An integrated reporting system using data warehousing: case study of National Medical Stores

Abstract

Many Corporations today have vast amounts of data from their transactional systems which they use for their day to day operations. However, tools that enable consolidation of this data for other enteprise wide tasks like forecasting, customer segmentation are still lacking. This study looks at integrating data from different systems into a data warehouse to enable ease of reporting and analysis. In contrast to data warehouses are operational systems which perform day-to-day transaction processing. A data warehouse is a repository of an organization’s electronically stored data. Data warehouses are designed to facilitate reporting and analysis. This classic definition of the data warehouse focuses on data storage. However, the means to retrieve and analyze data, to extract, transform and load data, and to manage the data dictionary are also considered essential components of a data warehousing system. Many references to data warehousing use this broader context. Thus, an expanded definition for data warehousing includes business intelligence tools, tools to extract, transform, and load data into the repository, and tools to manage and retrieve metadata. The study focuses on consolidation of data from the different transactional systems at National Medical Stores to create an integrated reporting system that enables users design and access reports from anywhere using a web browser.