Key challenges with data warehousing

Well architected data warehouses offer a number of benefits including improving data consistency, quick turnaround on data analysis and reporting and improved data security, to name a few. Although these are great benefits there may be certain challenges that you may face with data warehousing.

As highlighted on Database Trend and Applications, around 93% of businesses in the UK and US say that improvements are required in how they collect, manage, store and analyse data. Here are the key challenges with data warehousing whether you have an existing data warehouse or if you are looking to build one and how you can overcome them, with insights from our Ardent data engineering experts.

Traditional data warehouses

A traditional data warehouse is a data warehouse which deals with on-premise server data. Although, these are not as common since the massive boom in cloud data warehousing they are still prevalent. Traditional data warehouses can be costly to maintain, lack speed and agility and have high failure rates. Therefore, organisations should look to adopt cloud data warehousing which offers a great number of benefits.

Read about hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud environments.

Time, cost and effort

If you are looking to start a data warehousing project, whether that is moving away from a traditional, on-premise data warehouse to creating a new data warehouse on the cloud you need to consider that it will require substantial time, cost and effort. This is something that businesses always struggle with when it comes to successfully building a data warehouse.

Here is how you overcome each challenge:

Time – Planning is key when it comes to predicting the time required. Outline key stages of the data warehousing development whether you are building it in-house or outsourcing data warehousing. Ensure that you have forecasted an accurate amount of time needed.

Cost – Find the best solution for you and your business. Most organisations will not have the resources in-house to build a data warehouse that will effectively improve performance, create consistency and optimise your data structure. Therefore, they will look for a third-party provider. Carry out your due diligence in finding a data engineering partner that will deliver the best value with the right experience and technology stack.

Effort – The process of planning, building and maintaining a data warehouse will require significant effort depending on how involved you are in the process. If you are working with an external partner, make sure to agree on how much time will be required from you and your business. This can help you better manage your time through the duration of the project

Expertise and skillset

As highlighted on Data Science Central, around 80% of data warehousing projects fail to achieve their aims. When it comes to achieving your goals you need to ensure that you have the right team to help you achieve your set goals. Finding the right skill set can be challenging. This is when you might want to consider outsourcing your data warehouse development. Make sure to work with data warehouse architects that have the experience, expertise and skill set to build a data warehouse that is built to help you achieve your data goals in line with your overall organisation objectives.

Overcoming data warehousing challenges

Well-architected data warehouses can provide countless benefits for organisations. Therefore, it's crucial to ensure that you are taking the right steps to ensure that your data warehouse performs at optimum levels.

Ardent data warehousing services

If you are looking to update your current data warehouse, build a new one or migrate your data from one data warehouse to other, Ardent can help. Our highly skilled engineers have the skills, expertise and experience to help you unlock your data potential with our data warehousing services most suited to your data and data needs.

Explore all our data engineering services.