Clients leverage our core consulting services for enterprise-wide data solutions and for help in specialized areas like data warehousing, business intelligence, or the world of Big Data. We will dig in and work directly with your business community and IT personnel. Our core consulting services include the following areas of expertise.
Organization and Governance
Gaining true value from your data is more than moving data more efficiently. It is highly dependent upon the people and processes involved in supporting the entire environment. StarSoft Solutions leverages our experience with hundreds of organizations to help you define and implement the necessary organizational and process changes to ensure sustainable success with your data and analytics environment.
Coaching and Mentoring
StarSoft Solutions provides individualized coaching and mentoring for your staff. We work with business professionals and management teams to deepen their understanding of all aspects of utilizing data. We work with IT staff to expand their knowledge and provide practical recommendations throughout the project lifecycle including in-depth data modeling skills transfer.
We Provide:
- Direct access to world class consultants
- Coaching to assist you with any aspect of your data and analytic initiatives
- Early warning so you avoid problems before they happen
- Ensure you are following industry best practices
Leaving You With:
- Ability to deal with challenges going forward
- Confidence in your designs
- Necessary skills to realize the potential value in your data
- An understanding of your data and how to leverage its value
Organization Blueprint Recommendations
StarSoft Solutions will partner with you to review your current staffing levels, skill sets and organization structure to determine how to better support your current and future data and analytic initiatives.
We Provide:
- Experience from hundreds of organizations – large and small
- Custom solutions based upon your unique organizational needs
- Insight on how to optimize resources to ensure effective data and analytics programs
Leaving You With:
- DW/BI program that is defined and appropriately resourced to support goals and expectations
- Clear roles and responsibilities
- Recommended staffing model
- Education and training recommendations
Project Methodology and Planning
StarSoft Solutions works with you to leverage established best practice project methodologies to align with your organization and culture to ensure successful initiatives. We use our deep experience including the Data Warehouse Lifecycle, Waterfall and Agile project methodologies to optimize your projects. We help you establish your project approach that balances the standards of your project management office with the unique characteristics of iterative data and analytical work.
We Provide:
- Assistance with project definition, scoping and justification
- Practical recommendations for adopting a project methodology
- Guidance for the development of standards and project deliverables templates
- Coaching to ensure your staff has the understanding needed to manage projects
Leaving You With:
- Repeatable project plan template
- Baseline project tasks to drive detailed project plans
- Insight into the Data warehouse Lifecycle, Waterfall and Agile project methodologies
- Prepared to manage end-to-end tasks required for successful data and analytical projects
Data Governance Program Development
StarSoft Solutions can help you develop a data governance program that is achievable and sustainable. This requires executive commitment, assignment of ownership and authority, and the implementation of policies and procedures. Effective data governance can reduce confusion and ambiguity about data, minimize data redundancy, and improve data quality. We facilitate the relationship between the business and IT communities to achieve alignment that results in enterprise-wide success.
We Provide:
- A blueprint for a successful data governance program
- Practical steps to get you started
- Best practices for sustainable data governance
- Insight for how data governance impacts business results
Leaving You With:
- A clear understanding of roles and responsibilities for data governance and stewardship
- Defined deliverables for your data governance program
- A decision-making framework for approving data element names, definitions and calculations across the enterprise
- Awareness of technology available to facilitate your data governance efforts
Business Benefit Identification
Understanding your strategic objectives, critical business challenges and the data you already collect is the first step towards unleashing the potential of data and analytics for your organization. StarSoft Solutions can quantify that value so that management is confident in allocating necessary resources to these efforts. This is helpful whether you are just getting started or interested in jump-starting your existing environment.
Business Value Discovery
StarSoft Solutions will lead a comprehensive business study to understand the key factors driving the organization. This study includes interviewing business professionals and related groups to provide a cross-functional perspective. We will determine requirements and translate them into design considerations. However, our process goes beyond traditional requirements gathering and specification development. We help identify the key business areas that will realize impacts from a better use of data, and we help the organization prioritize these to balance value and feasibility.
We Provide:
- Identification of strategic business challenges and opportunities that will benefit from improved data access and analytics
- Prioritization of initial opportunities that yield the biggest benefits and are the most feasible
- Quantification of potential business value of key business opportunities
- The expertise to connect with executives, managers, and skilled professionals from both business and IT
- Translation of business conversations into requirements
Leaving You With:
- An understanding of current business and analytic challenges
- Documented strategic business requirements that drive design
- Candidate business analytic areas
- The ability to articulate the business potential of your data
Business Data Discovery
Your data is the heart of the matter. StarSoft Solutions will identify the data needed to support the business community and compare the findings with the data that exists today. We will find the gaps so that you can begin capturing or acquiring the necessary data.
We Provide:
- Proven experience to quickly understand complex enterprise data
- Facilitated discussions about data with both the business and IT communities
- Knowledge about primary data that drives solutions in your industry
Leaving You With:
- An inventory of critical formal and informal data sources
- Identification of existing data issues and integration challenges
- An understanding of what data holds the greatest potential
Data Modeling and Data Management Services
Our data modeling and data management services take a detailed look at your organization’s data to develop strategies and designs that provide a solid foundation to support the business today and into the future.
Business Dimensional Modeling
StarSoft Solutions pioneered the Business Dimensional Modeling technique to provide a mechanism ensure business understanding of data and commitment to analytic data environments. The Business Dimensional Model serves as the foundation for development of any analytical data system, regardless of the technology since it represents your business in your terms. We can provide the initial framework to get you started or a more comprehensive, in-depth model.
We Provide:
- World-class, industry-leading dimensional modeling expertise
- Proven method to develop and document data models
- Insight for how to leverage physical data structures based upon your technology. This includes, but is not limited to star schema design
- A framework to achieve enterprise data integration
Leaving You With:
- A technology independent model including business names and definitions for your data
- A business understanding of your data and how it should be organized for analytics
- A sound design that ensures long term stability and flexibility for growth
- A preliminary source to target data map that jump-starts development
Big Data Integration and Business Dimensional Modeling
Too many people think that new kinds of data negate older, traditional techniques and approaches. In reality, technological progress empowers us to tackle new and different kinds of data and problems, but does not eliminate the value in continuing to leverage what we already have. StarSoft Solutions has expanded the Business Dimensional Model to identify links between your structured and unstructured data to provide the highest possible insight and value.
We Provide:
- Experience to align your data to strategic business initiatives
- Strategies to link the results and insight from your big data with your structured data
- Practical techniques to document and communicate details of your data
Leaving You With:
- A clear understanding of your structured and unstructured data sources
- Insight to the business benefit of linking structured and unstructured data
- A framework to understand the integration of all your data
- Direction for what needs to be done and how to get started
Next Generation Enterprise Data Strategy
The kinds of data that we can collect and curate is ever changing. Technology continues to evolve. Data and related concepts have moved from IT into the mainstream – but do you really know what it all means? How do you determine what is applicable to you and your organization? StarSoft Solutions has been assisting clients for decades to understand the latest trends and developments of the data industry. We can help you navigate the complexities, variety and options of data and technology to craft an enterprise data strategy that is practical and achievable. Data concepts, ideas and topics can include:
- Enterprise DW
- Data Marts
- Star / Snowflake Design
- Data Lakes
- Data Vault
- Big Data
- Data Ecosystems
- Entity Relationship Models
We Provide:
- Data industry insight
- Powerful track record of providing practical, understandable strategies
- Expertise to develop a data architecture vision to harness your organization’s strengths and expand to capitalize on the progress of the data and analytics industry
Leaving You With:
- A clear understanding of the data marketplace
- An inventory of your current data assets
- A Data Architecture Vision that leverages what you have and embraces the future
Analytics and Storytelling
StarSoft Solutions focuses on high-impact analyses to help your organization achieve measurable results. We provide the strategic understanding of these opportunities and articulate the benefits. We can also connect you with high-quality organizations able to perform hands-on development.
Business Analytics Discovery
StarSoft Solutions can frame business problems without the limitation of preconceived solutions or relying on only easily available data. High-impact analytics begin with conscious and correct problem framing. Underlying this is appropriate data selection, identification of the proper analytic model, purposeful analysis, actionable outcomes and the ability to tell a compelling story with your data. Analytic solutions may include:
- Performance Management
- Regulatory Reporting
- Exception Reporting
- Root Cause Analysis
- Predictive Analytics
- Big Data Analytics
- Data Visualization
- Social Data Analytics
- Business Driven Analytics
We Provide:
- The ability to articulate data storytelling opportunities
- Decades of experience working with analytics
- Expertise to translate business analytical ideas into practical design recommendations
- A data focus to ensure your analytics vision can be implemented
Leaving You With:
- Documented candidate analyses for data storytelling
- Opportunities to deliver existing analytical data to new audiences
- Identification of data needed to support high value analytics
- Understanding of how to increase adoption of analytical solutions
Business Analytics Value Identification
Sometimes it is not enough to just know what analyses could be done. You need to justify the required investment to enable these analytics to be created. StarSoft Solutions can help you frame the business value and assist with prioritization.
We Provide:
- Experience to quantify benefits from reporting and analytics solutions
- A framework for prioritization of opportunities based upon value and feasibility
- Assistance defining development projects to deliver analytics solutions
Leaving You With:
- An understanding of your highest value opportunities
- The ability to articulate the business benefits
- Skills to repeat the business value identification process