However, several obstacles exist that prevent businesses from achieving this goal. Information that assists in sound decision making is often locked up in the data that a corporation collects and stores for product orders, shipments, inventory, product costing and other elements. Getting at that data is a time consuming, often hopeless, task. Even if a company can collect the massive amount of information required, converting that raw data into a useful format is unworkable. Data warehousing, the central storage of an enhanced copy of critical business information, simplifies the job.
Data warehousing provides more than end user query access to raw production files.
Many kinds of businesses can use warehousing. As mentioned, the ability to manage and store such large volumes of data is a necessity for today's business managers. Companies are using data warehouses to store information for marketing, sales and manufacturing to help managers run the organization more effectively. The ability to manage and effectively present the volume of data tracked in today's business is the cornerstone of data warehousing. The presentation layer manages the flow of information from the warehouse to the analyst, providing an interface that makes it easier for the analyst to work with the data.