In a world where data is collected for almost everything, companies often find they have trouble figuring out what to do with it. Theoretically companies could report on all their data, however, the larger the dataset gets the more money it will take to setup the infrastructure to support it. For most companies, especially those that are new to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing, this is not realistic.
For this reason it is just as important for companies to put in the time and effort to identify their key data assets and make sure to build the infrastructure to support these very well. A vertical focus on a few key data assets can provide very high business value and decision making abilities.
As the volume of data and number of data sources grow, it becomes even more important to put in time and effort to analyze the quality of the data and cleanse the data. Most companies don’t want to spend time or money on data governance initiatives, but if the data fed into the reporting tools is bad or inaccurate, then the reporting will be bad and inaccurate as well. In short, “Garbage in, garbage out”.