| The data warehouse is an evolving technology that is part of an organization's long term strategic investment. In this role, it is supporting organizations' customer relationship management and business intelligence strategies. Data warehouses are huge, time-consuming development and implementation projects. They are expensive to build and maintain with average cost of building a typical data warehouse estimated at {dollar}5 million.; Successful data warehouses have high rates of returns (400%) with average payback of 1.7 years. Unfortunately, they also have high failure rates ranging from 50–70%. Reasons for failure includes poor data quality, lack of executive sponsorship and unrealistic expectations.; Although the business community has embraced this technology, few academic researchers have conducted empirical studies in the field. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of critical success factors in data warehouse development and implementation, and whether they help organizations achieve a competitive advantage.; The findings were obtained by analyzing data provided by a panel of experts consisting of information technology personnel and business users within AXA, a global leader in financial protection and wealth management. The study did not identity the critical success factors that impacted the successful development and implementation of the data warehouse. However, it identified a number of findings whose impact could affect future data warehouse development projects.; The dissertation presents an overview of the literature on decision support systems and data warehousing, strategy, competitive advantage and critical success factors in data warehousing. It also includes the implications of the study's findings as well as recommendations for future research in data warehousing. |
