Santa brought many a package this year - a packaged data warehouse.  There are a host of these offerings now available which represent the consultant dream of repackaging custom work to more customers.  Of course, the popular ones come from the large vendors who own the systems which originate the data that is challenging to warehouse.  For many, these approaches yields the following practical benefits:

• Enterprise Data Model using relatively acceptable best-practices and standards
• Views for the Business Model metadata
• ETL framework containing mappings/routines to load and refresh the data warehouse
• 100s of reports and dashboard content
• ETL routines have built-in Change Data Capture logic
• Open Interfaces to  other data sources
• Industry standard Metadata for Common Business Functions (i.e. AP, AR, GL, Sales Forecasting, Pipeline, etc.)
• Faster Time to some value
• Small team to deploy initially
• New features available via upgrades

It IS the fastest route to SOME value.  Is it the right value for you?  Is the time savings worth the extra cost?  Will it pay off in the long run?  It's not something to get into lightly.  Unfortunately, packaged data warehousing tends to come with many misconceptions that make it seem more attractive.  These are the most common:

1.      It's a total plug-and-play

2. Data modeling is not important
3. The client does not have to staff data warehouse expertise
4. The business does not have to be involved
5. Data quality is not important
6. Your individual enhancements will merge seamlessly with vendor enhancements in their releases
7. The vendor will continue to upgrade its solution in real-time with the corresponding source system
8. There are no other costs, i.e., Hardware costs, Employee costs, Consulting costs

Be sure to take a complete and multi-faceted view of this important decision.