pitfall and implementation issues that can lead to data warehouse project failure. Please discuss the provided case of Complicated Systems (see below). Identify major issues in its data warehousing implementation and how to turn things around.

Complicated Systems

The manager for Complicated Systems IT client information center started her job three years ago. That was six months after Complicated launched its data warehousing initiative that started with initial interest from the chief financial officer but shortly thereafter received its support from Complicated headquarters. A small group of people from Complicateds main office, possessing no experience with data warehousing, decided which data would be appropriate and which data access tools would be utilized. This set limits on the future of the system based primarily upon the types of reports corporate headquarters assumed everybody needed and their arbitrary selection of OLAP tools.

With corporate headquarters championing the effort and supplying funds, the project had a lot going for it. However, end users were not brought into the picture even though they were the targeted beneficiaries. Information was immediately accessible to sales, service, marketing, and finance divisions around the world but it was not the right information.

Luckily for Complicated, certain things beyond strong corporate championing and finding worked to Complicateds advantage. Extenuating circumstances included corporates initial design decision, the appearance of new initiatives from the marketing division, as well as top management, and the turnaround that the data warehousing project manager bought to the IS division.

First, an initial decision was made to Web-enable the database. This meant that although the information originally disseminated by the organization was of little value to those outside of top management, flexibility existed that would later allow the system to be put to use.

Second, independent initiatives from marketing and top management at headquarters, as well as more vocal end users than had existed in the past, started the move toward making the data more accessible and relevant to users. Specifically, marketing wanted access to valuable data already gathered. At the same time, corporate headquarters was experiencing difficulties it thought might have solutions within the data warehouse. This further fortified the commitment of central management to their belief in the strategic benefit of the data warehouse and elicited moral support that went beyond the dollar commitment already made.