It's no secret that the US and global economies are facing difficult times. If the economic pundits are correct, we are now working through the most challenging economic decline of most of our lifetimes.

Many of your organizations have already made significant reductions in staffing and spending. The data warehouse/ business intelligence (DW/BI) sector seems to be faring somewhat better than others. In bad times as in good times, organizations desire better visibility into their business and improved decision-making capabilities. Even so, many DW/BI teams are facing staff reductions or at least hiring freezes coupled with significant reductions in budgets for new hardware, software, training and consulting. Perhaps your organization had grander plans, but now you find those plans on hold.

No astute DW/BI manager would be so short-sighted as to ignore these realities in the face of today's economic environment. But rather than just putting current activities on a budgetary crash diet, it's time to institute a proactive fitness program that will yield a leaner, more efficient and effective DW/BI program for the long haul. How can you do more in an environment where staffing and funding are constrained? Focus on three key opportunities:

• Cost savings
• Cost avoidance
• Growth

Cut the Flab

In tough times, the obvious place most organizations start to cut is in identifying opportunities for cost savings. This often means significant reductions in budgets as well as possible staff reductions. We'll assume you are already running very lean; your budgets and staffing have already been evaluated and trimmed. After these obvious cuts, you'll want to look for other avenues to achieve cost savings.

Revisit the original justification for your DW/BI effort; often a number of cost-savings goals were identified during the project justification effort. Have these goals been realized? If not, why not? Are the savings still available? If so, look for inexpensive methods that would help you achieve these goals.

Often the most significant cost savings assigned to a DW/BI effort are related to sunsetting older analytic environments, resulting in significant savings on hardware, software licenses, maintenance and support resources. Try to determine why these savings have yet to be realized. We can often point the finger of blame at office politics. The new DW/BI environment may be well positioned to support the requirements of the existing analytic environment, yet a group of business users lacks the motivation to make the move. A mandate is required to force these stragglers to migrate to the new environment and the current economic environment may provide just the incentive you need.

It's easy to just blame politics, but you need to talk to the holdout business users to understand their perspectives. The new solution may be almost everything these users need, but some vital component might still be missing. It could be very easy to solve the issue, perhaps with user training, a little applet or macro, modifications to reports, or possibly a minor change in the data or model.

Even in the best of times we want to sunset old applications, not only because of the operating costs but also because we want a single version of the truth. In these worst of times, we should be able to entice or force the stragglers to migrate away from the legacy environment to the new DW/BI solution and finally achieve the cost savings initially envisioned.

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