Question

  Asked: Oct 11 2004   10:43 AM GMT
  Asked by: mrErik


Datawarehouse building - datamart specification: how would you engage a scattered userbase?


DataCenter, Implementation, Information risk management, Remote users, Data analysis, Data warehousing applications, Knowledge management applications, ERP, Financial services applications, Transaction Systems Architects

We are currently building a datawarehouse and will need to engage the customers in order to successfully specify the datamarts, a search functionality, etc. All of the technicalities are scoped and being put in place. The question hence directs itself to successfully engaging the customer base, without whose input this could never be successful. Some of the customers were easy to contact, but some 500 customers are scattered around the globe in different user pockets. We have been supplying data to these customers one way or the other in the past. How would you suggest we tackle engaging these customer pockets?

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Our customer base is not as widely distributed as yours, but in our ERP implementation we've established a Change Management group to liaise with customer "Change Agents". Our CMs are very survey oriented for getting information from customers, using the Change Agents to champion the surveys. They are successfully using demonstrations (PPT) and web-based articles and "e-learning" style programs to distribute information back to the customers via the Change Agent network. Our Change Managers tend to be in the "Information Officer" career group rather than IT...
Best of luck with your project.
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Darkgudda  |   Oct 11 2004  9:24PM GMT

At our company we designated a team to implement any change with a person that is the lead to keep people focus. Our staff is not as big as yours so do not know that will help. The person we have as the lead is 100% analytical so he is focus driven it has good and bad reactions but it seems to get the job done.

 

al5280  |   Oct 12 2004  11:19AM GMT

We have a similar need to gather information from our userbase. This is what we’re going to do. These users login to one of 2 different web based portals. When the user logs in we will present them with an input screen. The screen will ask them for specific required information. For us this information is absolutely required, so they are not allowed to continue without providing the information. If they try to break out of the window, or get around it they will be logged out of the system. You may not want to be this forceful and make it optional, and instead provide a explanation/reason that will compel the user to provide the information you seek.

I hope this helps.

 

jurist  |   Oct 12 2004  11:59AM GMT

Our company has a process improvement team of diverse professionals that performs this function for us and builds the results into their data warehouse. They rely primarily on email surveys sent to every customer for every case. The emails quiz the clients on professional services performance metrics. Our group has about 3700 customers. They also use a website with CGI that clients are invited to access after a case is closed and they can lodge their ratings of professional services performance on a limited number of parameters. Data collected from the website then populates their data warehouse.