data warehouse
...nsidered to be the key component of many organizations’ information system, and it plays a very important role in all the four functional departments of an organization. In knowledge-based economy, information system management replaces technology and products to be the core competition of an organization. For retailing, it consists of famous brand and good reputation, employees and their technologies, good relationship with suppliers, huge amounts of customers’ information and rapid response to those information, proprietary techniques and advanced management. In my opinion, the good relationships with suppliers are the most important factors among all of them. Wal-Mart has done an excellent job in the relationships with their suppliers. Its data warehouse provides their suppliers and buyers with the accurate information; therefore they fulfill the task that provides the right products to every branch at the right time. Thanks to its perfect data warehouse, every products and costs have been analyzed carefully, which help the senior managers make better decisions. Wal-Mart allows more than 3,500 suppliers to remotely access information on sales of their products and perform analyses. These suppliers use this information to identify customer buying patterns at the store display level. They use this information to manage local store inventory and identify new merchandising opportunities. When the supplier’s inventory in the Wal-Mart store became low, the supplier would resupply immediately, thus saving Wal-Mart the need of having warehouse space. Moreover, these information help them analyze the customers’ purchasing power and seasonal purchasing trends, consequently make reasonable discount decisions, keep track of the quantity and the flow of their products and make quick response to that. When customers entered Wal-Mart store and decided to buy, Wal-Mart had already known what they want to buy, whether you believe it or not, it is true! Wal-Mart builds a permanent, stable and reciprocal relationship with their suppliers with creativity, and through the powerful information system manages this special relationship efficiently. Through this data warehouse, Wal-Mart not only gets the best products with the lowest prices, but makes the most rapid response to the change of the market need. All of these became Wal-Mart’s competitive advantages and ranks first on top 500. After the introductory of this data warehouse, the organization implemented the information system more efficiently. More and more employees realized the importance of data warehouse and they must command it at their finger-tips in this situation. It spurred them to filling-up and cover-up from time to time. Every single employee must understand the data and change it into use...