Management Decision Problem

Creating Company-Wide Data Standards

1 .       Your industrial supply company wants to create a data warehouse where management can obtain a single corporate-wide view of critical sales information to identify best-selling products in specific geographic areas, key customers, and sales trends. Your sales and product information are stored in several different systems: a divisional sales system running on a UNIX server and a corporate sales system running on an IBM mainframe. You would like to create a single standard format that consolidates these data from both systems. The following format has been proposed.

Prod_No

Product_ Description

Cost_per_
Unit

Units_
Sold

Sales_Region

Division

Customer_ID

             
             

The following are sample files from the two systems that would supply the data for the data warehouse:

Mechanical Parts Division Sales System

Prod_No

Product_ Description

Cost_per_Unit

Units_Sold

Sales_Region

Customer_ID

60231

4" Steel bearing

5.28

900,245

N.E.

Anderson

85773

SS assembly unit

12.45

992,111

M.W.

Kelly Industries

Corporate Sales System

Product_ID

Product_ Description

Unit_Cost

Units_Sold

Sales_Territory

Division

60231

Bearing, 4"

5.28

900,245

Northeast

Parts

85773

SS assembly unit

12.02

992,111

Midwest

Parts

  1. What business problems are created by not having these data in a single standard format?
  2. How easy would it be to create a database with a single standard format that could store the data from both systems? Identify the problems that would have to be addressed.
  3. Should the problems be solved by database specialists or general business managers? Explain.
  4. Who should have the authority to finalize a single company-wide format for this information in the data warehouse?