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Case Study 12

Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation Information Systems ArchitectureOwens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. (OCF) is the world’s leading manufacturer of glass fibermaterials and a major producer of polyester resins. Founded in 1938, originally as a joint venturebetween Owens-Illinois and Corning Glass Works, OCF had an after-tax profit of $172 millionon net sales of approximately $3 billion in 1989.

The OCF Construction Products Group manufactures and sells insulation and roofing products for residential, commercial, and industrial construction and remodeling. This group also ranks as the country's largest producer of specialty asphalts and produces a line of windows for new construction and replacement markets.

The OCF Industrial Materials Group produces reinforcements, yarns, and resins for the transportation, marine, aerospace, energy, electronics, and appliance industries.

OCF manufactures and sells reinforcements, yarns, and insulation products in twenty-seven countries through its network of subsidiaries and affiliates. Products are also produced domestically for export.

In addition, a domestic subsidiary, O/C Tanks Corporation, is the world’s leading producer offiberglass-reinforced underground storage tanks.

Headquartered in Toledo, Ohio, OCF employs more than 17,000 people, operates more than 40 manufacturing facilities in the United States, and has sales offices in more than 70 cities and distribution units in 20 locations. Research and development is conducted at the OCF Technical Center complex in Granville, Ohio.

This case was prepared by Professor E. W. Martin as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation.

Copyright © 1990 by E. W. Martin.

The OCF Information Systems Organization

The OCF IS organization has a history of strong management leadership. Both Paul Daverio, senior vice president for finance and administration, and Frank Glover, vice president of marketing, retail, and distribution for insulation products, are former IS vice presidents. Dennis Barber, vice president of information systems, reports to Daverio.

As shown by the dotted line relationships in Exhibit 1, the OCF IS organization is heavily decentralized, with each operating division and a number of science and technology units having their own IS units. Corporate IS operates the corporate data center and the communications network, develops corporate systems, and provides corporate-wide technical support, training, and planning. A summary of the corporate information systems vision and values is provided in Exhibit 2. The OCF corporate data management mission statement is shown in Exhibit 3.

The IS department is committed to the ideal of a partnership relationship with its clients in the

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business, whom it refers to as its business partners. OCF believes that information technology must contribute directly to the success of the business, and all IS expenditures must be justified on that basis. All IS services are billed directly to the users, although the OCF management council has occasionally appropriated funds directly to IS for development of systems that were crucial to corporate success.

EXHIBIT 2OCF CIS Vision and Values

CIS Vision

Each individual or team is dedicated to providing an “error free” product or service to thecustomer. The goal is 100 percent total quality; anything less does not meet our standards ofperformance and commitment to the customer.

Values

People CIS is people: they define our commitment and performance. Our environment will foster change and individual growth. Equitable reward and recognition systems will promote quality, teamwork, and morale. All are empowered to promote a bias for action by making timely decisions and taking necessary risks.

Quality Quality is our top priority. It starts with focusing on the work of highest value. Error-Eree defines a standard of performance; it mandates an attitude that errors are unacceptable.

Teamwork Teamwork demands trust and respect. The three (3) “In’s” dominate all actions:

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initiative, independence, and integrity. Team approaches are encouraged.

Business Orientation Our business partners will guide our investments. We are sensitive to theneeds and requests of our customers. We have a “can do” and “make it happen” attitude.

Continuous Learning Pride in our work and creative products and services make significant and recognized contributions. We can learn from our business peers and will make the required investment to improve our performance, both individually and functionally.

EXHIBIT 3OCF Corporate Data Management Mission Statement

The mission of Corporate Data Management (DM) is to be a service organization that isresponsible for the management, planning, and control of Corporate Data which is the baseelement of the “Information Assets.” DM provides services to support the Data/Informationneeds, productivity requirements, and quality guidelines of both Corporate and Divisionorganizations in their quest to build systems that reduce costs, increase productivity, and improvetheir competitive position. these services include:

1. DM will provide Data Planning and Information Modeling services to support and control thedevelopment of integrated “Data Models” that aid management in the strategic use of theCorporation’s “Information Assets” through implementation of integrated database systems thatsupport both the operational and informational needs of the Corporation.

2. D.M. will provide physical database design and consulting services to support the Corporate and Divisional MIS staffs in implementation of integrated IDMS database systems for front and back office systems as well as Data Warehouse applications.

3. DM will provide corporate-wide data dictionary (IDD) services to support the Data Planning,Information Modeling, and physical database design functions. The IDD will provide a“Directory” for the definitions, locations, and uses of Corporate data that reside within it. DM willalso provide consultation on the IDD and its uses.

4. DM will implement and maintain the software required to support the database environment. Technical expertise will be maintained in these software products and guidance provided to ensure an efficient and compatible database environment.

5. DM will research and implement new development tools and techniques as well as development methodologies required for the development of quality systems and databases with the flexibility needed to improve responsiveness to change and reduce cost to support.

6. DM will develop, coordinate, or otherwise arrange to provide the training necessary to fullyimplement the use of the “Tools” we have responsibility for and have identified as key to thesuccessful movement to the “Information Age.”

7. DM will provide strategic direction guidance and leadership in the evolving areas of Data Planning, Development Center, and Database environment to ensure they support the overall MIS strategy.

8. DM will provide support for the Data Warehouse system. This support includes support for the application programs and databases used by the Warehouse to maintain, store, and deliver data.

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OCF’s Data and Applications Architecture

For the past seven years, OCF has been working on the development of an architecture for data and applications.

Business Objectives OCF views IS as a business within OCF. IS is focused on delivering value to its OCF business partners It has four business objectives that have motivated the development of the IS architecture.

1. Provide outstanding support to OCF’s day-to-day profit making operations.

2. Substantially improve support of OCF management in performing analyses, making decisions, and carrying out actions.

3. Enable OCF management to change the organization freely with only minor delays and expenseto change the supporting information systems. OCF is constantly changing in response to externalthreats and opportunities. In the past, inflexible informat on systems have seriously constrainedOCF’s ability to make change within the business because the systems could not change fastenough and the cost of change was too great. It is strategically important to IS to get out of thisbottleneck situation.

4. Improve IS performance in development and maintenance of systems. Vice president Barber set a target of a five-to-one improvement in IS organizational performance in these areas.

What Is an Architecture? According to David Cooper, an IS specialist who is currently leading the development of the OCF architecture

From our perspective, architecture is an expression of strategy for using information technology. It is a structure of how we do business. It is how we manage the assets of information and information technologies.

We’ve thought about where technology ought to be going, we’ve thought about howit ought to be applied in the business environment, and we’ve set some directions forthe corporation and for the IS people in how to leverage it. This says that we moveaway from making technology decisions on a project-by-project basis as we did inthe past. Instead, we define the way we’re going to apply technology and the kind oftechnology we’re going to use, and we intend to remain relatively consistent on thatregardless of what the apparent demands of individual projects are.

Architecture isn’t intended to constrain completely our choices. For an individualproject, we look at the needs of that project, assess the architecture, and if thearchitecture doesn’t fit, we do not insist on following the architecture. We’re not thatsmart in developing architecture. But if people can’t follow the architecture, thenthey must explain why not. They must explain what forces them to violate thearchitecture, and justify the long-term cost to the corporation of that decision. It mayturn out that this discussion causes us to alter the architecture because we learncontinuously. That’s why the architecture is never completely built, or completelyaccurate. The business conditions change, the technologies are changing, and thearchitecture has to continue to evolve to represent a target for where we’re going, asopposed to a historical perspective of what we’ve already done.

Breadth of this Architecture Exhibit 4 shows three dimensions of the OCF concept of architecture. The dispersion axis (projecting forward in the figure) indicates that OCF intends its

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architecture to impact the entire business. from corporate headquarters out to the customers and suppliers. It intends this architecture to provide ways for it to link with its customers and suppliers.

The horizontal axis presents applications, data and systems as components of the architecture.Applications refers to a conceptual view of what information systems do for OCF—processtransactions and deliver information. Data refers to a logical view of the data that needs to beavailable to allow OCF to construct and maintain its applications. It provides for a shareable dataresource that spans both application and organizational boundaries. Systems refers to theconfiguration of the hardware, software, and networks that allow the applications to perform.

The vertical axis indicates the five levels of the OCF architecture. The business strategy leveldeals with what markets the OCF business units will serve and in what ways they will serve theircustomers. The business design level deals with the processes these business units will employ toserve those markets and customers. It specifies how the business units are organized—-who doeswhat, where, and with which customers. The technical facility level deals with the componentsthat must be in place to a low IS to serve the needs identified in the previous two levels. Thespecification level finally gets down to technology specifying the technologies and standards thatIS will use to provide its services. Finally, the configuration level deals with the specific hardwareand software products that will be used to provide applications services, data services, andsystems services.

General Conceptual Model

Exhibit 5 depicts the general conceptual model of the OCF applications and data management components of the IS architecture. OCF conceptualizes the primary IS production activities that produce value for OCF as transaction processing, data provisioning, and information delivery. Today, most applications bundle these activities together, but this architecture proposes to treat each of them separately. The infrastructure components that support this new approach are relational database management systems and a data dictionary/data catalog.

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Transaction processing, data provisioning, and information delivery are unusual terms for describing data processing activities. The following explains what they mean and why OCF has separated its processing activities into these three pieces.

Transaction Processing Transaction processing is a limited activity. It collects data—customernumber item number, quantity ordered, and so on. It validates that data using rules defined by thebusiness people. It constructs business transactions from that data and checks that all the datarequired for a valid transaction are present Then that validated transaction data is sent to dataprovisioning.

In addition, transaction processing provides operating information about how the business isperforming relative to that set of business transactions. For an order-processing transaction,business people want to know how many of each item have been ordered today, how many ofeach item are awaiting shipment—-the things they need to know in order to decide what to makeand what raw materials to order. That is operating information and transaction processingproduces it. Transaction processing is routine, predictable, and does not change much from yearto year.

One of the architecture’s objectives is to simplify transaction processing in order to reduceprocessing costs, to make it more routine and less subject to change, and to make it easier tochange when change is necessary. It simplifies transaction processing by removing theresponsibility for maintaining historical data and giving that responsibility to data provisioning. Italso removes information delivery responsibility from transaction processing.

Further, the architecture removes from transaction processing all data representing informationrelationships—-all of the codes that represent relationships or allow summarization to producemanagement reports. OCF refers to such data as fiction because it is not a characteristic of thetransactions but is there to allow certain analyses of the transactions and may change when OCFdecides it wants to analyze the data in another way. Although this fiction no longer appears intransaction processing, it is maintained in data provisioning and information delivery so that thedesired management information can still be obtained. Relational database technology allows OCFto maintain the fiction data in separate tables, and then combine it with transaction data whenevernecessary by joining tables.

Organizational structure data is an example of the fiction that OCF has removed from transaction processing. Organizational structure refers to business units, production departments, sales

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offices, sales territories, and so on. These are the things that change when OCF reorganizes the business. When this organizational data is collected and stored in transaction files, and the processes for producing reports summarizing this organizational data are incorporated in transaction processing, then transaction processing must be modified whenever OCF reorganizes. It wants to eliminate the cost and delay involved in these changes, so it removes this fictional organizational data from transaction processing and deals with it in data provisioning and information delivery.

As an example of the impact of removing the fiction data from transactions, OCF found that 80 percent of the data that it was collecting on its order forms and entering in order-entry transactions was fiction and only 20 percent of the data was really necessary to identify what was being ordered and who was doing the ordering. By eliminating this fiction OCF could cut its data entered from an order down to 20 percent of what it was before.

Data Provisioning Data provisioning is responsible for receiving, storing, and managing allvalidated transaction data from transaction processing. In this architecture, transaction processingdoes not keep any historical data—-all it stores is the current data necessary to provide the statusof current operations. Data provisioning also receives stores, and manages information frominformation delivery. And data provisioning also provides data back to transaction processing anddata and information to information delivery when requested.

Data provisioning manages the inventory of data and information, using relational database management systems and a data dictionary and data catalog. These tools keep track of what data exists, where it is stored, what it means, and who has authority to access it. Thus, data provisioning protects the data and provides for convenient access to data and information to those who need it.

Data provisioning is a buffer between transaction processing and information delivery that prevents changes in how people want to look at data from changing the way data is collected and processed on a day to day basis. Data provisioning stores the organizational structure rules in its data dictionary or in tables in the database, so these rules can be readily changed when management decides to modify the organization.

Information Delivery Information delivery requests data and information from data provisioning. It then transforms data into information by applying various models and techniques to perform analyses, identify trends, formulate decisions, develop presentations, and support decision-making. Data provisioning must provide a rich and responsive database so that whenever someone asks an information delivery question, the data is available. The technology must be fast enough to meet the business needs for responses to the questions. Some questions may require one-second response time, while others are satisfactory with one-day response time.

Responsibility for organizational structure data has been removed from transaction processing and moved to information delivery. Instead of collecting and maintaining organizational data in application programs and storing it in transaction databases, organizational data is stored in tables in data provisioning, and these tables are maintained by business people as part of their information delivery responsibilities. When they want to change the rules, they can go into the tables and change them. If, for example, they want to reorganize and create a new unit that is made up of certain employees reporting to this person, then they simply change the tables that define who reports to whom, and that is all there is to it. Transaction processing is not affected, and the fundamental databases did not change, but different information can be produced.

OCF wants its business people to do their own information delivery. One reason is that theprocess of analysis is very interactive—-a result often suggests another question or another typeof analysis. If you introduce the delays involved in having IS people formulate the queries and

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perform the analyses, then things slow down a lot and the process is much less creative. Often thebusiness person will ask the wrong question the first time, and it is frustrating when the IS personcomes back with the answer, but that is not what the manager wanted. If, however, the businessperson can get the answer by himself in five minutes, he will figure out that he asked the wrongquestion and be able to formulate the right question very quickly. He also learns more about theproblem than he could when working through someone else.

Since business managers and functional analysts are responsible for their own use of theinformation delivery facility, the tools that are provided for analysis should be “businessseductive,” They should be so attractive that they draw the person right into the computer—-theycannot leave it alone. The tools need to help the people using them to ask the right questions, notjust be easy to use. Furthermore, IS must build partnerships with business people so that theyunderstand how to use these technologies, and even feel ownership of them. This takes a greatdeal of educating, coaching, and working together.

The Technological Basis for Data Provisioning OCF uses two database technologies to support data provisioning. Data provisioning must store and maintain data in response to transaction processing, and it must also store that data so that people can get information from it. But the performance characteristics of these two demands are quite different. The person seeking information can ask one question that can bring any mainframe computer to its knees for several hours, but transaction processing must have access to data in milliseconds.

Therefore OCF has constructed two environments—one to support transaction processing andanother to support information delivery. They are both relational databases. The transactionprocessing technology is IBM’s DB2 running on the mainframe, and it is designed to processhigh transaction volumes speedily. The information delivery technology is a TERADATAdatabase machine—a combination of hardware and software that is optimized for answeringinformation questions. By applying the right technology to the business needs, OCF optimizesperformance on both sides.

Evolution of the Information Delivery Architecture

The initial thinking on an “information delivery architecture” was performed by Larry Loehrke,Jerry McColough, and Bill Whitten at the request of Paul Daverio, who was vice president ofinformation systems at that time. Daverio had two motivations for this request. First, he wished toimprove the access to data for ad-hoc analysis by business professionals who were becoming PCcomputer literate and who were under increasing business pressure to reduce significantly thetime it took to respond to changes in OCF’s markets and operations. Second, he wished to reducethe professional IS resources devoted to modifying systems when OCF wished to changereporting sequences and algorithms. This led the team to the concepts of transaction processing,data provisioning, and information delivery described above.

The Data Warehouse As OCF began to try to implement these concepts, Don Kosanka, whowas an early contributor to this effort, initiated the concept of a “data warehouse” in 1984, Thedata warehouse is part of the data provisioning function depicted in Exhibit 4. As shown inExhibit 6, the data warehouse is conceptualized as a vast repository for the data that are needed tomanage OCF. It must provide interfaces that accept transaction data from all sorts of transactionprocessing systems and move them into the warehouse environment. In this process that data arecarefully examined and validated to assure that only high quality data are accepted On the outputside, there must be interfaces that allow a user to ask for data from the devices (PCs or terminals)that he ordinarily uses. And the data in the warehouse must be structured, and tools must beprovided, so that users can easily obtain answers to their questions and perform analyses on thisdata.

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In the summer of 1985 OCF assigned a project manager and three people to develop a limited datawarehouse. After about 18 months they concluded that it was impractical to implement thisconcept with their existing IDMS/R database management system, so they began a search formore suitable technology. By the summer of 1987 they had selected IBM’s DB2 relationalDBMS, the SQL query language, and the TERADATA database machine as a suitablecombination of technologies to support the data warehouse. They leased a small TERADATAdatabase machine for six months to experiment with this technology.

In about three months they were able to build a data warehouse for the Residential and Commercial Insulation Products (RCIP) division that contained product data, sales data, and customer data. This was received so enthusiastically by RCIP managers that they helped convince the OCF management council to fund the purchase of a larger TERADATA machine and associated software. This move enabled them to expand this data warehouse to serve the other OCF divisions.

Don Kosanka recalls:

In implementing the data warehouse we had to work through some data qualityproblems. Building the interfaces between our COBOL transaction systems and therelational database warehouse so that all the data got transferred accurately took ussome time. There were data problems that were the result of timing problems, andproblems that were the result of the fact that some data in the transaction systemswere just bad. Now that they were available so people could use it, they found thatthe codes were wrong—the data were incorrect, and had always been incorrect, but

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no one had ever looked at it carefully before!

That got us to thinking about our data management strategy. It became obvious tous through the implementation of the data warehouse that a lot of the problems thatwe had been experiencing were caused by building information delivery aspects intothe transaction processing systems. When you build organizational codes and datainto transaction processing, you just complicate things. We decided to eliminate thisfictional data from transaction processing. We intend to include in transactionprocessing only the data that are actually needed to run the business. We introducefictional organizational codes by storing them in tables in the database that can bejoined with the raw data to produce whatever summaries and analyses that youwant. These fictional codes, which we change every year, can be easily changed bychanging the tables, but we don’t have to go back and change the transactionprocessing systems.

This data warehouse contained cumulative data for the year in both detailed and summary form.The summary data were intended to provide quick convenient access to all the users, butmanagers soon found that different users wanted the data summarized in their own way, so theaccess to the data was often slow and inconvenient. And all of this activity was overloading thedatabase machine and slowing response time for everyone. Further, each user was faced with fartoo much data, most of which were not of interest, and the users found this to be confusing.These problems led OCF to extend its architecture to include the concept of a “retail outlet.”

The Retail Outlet According to Don Kosanka, the concept of a retail outlet comes from common experience.

The analogy that we use is that a warehouse is really accessed by retailers, not by customers. Retailers come into the warehouse and pick up goods by the truckload. They take it to their shops, and their customers come in and get it. The warehouse has all sorts of stuff in it, but if you run a store you stock the products that your customers want, and you make it attractive and convenient for them to get what they want.

As shown in Exhibit 7, there may be several retail outlets, each of which obtains its data from thedata warehouse. The retail outlet is a set of data that is selected and “packaged” to serve the needsof a group of users. Packaging involves several things. First, only the data that are pertinent to thebusiness unit is selected. The organizational structure data that were eliminated from thetransactions are introduced. And the data may also be summarized according to thoseorganizational categories and by time period Packaging can also combine different types of dataFor example, determining the profitability of a product involves combining sales, cost, freight,adjustments selling expenses overhead, and so forth. Because the data are small and focused, aperson can easily specify what is wanted, and the delay in retrieving the data can be greatlyreduced.

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A retail outlet may be implemented on several different platforms, It may be a special set ofdatabases on the TERADATA machine, or on a minicomputer, or the data may be moved onto theserver of a LAN used by the group of “customers” of that retail outlet OCF intends the retailoutlet concept to be very flexible and it is trying to provide user-friendly (or even “businessseductive”) tools for accessing and analyzing this data.

OCF’s first retail outlet was a profitability database for one of its divisions OCF wanted to beable to look at the profitability of a product or a sales office or even a specific customer, In orderto develop this retail outlet, managers had to go back and expand the data in the data warehouseThe data warehouse had always contained customer data and price but it did not contain thedetailed cost data required to determine profitability.

The profitability retail outlet was a great success because it addressed a recognized business need. Similar retail outlets have been developed for the other OCF divisions.

The other high priority retail outlet OCF is working on is in the area of pricing. It is a databasethat provides information to help OCF managers decide how to respond to requests from itsdistributors for special price adjustments to meet competition. Defining the data for this retailoutlet has been a difficult task—it is still not clear what data are needed or how it can be obtained.OCF now has pricing retail outlets that are considered to be useful, but it still has a groupworking on improving pricing data.

The retail outlet component of OCF architecture has been quite successful. It has enabled OCF to simplify its data warehouse, for the warehouse now contains only detailed transaction data. OCF

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has moved the summarized data and the organizational tables into the retail outlets. But more importantly, the retail outlet has vastly improved the ease with which OCF managers can obtain the data that they need to manage the business.

The Information Warehouse OCF has been working on a project to develop an ExecutiveInformation System (EIS) for one of its senior managers. In this process OCF learned that theretail outlets do not contain the information that managers need. Rather, the outlets contain the datafrom which this information can be created by applying analytical and statistical techniques toidentify trends and provide understanding of what is happening in the business. Once created, theinformation leaves the system and is only available to those for whom it was created. Not only dothese users lose track of the information—the most useful product of the system—but they alsolose the process by which it was created. Wouldn’t it be great if this information could be returnedto the system where it would be available for use by other OCF managers? And wouldn’t it begreat if the process for creating the information could be preserved so that it could be used againto create similar information in the future?

Thus the concept of an information warehouse was conceived. It is to be another set of databases designed to provide easy access to both management information and the rules and processes used to produce it. Also, the information warehouse provides the tools to turn this information into effective presentations and stores these presentations. This requires that the information warehouse store compound documents that may include image, voice, and graphics information. Incidentally, OCF people believe that the tools needed to support an information warehouse do not exist at this time but that they are being developed.

The Current Architecture

The current version of the QCF information delivery architecture is shown in Exhibit 8.Beginning in the upper left-hand corner, we see transaction processing and the transaction filesand databases. Transaction data are delivered to the data warehouse, where they are carefullyvalidated and controlled. Then data from the data warehouse are “packaged” by carefully selectingpertinent data, introducing organizational data (fiction), and summarizing them to improve accesstime and its understandability.

As managers and analysts transform the data in the retail outlets into information, this information and the transformation rules are stored in the information warehouse. Also, effective presentations (memos reports, graphs, video presentations, and the like) of this information are stored in the information warehouse where they may be retrieved for use in the future. Finally, external databases are shown in the lower right-hand corner, and the arrow indicates that data from them can be introduced into the retail outlets or the information warehouse.

Consider the business decision-maker depicted on the right of Exhibit 8. The rules built into the information warehouse may bring to his attention conditions that he should consider. If he finds something interesting in an analysis, he can examine the rules that produced that analysis and modify the analysis. And if he needs more background data, he can select an alternative that takes him back to the data in his retail outlet, or even back to the data warehouse. Using this data, he can perform other analyses, ask further questions, and develop decisions and presentations as he sees fit.

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The Business Design Level One of the concerns of the business design level of the overall ISarchitecture shown in Exhibit 4 is organization—who s responsible for what. In this architecture,corporate or divisional IS professionals build the transaction processing systems, which (in newsystems) includes delivering the data to the data warehouse Corporate IS is responsible for thecorporate data warehouse, which includes responsibility for developing the bridging interfacesthat transfer data from old transaction processing systems into the data warehouse. Corporate ISis responsible for assuring the quality of the data in the data warehouse, and for protecting it fromunauthorized access or destruction.

Divisional IS professionals develop the packaging rules that add organizational data, and that summarize and combine data to produce the retail store databases. However, the tables that contain the organizational data are maintained by business people.

Business analysts, not IS professionals, are responsible for converting the data in the retail outlet into information in the information warehouse. The responsibility of IS is to provide business seductive tools and access to data so that these business people can easily create useful information in response to the needs of business management.

The Specification Level As indicated in the above discussion, the technology (both hardware and software) that is available determines the degree to which one can profitably use the concepts of the architecture. The architecture should be driven by business needs, and it may be ahead of current technology. As suitable technology becomes available, it may be used to make the

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architectural concepts real.

Exhibit 9 shows the specific products in use or under consideration for implementing systems under this architecture. (Those products that are enclosed in rectangles are under consideration.) For example, business people use PC/SQL LINK in various places to retrieve data from the databases. This usage requires them to understand the data well enough to specify what data elements they want and the tables that contain them, and then PC/SQL LINK will retrieve the desired data. To use this technology, business people must concentrate their thoughts on the data rather than on the business problem.

In addition, OCF managers have just decided to purchase another product, INTELLECT, whichallows you to say: “Give me all the sales of three-quarter inch Fiberglas roof-deck board sold inthe western region last quarter, and tell me what that is in total and by salesman.” And it gives youthe answer. Or, INTELLECT might come back and say: “I don’t understand western region,explain that to me.” Since PC/SQL LINK is only user-friendly to an IS professional,INTELLECT will be a vast step in the direction of “user-seductive” tools.

However, OCF does not purchase new technology just because it looks attractive—-the decisionis made by business people when they are convinced that the business impact of the technologyjustifies its cost. It took over a year of study and experimentation to decide to acquireINTELLECT. OCF people are continually evaluating new products to see how they might fit intothe architecture, but investments in new technology are carefully evaluated.

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Impact of the Architecture

OCF has a data warehouse in place containing cost and sales data—customer data, product data,order data, and so forth. OCF has built profitability and pricing retail outlets for individualmarketing organizations, and business people are getting experience in using them. As part of itsproject to develop an EIS for one of the senior OCF managers, OCF is in the process of buildingan experimental information warehouse.

OCF marketing managers are using their retail outlets on a continuing basis to evaluate product line movement and trends as well as analyze customers and sales areas. And some managers believe that they are doing a much better job of price management. There is wide agreement that the architecture is contributing significantly to business success.

OCF’s very limited experience so far indicates that it may obtain the targeted five-to-one increasein IS productivity in developing and maintaining systems that conform to this architecture.

Lastly, OCF is in the process of developing closer relationships with vendors that it considers tobe strategic. One unanticipated benefit of the architecture is that it helps provide a framework forinteraction with these strategic vendors. Since the architecture describes OCF’s strategies intechnology, these vendors can better target their products to what OCF is trying to do. That hasproved to be helpful in developing mutually beneficial relationships.

Although this architecture is still considered to be experimental, senior OCF management hasinvested considerable resources in large-scale experiments to develop and evaluate thisarchitecture. The firm is developing most new applications within this architecture. The OCFmanagement council has allocated the necessary resources in 1990 to replace its large, antiquatedhuman resources system with a new system that will be developed under this architecture. Thatwill require adding human resources data to the data warehouse, and developing suitable retailoutlets for the human resources department. This will be the first major system in which the“fiction” data will be removed from the transaction data.

At present, the data warehouse contains only a small fraction of the OCF corporate data, and itwill be years (if ever) before all the old mainline transaction systems are converted to conform tothis architecture. And the few retail outlets serve only a small percentage of OCF’s managers.Since everything is justified on the basis of its bottom-line benefit, change is deliberate.

There have been and there continue to be a number of significant problems in applying this architecture. It is often a struggle to justify adhering to the architecture when developing a new system, for some people may argue that another course of action may be quicker, or less costly, or in some way better for that project. Also, most existing systems do not adhere to the architecture, and there is a tendency to want to expand these systems without converting them to the new architecture. Finally, the new architecture requires significant changes in how IS professionals must think when they design and implement new systems, and a number of IS people are uncomfortable with these changes. The road to adoption of this architecture has been and will continue to be steep and crooked.

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