3.13. The IT managers responsible for selling the data warehouse concept to upper management say that it would be much harder to make the case in today’s climate of shrinking IT budgets, because most organizations are trying to cut costs rather than launch new initiatives. Discuss the approach that the IT shop would need to take in presenting a business case for a data warehouse with application tools such as that of MasterCard International.

An example of a client/server architecture is that used by MasterCard International [HIGG03, STEI02b].The company’s computer facility authorizes, clears, and settles each credit card transaction in real time as a cardholder’s credit card is swiped.The client/server system ties together 25,000 member banks with MasterCard’s massive data warehouse, which helps the credit card giant and its bank clients make more effective business decisions. MasterCard has converted the 50 terabytes (TB)1 of transactional and financial data into a business-intelligence engine for use by banks and MasterCard employees.
Planning for the data warehouse began in the mid-1990s. Interestingly, the IT (information technology) staff did not feel the need to present a detailed business case to upper management for this major project. Rather, the data warehouse was presented as a strategic move to give MasterCard a competitive edge. Specifically, MasterCard wanted to improve market share. At the time, MasterCard accounted for only about 25% of charges for goods sold worldwide using credit cards, with Visa accounting for 50%.Today, that market share is closer to one-third and growing.
Financial institutions that use MasterCard rely on the history of credit card