Siebel Customer-Centric Enterprise Warehouse Installation and Configuration Guide > Planning Your Warehouse Configuration Project > Gap Analysis >

Beginning Gap Analysis

The most efficient way to approach gap analysis is to start with the front-end reports. If you do not have easy access to the front-end reports, you can perform the gap analysis strictly from the back end. To understand where gap analysis ends in the front end, and begins in the back end, you must understand the entire gap-analysis process, as shown in Figure 2, and outlined as follows:

1. Begin with your front-end reports. Do they meet your needs? If your requirements do not exceed what is available in the reports, you do not have any gaps to analyze. Otherwise, you need to identify information that is not available in the default reports. To do so, proceed to the next step.
2. Continue with your front-end solution. Is the information you are seeking already available in, or can it be derived from, the front-end metadata?
3. Conclude with the data warehouse data model. Is the information you need already being extracted from the source system, or do the extracts need configuration?

Figure 2. Simple Approach to Gap Analysis

Resolving Gaps in the Data Warehouse Data Model

You can redefine, add, or delete functionality in the data warehouse model to best meet your business requirements. The following sections provide a brief overview of general back-end configuration information that spans all applications. They also provide configuration information specific to each application.

There are two high-level possibilities for configuration at the back end:

• The information you need is already extracted, but is not transformed and loaded as you require. To reconfigure, modify the appropriate mappings to transform and load additional data into the extension columns provided in the target table.
• The information you need is not being extracted from your source system. There are many ways to address this issue—the method you choose depends on how much information is required. You can modify an existing extract mapping to extract the data, or create a new extract mapping.