Turning data into information

From Sebastian Bachmann's point of view, the DWH serves as a springboard into the areas of business intelligence, or data-driven business. "This ranges from simple decision support to predictive data models," says Bachmann. The Head of Business Intelligence at Finstar continues, "Stephen Hawking defined intelligence as the ability to adapt to change. I think this competence is eminently important, especially in today's environment, to act actively and with foresight and not just react."

When asked about the connection between Big Data and DWH, Bachmann differentiates, "For me, Big Data means either enormous or completely unstructured amounts of data, like social media comments." In contrast, the Finstar DWH works with much less, but closely linked, information-rich data - "the term Smart Data is appropriate for me." Merging data from a wide variety of systems, making it available for analysis is a continuous process as new data sources flow in all the time. "The digitization of a wide variety of work areas and the integration of more and more devices (Internet of Things) mean that there are always new opportunities." Bachmann says it is important to prioritize the topics correctly in order to achieve the greatest benefit. In the context of developing a DWH, the business is the driving force, and the DWH should provide the key performance indicators and KPIs for control. Data integration, optimized interfaces and analysis with the help of artificial intelligence are at the center of the implementation of the specifications.

For Bachmann, the biggest challenge is data modeling. "This is also one of the most exciting topics, because it involves putting different data worlds into context - this process also unearths the most interesting insights." While the amount of data is no longer a problem, it's the data that determines DWH quality. "Finstar provides very good data, which allows us to update and deploy efficiently." The Finstar DWH currently covers two areas, financial management and sales, and also offers a self-service business intelligence that enables analytics down to the customer or transaction. "Overall, the DWH provides direct access to your own data," Bachmann concludes, "and that's why most banks can benefit from this technology in some way."

The data warehouse supports the digitization of other processes, the specific provision of information and the monitoring of specifications. "Bank employees benefit from targeted queries, it facilitates their work from task management to geographic market analysis," Bachmann on the benefits. To this end, the DWH stores data at the finest granularity so that it can be recombined when queried. "This makes it easy to interpret the data. So, in the case of the bank balance sheet, it can be accessed down to the customer level." And further development? "In addition to the further development of the data model, the integration of additional data sources is planned. In terms of customers, the DWH is already in productive use at Hypothekarbank Lenzburg - other customers will be able to benefit from the advantages from November 2020."