An Event Management Company  Enterprise Integration and Development of a Decision Support System  This company is in the business of planning and running business meetings, conferences, and incentive programs. The events range in size from a couple dozen to thousands of attendees with budgets in the millions of dollars. The company can handle all aspects of the event from negotiating hotel contracts, registering attendees, providing creative materials, ticketing air travel, to on-site management. Problem Statement Data systems within this company had evolved separately and were only just starting to be integrated via selected interfaces. Furthermore, each department focused on performing its function without regard to the overall goals of the organization. Future plans included increased usage of outside service providers (ASPs) which also complicates the process of integration. While the company’s data systems were sufficient to support the successful operation of the business, they lacked they capability to provide analysis of the business as a whole. Data-Core was engaged to develop a plan to create the appropriate warehouse and select the necessary analytical tools. The Solution Data-Core approached the problem from a functional standpoint rather than a technical one and looked at what the users needed before offering a technology solution. Requirements were determined by interviewing key personnel. Special notice was taken of needs that could not be handled by any single existing system. An inventory of the available data sources was prepared at the field level to identify what data could be derived from the existing systems. Further analysis was done to see if the fields of interest actually had a meaningful data population. Also documented were the keys that could be used to join data from separate systems. A multi-tier, Web-based architecture was provided to serve multiple users, no matter where they are in the world. The solution keeps even remote users in touch with the information they need. Users can work directly with business information for ad hoc reporting and develop their own applications using advanced data visualization and data mining techniques via Internet browser software and the company’s standard digital tools. The rich functionality and flexibility of the Web interface minimized training and accelerated deployment. The delivered solution Provided a data foundation that supports the vision and goals of the organization Ensured that the foundation is extensible and scaleable Enabled further alternatives to be considered by management for current and future data strategies Leveraged existing IT architecture investments Delivered within client’s cost constraints The delivered components Data Exchange Maintains master files and code tables Maintains cross reference tables for keys and codes to enable the transfer of data from one system to another Transfers and/or synchronizes data between systems Operations Center Applications for standardizing and scrubbing data Repository (Data Warehouse) Set of Data Analysis Tools Ad Hoc Query OLAP Web Browser based user interface Comprehensive Application Security Framework Integration Infrastructure Framework