Building a human resources data warehouse

Bringing data together for an enterprise is an excellent (and most often driving factor) for implementing a data...

warehouse. To develop an HR data model that reflects the corporate view of the HR function, spend some time really understanding the business information needs (what questions are the corporate folks needing to get answers to and what metrics and measures do they need to help answer those questions). Build this information into a data model as well (this is your access layer data model). Determine and define the rules for enforcing conformance of data from the 15 locations in order for them to fit into the corporate view. This forms the basis of your transformation from the 15 sources to the corporate view. Map those sources to the Target and implement the software and scheduling to continually pull the information from the sources to your target corporate view.

Of course, this is a simplistic view of the work needed.

You might look into a hosted data warehouse solution as well. This provides a cost effective and expeditious means to implement business intelligence functionality for your company without causing a lot of technology change in your company.

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