::The purpose of creating a Data Warehouse is to form the foundation for Data Mining. Data Mining is a capability for extracting patterns from historical data that can provide powerful answers to critical business questions. Accurate Data Mining is the key to Business Intelligence (BI). For companies willing to make the commitment to financial and technical resources, highly qualified analytical talent, the cleanup and maintenance of clean data and the willingness to learn and act upon the results, data mining can provide a powerful competitive advantage.

:: Data Warehousing and Data Mining are complex business and technical processes. Infotek understands that there are several significant issues In Implementing, using and maintaining a data warehouse / data-mining capability that organizations need to address:

• Understand What You Are Getting: Buying a data-mining software engine is insufficient to affect a successful, ongoing data-mining capability. The software engine is a tool kit. As such, prerequisite business plans the IT infrastructure and the skill-set capable of implementing and using the tools must be secured and put into place.
  
  
• Data Readiness for Analysis: Data-mining requires a consolidated "de-duplicated" and cleaned data store to draw from. Seventy to 85 percent of the work in building models using data-mining relates to the cleaning and preparation of data prior to a specific mining.
  
  
• Staffing: Data-mining software is not a replacement for skilled analysts. The algorithms used in data mining are quite powerful. If the users do not understand these Issues or do not have access to knowledgeable staff, the results can be disastrous. The ongoing use of a data-mining capability requires business analysis and skilled staff.
  
  
• Take Action: Data-mining is about acting upon the results and making changes. An important issue which must be addressed before undertaking the creation of a data mining capability is the organization's ability to take the learning's, interpret the results and make the recommended changes in the business and organization.
  
  
• Cost Considerations: There is a considerable danger of underestimating the costs of implementing, using and maintaining a data-mining capability. A frequently overlooked source of cost is the labor required to use and maintain the system. Data-mining software vendors have tendency to make recommendations calling for fewer analysts of lower skill levels that will be actually required by the data-mining capability to meet company expectations.