide them with detailed insights to make informed critical business decisions. This data needs to be mined and analyzed in the right way to realize its full potential and to provide valuable insights for the business.
Business intelligence also refers to the processes and tools used to analyze business data, turn it into actionable insights, and help everyone in an organization make better-informed decisions. Also known as a decision support system (DSS), a BI system analyzes current and historical data and presents findings in easy-to-digest reports, dashboards, graphs, charts, and maps that can be shared across the company.
Data Warehousing (DW) is the process for collecting and managing data from varied sources to provide meaningful business intelligence insights. A Data Warehouse is typically used to connect and analyze business data from heterogeneous sources. The data warehouse is the core of the business intelligence system which is built for data analysis and reporting.
A data warehouse is a blend of technologies and components which aids the strategic use of data. It is electronic storage of a large amount of information by a business which is designed for query and analysis instead of transaction processing. It is also the process of transforming data into business information and making it available to users in a timely manner to make informed business decisions.
Data processing occurs when data is collected and translated into usable information. It is important for data processing to be done correctly as not to negatively affect the end product or data output. Data processing starts with data in its raw form and converts it into a more readable user-friendly format like graphs or reports for business users to interpret and analyze. Data processing gives the raw data the form and context necessary to be interpreted and transformed by computers and then produces and stores the final output to be analyzed by key business users throughout an organization.
ETL is a process that extracts the data from different source systems, then transforms the data by applying calculations, concatenations and lookups to other tables in order to add additional business information then finally loads the data into the data warehouse system. The full cycle form of ETL is Extract, Transform and Load. This usually happens in a database that we refer to as a staging database.
It’s tempting to think of creating a data warehouse is simply extracting data from multiple sources and loading it into a data warehouse database. This is far from the truth and requires a complex ETL process. The ETL process requires active inputs from various stakeholders including developers, analysts, testers, top executives and is technically challenging. In order to maintain its value as a tool for decision-makers, data warehouse systems need to change as the business changes over time. ETL is a recurring activity (daily, weekly, monthly) of a data warehousing system and needs to be agile, automated, and well documented.
SQL (Structured Query Language) is a standardized programming language that’s used to manage relational databases (RDBMS) and perform various operations on the data in them. SQL is regularly used not only by database administrators, but also by developers writing data integration scripts and data analysts looking to set up and run analytical queries. At Skydata, SQL forms the core foundation of technologies that we use to manipulate and analyze data and forms a large part of our business intelligence services. We also fully utilize Microsoft’s SQL extension, known as T-SQL, to further extend the powerful features and functions SQL can provide to businesses.
An OLAP cube is a specific method of storing massive amounts of data in a data warehousing environment. The term “cube” refers to the numerous defined dimensions, measures, and hierarchies by which users designate their data to be stored and constructed for in-depth analysis. Dimensions and measures are known to be the building blocks of any report . For example, sales would be a measure that is reported by area, product and time, which would then be the defined as the dimensions of the report.
OLAP technology enables slicing and dicing of the data from the cube which is the breakdown of a body of information into smaller parts or to examine data from different viewpoints so that it could be understood better. Hierarchies are the different levels of data relationships defined within the dimensions of a cube. By storing data using OLAP cubes, resulting data information is pre-calculated and ready-to-use. The instantaneous use of OLAP eliminates the long data queries and pending requests of a conventional data warehousing environment.
An operational data store (ODS) is a central database that provides a snapshot of the latest data from multiple transactional systems for operational reporting. It enables organizations to combine data in its original format from various sources into a single destination to make it available for business reporting. An ODS contains up-to-date information integrated from operational sources, and supports business intelligence (BI) tools that aid in tactical decision-making.
Business Intelligence solutions are based on a data warehouse, modeled according to specific business processes and challenges that clients wish to overcome, and the goals they intend to achieve. Thanks to the expertise of Skydata we can build custom BI solutions for your business that caters for all its reporting needs, enabling your business to grow with informed decision making and improved efficiency within its sector.
We have over 30 years experience in SQL and business intelligence systems development in our team at Skydata, with hundreds of successfully completed projects from small startups to large corporate businesses with international presence.
Delivering data intelligence with passion, Skydata will empower your business with the solutions it needs to excel!
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