Goliath's Jerky Snacks: Case Study

Mid Term Exam – ISDS 415- Spring 2015

To answer the following questions you may use marketing, financial reporting, social media analytics, etc. functions in an organization. (80 points)

In order to answer parts a through d for question #1 and to avoid the over usage of the phrase ‘this company’, I will create a fictitious company called Goliath’s Jerky Snacks. Goliath’s Jerky Snacks is a small-sized company which sales a variety of jerky snack products. They have been seeing a lot of growth in the past two years and as a result, the CEO and owner, David Hannigan, would like to have a data warehouse developed for his company.

Describe the process to develop a data warehouse.

If Goliath’s Jerky Snacks uses a system or systems to collect data for its company, they will need to develop a data warehouse to sift through all of this data. If this company collects data, but does nothing to sift through and analyze it, then they could be missing out on valuable information which could be

When deciding upon which architecture to use for data warehousing at Goliath’s Jerky Snacks, some issues which need to be considered are:

1

What kind of analysis does Goliath’s Jerky Snacks wish to accomplish?

Are they more interested in historical data analysis or predictive analysis?

2

Is the necessary data being gathered in order to support the desired analysis?

For example, if Goliath’s Jerky Snacks wishes to have its employee sales data incorporated into the data warehouse, it is important that they have those sales records available.

3

Where is this data located?

Is this data being tracked in a certain system or systems within the company? Is it being recorded by hand, using spreadsheets, etc.?

4

Does this data need to be cleaned? If so, how much does it need to be cleaned?

Are there a lot of errors, such as duplicate records, repetitive data, or old entries?