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Businesses today make decisions faster than ever before. Leaders in highly reactive and flexible industries like retail, manufacturing and tech need to make informed decisions quickly and switch tactics when the data calls for it. But how can they do with outdated data? That's where an operational data store comes in. 

Operational data stores are the must-have tool for enterprise businesses committed to rapid, data-first decision-making. This article will explore how to leverage an operational data store to start making better and faster decisions for your business.

What is an operational data store?

An operational data store (ODS) combines original data from multiple sources into a single destination, making it available for efficient business reporting. An operational data store is a real-time picture of an organization's business data.

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Access to an operational data store allows businesses to immediately leverage critical data about leads, sales, inventory and customer actions. Businesses that use real-time data tools reap the benefits of this rapid pace of operationalized data.

Operational data stores eliminate the need for business executives to painstakingly search disparate source systems for a piece of information they need. Work that used to be time-intensive and often produced inaccurate or out-of-date results can be streamlined and improved using an operational data store.

An operational data store is often integrated into a business' larger operational systems, as its applications and capabilities are powerful but limited. It's important to understand the differences between an operational data store as a type of database compared to others.

The difference between an operational data store and a data warehouse

This real-time data capability separates an operational data store from an enterprise data warehouse. Sometimes, a data warehouse may be the destination where data ends after passing through an operational data store.

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The fundamental purpose of a data warehouse is different from that of an operational data store. Data warehouses are massive compendiums of current and historical data and have powerful capabilities to analyze large quantities of data. An operational data store can run quick and updated queries. However, a data warehouse can run more complicated or comprehensive data queries.

How is an operational data store related to an ETL pipeline?

An operational data store is often used as a temporary stop along a data pipeline, which is collected and moved using Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) tools. However, since an operational data store doesn’t transform the data, it doesn't necessarily require ETL tools.

How do operational data stores work?

An operational data store efficiently synthesizes and displays data to update you with the latest company data. First, an operational data store collects data from many different sources. Whether it's your SQL database or this month's Facebook impressions, it collects the data from whatever sources you choose and makes it available for business intelligence functions.

Afterward, people across functions within your organization can view it for different business purposes. You can also leverage it to send timely notifications and emails to your integrated applications.

It bears repeating that operational data stores are for real-time data only. When an operational data store brings in new data, it erases the previously written data. If the source data changes or updates, the data store displays that new data.

Unlike in a full ETL system, the data in an operational data store does not transform. Suppose you want to use your operational data store to be a temporary holding place before moving it on. In that case, you can use ETL tooling to transform and load the data captured into a more permanent destination, such as a data warehouse.

Advantages and disadvantages of an operational data store

For many organizations, operational data stores have become an integral part of their business operations. This is because there are many advantages to utilizing an operational data store.

Advantages of an operational data store

Firstly, they boost a company's operational reporting capabilities. They allow you to leverage powerful data statistics and sophisticated reporting that many traditional data warehouses cannot handle.

The power of real-time data can't be overstated. It's estimated that executives spend around 37 percent of their time making decisions and that more than half of that time could be more effective. 

Having access to critical information while the data is still relevant helps business leaders make quick decisions efficiently and pivot operational decisions to respond to changing needs.

An operational data store enables executives across your entire organization to make better decisions. Many different departments can access an operational data store at once. This allows business decision-makers in sales, marketing, customer success and operations teams to all simultaneously make important decisions. With an ODS, the need to consult the data team and wait long periods of time for data uploads and transformations is removed.

Often an operational data store can also be more reliable and contain less duplication or other errors than other types of data solutions. Improved data integrity helps decision-makers feel confident that the source of their decisions is accurate and trustworthy.

You can also set up business rules for your operational data store — that pertain to how often it should be refreshed or checked for redundant information or scrubbed of data — to follow pertinent compliance regulations.

Operational data stores can also be leveraged for customer-facing applications. In today's market, providing a personalized customer experience is key to getting loyal, repeat customers. In fact, 60 percent of consumers said they would buy from a company again if they received a personalized customer experience. 

An operational data store allows you to send real-time updates to your customers and respond to their unique situation as it changes.

Disadvantages of an operational data store

If you're looking to run complex queries or examine historical data, you'll need to look elsewhere. While operational data stores are excellent for their real-time snapshot reporting, they can't do the heavy lifting of a full data warehouse supported by an ETL pipeline.

An ODS can also be a high-maintenance tool and extremely volatile. It's also recommended that a data engineer or other expert be brought in to set up and maintain an ODS, so if your organization doesn't already have dedicated data personnel, that's something to consider. Scaling an ODS isn’t always easy, nor at times, even possible.

However, you can overcome these challenges by using a fully managed data pipeline tool like Fivetran to help you integrate an operational data store into your processes. Fivetran has strong, ready-made integrations that take away the headaches of creating data stores by hand. 

It's important to thoroughly evaluate all the possible benefits and challenges that operational data stores pose and what resources you can use for help before deciding to integrate one into your business processes.

How can you use an operational data store in your business?

With all of that in mind, the most important thing for you to consider is how best an operational data store could be used at your business. Dig deep into what you want to use an operational data store for and where it'll bring the biggest benefit.

You may use an ODS to aggregate your data from many sources, thereby collecting all the information from your business operations at once. You can use an operational data store to store data that's used only for ad-hoc requests. Or, you can set it up to send notifications about specific events, on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

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It could be the decision-making advantage you most want to leverage. For example, integrating an operational data store into your key strategy meetings is a necessary step on the agenda to get everyone on the same page before making a big decision. By having a system in place where different teams can share data, you can improve communication and coordination within your organization.

An operational data store can also help you improve your conversations and interactions with customers. You can set up more customer-facing notifications that trigger when specific customer activities or interactions occur. 

For example, suppose your operational data store picks up on the fact that five customers in the past hour have purchased a specific product from your shop. In that case, you could use this to trigger a notification for other shoppers who have that product in their bag to receive a notification that it's a hot item.

There are countless ways an operational data store can be leveraged depending on your company's specific needs and desires. Don't be afraid to think outside the box!

How can you get started with an operational data store?

Getting started with an operational data store doesn't have to be a complicated process, but being thoughtful and purposeful about where you deploy it and when can ensure that you get the most out of the tool.

First, consider finding out what part of your data analysis process is most stale and lagging behind. More importantly, where do you need it to be faster and more agile? This place should be the focus of your operational data store deployment, as that is where it will improve your business the most.

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Make a full inventory of all the data sources you want to consolidate and ensure that each data source is compatible. Consider consulting a data engineer on how best to integrate and configure your operational data store. 

Better yet, a data pipeline company like Fivetran can get you up and running with real-time data analytics capabilities faster and smoother than an in-house data engineer.

Spend some time strategizing about what business processes you want to affect and improve with your new tool. Assess the impact it'll have on your existing operational analytics process. 

Is your operational data store going to be combined into your data pipeline with existing ETL tooling or data warehouses, work in parallel to those or work in isolation? By planning ahead with these things in mind, you'll be ready to start using your operational data store as soon as it's ready to go.

Conclusion

If your organization is looking to better operationalize real-time data, then an operational data store may be just the thing to add to your modern data stack. Leveraging your data when it's still relevant, sharing that data across your network for cross-company collaboration and utilizing your data to create unique customer experiences, are just a few of the benefits an operational data store can bring to your business.

Operational data stores also have their limitations, so be sure to understand where an operational data store can best be used at your organization. Having a fully built-out modern data pipeline is essential to the long-term success of your business.

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