Datamarts are developed and implemented to make it easier for business to get better value from data.  They are smaller than a data warehouse and usually aligned to a specific department or business project.  By combining different databases into one smaller repository, organisations can understand a person’s total relationship with their company, and their current and potential value.  To get an even better picture, relevant external data like Census and Quotable Value data and/or attitudinal research data can be appended.

Datamarts are fully customisable and can either be installed in-house or hosted externally at Datamine.  The data is regularly refreshed and cleaned (daily, weekly or monthly) to provide up-to-date, current and accurate data. This can easily be tracked and enable reporting on initiatives in order to develop a continuous learning and improvement culture.  Having a datamart with clean and accessible data also makes it much easier for Datamine to work on other data analytics projects, as the project delivery timeframe is reduced.

The first step of a Datamart Development project is a workshop with stakeholders to scope and understand the intended use for the datamart.  Questions to be answered:

• Who are the 'users' for this datamart?  Marketing?  Product?  Risk?  IT?  All of the above?
• What is the purpose of the datamart?  Analytics only?  Or will campaign lists be required?
• What data sets are available and in what formats?  Who 'owns' these data sets within the business?
• How and how often are they updated and how often can Datamine receive a data refresh?
• Are there any 3rd party data sources of interest, e.g. Census.
• What cleaning and processing will be required, e.g. Address cleaning?  Name cleaning?  Email pinging?
• Is a Single Customer View (SCV) a development requirement at this stage?  Or later?
• Who will host the datamart, Datamine or the client?