Don Steffen is a cofounder and partner of AmberLeaf Partners, Inc. (formerly BI Solutions, Inc.), a consulting firm dedicated to enabling innovative companies with the information to make critical investment decisions. Steffen has been designing and delivering technical architecture and solutions in the business intelligence and data warehouse industry for more than a decade. He can be reached at dsteffen@amberleaf.net.

Getting Data Right at the Source
May 1, 2011 Benefits of tighter source and downstream application integration

The Purpose of System Testing
July 1, 2010 An important process can be reduced to the goal, the approach and the execution

Foundation of Multiapplication Support
May 1, 2010 Documented processes and good communication help deliver top-notch application support

What is Different about Data Integration Project Management?
March 1, 2010 Understand special challenges and dependencies on source systems for feed timing and data quality

A Recipe for Success When Companies - and Their Data - Merge
January 19, 2010 Consistent processes, migration validation and performance consideration are mandatory in M&A situations

Setting the Standard for ETL Unit Testing
November 1, 2009 Test the success and failure of every business rule and piece of logic

Add Real-World Value to the Staging Area
September 14, 2009 Architecture and design can add lots of value when staging data ETL jobs

Two Boosts for BI Adopters
July 16, 2009 You have all the components for a successful business intelligence project, now communicate and gather buy-in

The What-If Review
April 16, 2009 The technical design process should include worst-case scenario planning

What Else Have You Got?
March 23, 2009 Stay focused on traditional sales and marketing objectives when beginning a predictive Web analytics strategy

Web Marketing and Paid Search
February 12, 2009 A successful paid search marketing program requires attention to teasers, keywords and ongoing maintenance

Web Analytics: What's the Goal?
January 29, 2009 Web analytics may still be a distant prospect but should not be ignored

The Conformed ETL Architecture
September 1, 2004 At last, an approach that eliminates proliferating, redundant ETL actions.