Business Situations That Drive the Need for Ad Hoc Queries - Teradata Database

Business Situations That Drive the Need for Ad Hoc Queries

Two general situations typically drive ad hoc queries: exploratory analysis to discover business opportunities and detailed analysis of why some complicated event that had a negative impact on the enterprise occurred. You must be able to ask questions as they present themselves in either situation and the data warehouse you use for your analysis must be capable of accommodating that need.

Consider the search for new business opportunities. The following table lists some likely business opportunity searches by industry:

Industry	Typical Query Focus
Financial	Cross-selling opportunities
Retail	Market basket analysis
Communications	Calling patterns indicating high risk of losing a customer to the competition.

Now consider the “what went wrong” type of analysis. The following table lists some likely scenarios for this type of ad hoc query by industry:

Industry	Typical Query Focus
Transportation	Over capacity Under capacity
Communications	Sudden customer attrition

Businesses cannot know what questions they will need answered in the future, but they must be able to ask questions that permit them to influence the future positively. Neither issue can be dealt with by means of an analysis of the data warehouse if the system does not provide support for complex ad hoc queries.