Reporting and Decision Support Using Data
Warehouse for E-Commerce top-up Cell-phone
Credit Transaction
1st Vito Vincentdo, 2nd Andhika Rizky Pratama, 3rd Abba Suganda Girsang, 4th Rizaldi Suwandi, 5th Yosefina Pricilia Andrean
Computer Science Department, BINUS Graduate Program-Master of Computer Science
Bina Nusantara University
Jakarta, Indonesia 11480
vito.vincentdo@binus.ac.id, arizkyp@binus.ac.id, agirsang@binus.edu, rizaldisuwandi@binus.ac.id, yosefinapricilia@binus.ac.id
Abstract—As e-commerce that covered all Indonesia, needs
a fast reporting system to analyze the business to make the best
decision. This paper provides methods to fasten the reporting
process by making a data warehouse using Kimball and ross
method. Data warehouse consists of 9 step methodology
designed by Kimball and Ross. This paper devoted for business
processes in e-commerce especially for online cellphone balance
top-up transactions. Furthermore, data can be displayed in a
form such as a dashboard, and also in a simple, informative and
effective report.
Keywords— Data Warehouse, Kimball, E-commerce, Online
Transaction
I. INTRODUCTION
XYZ is an e-commerce company that sells a variation of
products start from everyday grocery, industrial, medical,
electronics digital products and many more. One of the
products that is sold by XYZ is cell-phone credit. From each
transaction that occurred, each of them will be recorded in a
database. These data doesn’t have any meaning yet and
doesn’t have any other role besides for reporting. Report that
generated from each transaction usually will generated in a
monthly period. Report still in excel form and takes a moment
to generate a report from some excel file.
The occurring problem can be solved by using a data
warehouse system. As defined by John L., data warehousing
technology is a set of methods, techniques, and tools that are
used to create a vehicle that delivers data to end-user on an
integrated platform [1]. The data warehouse can also know as
a database that stores a collection of data that exists and
present data. Each data comes from different sources and
formats. Data warehouse integrated some source of data to be
a single formatted consistent database. The challenge in the
making of the data warehouse is to withdraw data and
combine those data into 1 structure through an ETL (Extract,
Transform, Load) process [2]. The methodology used for data
warehouse development is Kimball lifecycle methodology
which published in the 1990s. This methodology was used
and proven by many researchers in various fields [3]. This
design had a well-known paradigm in the area of data
warehouse and database in general, always related to OLAP
tools [4].
II. RELATED WORK
Business Intelligence (BI) involves several distinct areas
and technologies that converge in the common goal of having
access to data in order to help businesses in other words [5],
BI can be defined as the process of turning data into
information, and then into knowledge [6]. According to Alpar
P., & Schulz, M. Business Intelligence (BI) systems had
undergone two distinctly different fundamental changes. On
the other hand, social media systems, machine sensors,
devices like smartphones, and other sources generates new
data which often differ from traditional operational data
regarding their structure, rate of growth, and volume. The
scope of BI has been extended from strategic questions to
operational tasks so it’s very important now for every
organization to use Business Intelligence because it can
improve efficiency and give a good result of increased
productivity, it can also cut the organization expenses.
Business Intelligence uses a variety of tools or applications to
retrieve data from the warehouse and to present it to users.
Process from BI can be used for making business decisions
in an effective and efficient manner [7]. For example, user
can use BI in the supply chain, sales, finance, and marketing
[8]. The key characteristic of this, is not unique to Business
Intelligence but certainly more prevalent in Business
Intelligence culture than in traditional BI, the reports are often
interactive with their users, which may include proactive,
responsive, and contextual. More employees have a need to
apply BI [9].
Data warehouse is a relational database system that is
used to store and analyze data, also report the results to users.
The data mart is based on a data warehouse and facilitates the
access and analysis of the data warehouse. A data warehouse
is mainly responsible to store data that is sourced from the
operational systems [10]. Data Warehouse Methodology,
Methodology itself means, a system that had been used in a
particular study/activity, in this case, is software engineering,
data warehouse to be specific, in software development
methodologies such as waterfall, spiral, Rational Unified
Process (RUP), Agile, and etc. [11]. One of the methods that
was used is the Kimball method, and it’s using the bottom-up
approach which is much better for data reporting purposes.
The data warehouse has a big role in every organization to
analyze what’s trending in their data within a certain period
of time to stay competitive. From recent studies, key factors
The 7th International Conference on Cyber and IT Service Management (CITSM 2019)
to a successful data warehouse is, improved availability of
data to meet business needs; improved capability of satisfying
analysis and reporting needs; improved data quality for better
decision-making; and improved timeliness of information for
business users use [12].
III. PROPOSED METHOD
The Kimball methodology involves a singular focus on
individual business processes as the basis for designing
analytical reporting database structures. This is its strength,
but also a weakness, as it does not look at how these processes
interrelate. The interrelation of processes and associated
information is important in areas such as health research that
need to examine cause and effect [13].
Based on bottom-up data warehouse by the Kimball
approach, there are 4 steps of development. The first is to
select the business process, this requires a full understanding
of the process that happens inside this company. To
understand this, analyzing every possible transaction that
could happen in any scenario is needed. Second is to declare
the grain of a fact table. Grain is what do you want to describe
from a single row of the fact table and determines the level of
detail. The third is to identify the dimensions needed to make
the data warehouse system running. Dimension typically can
easily identify end as they represent the “who, what, when,
why, where and how” associated with the events. The last
step is to identify the fact. The fact can be described by a table
that store a specific transaction, in this case, is online top-up
cell-phone credit. The end result from this step is to produce
a star schema as shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. Star Schema Model for Online Top-up Cell-phone Credit
Transforming data conceptual model into a model based
on a large structure table approach has been used, which
keeps the fact and the dimension joined. This approach can
be called a denormalized logical approach (DLA) [14].
IV. ANALYSIS RESULTS
As seen from star schema in Fig. 1, there are 8 tables.
Each of these tables is generated from an ETL (Extract,
Transform, Load) that processed data from an excel file, into
an integrated database table. There are 8 ETL process, 1 is the
fact process and the remainder is the master table process.
Pentaho Data Integration Service has been used to make this
data warehouse. Dimensional model of any business process
has two distinct aspects, measurement, and its context. In data
warehousing, this term is known as fact and dimension [15].
A. The Dimension Table
The next step after completing star schema is data
processing. First, decide which one to process from the
simplest table such as product, source, status, and user
dimension. All of this table didn’t need any complex
transformation. The process was, extract from its source,
select a value that correspondence to the target field, and load
to the target table. Fig. 2 is one example of the process that
occurs.
Fig. 2. Source Dimension ETL
For the date and time dimension, the ETL was slightly
different. Calculator transformation from Pentaho was used
to calculate the transformation. This transformation
simplifies complex query process into a single function. For
ETL process in Fig. 3, we used calculator to extract a date,
month, year, and quarter from a date and load into the target
table. The time dimension is not so different from date
dimension, it is used for the same transformation to extract
the hour and minutes. The hour and minutes can be extracted
when the date source format field includes hour and minute.
Fig. 3. Date Dimension ETL
The last dimension is payment dimension. This dimension
is a little more difficult to make because it needs integration
between 2 different tables into 1 product dimension. The
process in Fig. 4 is joined payment method and payment
detail table by lookup the detail from the fact table.
Fig. 4. Payment Dimension ETL
B. The Fact Table
From completing the dimension table ETL, the next
process is to make the Fact ETL. In this case, only 1 ETL
needed to make the fact table. From Fig. 5., can be seen that
the old transaction fact table was processed and transform
into data warehouse fact. The difference between old fact and
the data warehouse fact are the contents that kept inside. For
fact in a data warehouse, A key from each dimension are
stored. This is to minimize the redundancy and also minimize
 The 7th International Conference on Cyber and IT Service Management (CITSM 2019)
the impact if there is a change. The data in dimension and
data integration can easily be changed into fact.
Fig. 5. Payment Dimension ETL
C. Generating Report
By finishing all the ETL process now data warehouse is
ready. The last step is designing the reporting form that
needed to process. For each design, report design only
depends on the requirement analysis. For example, designing
a report that can show sales rates based on data warehouse.
Fig. 6. Report and Chart for Specific Total Product Sales
Fig. 6. shows the sales report of a specific product and
summarizes it within a month. This report was generated
from the data warehouse database and design it into a specific
and simple design. From this report, hopefully, the company
analyst can compare the report and make a decision to
improve the company operationally.
D. Dashboard
The dashboard is an information management tool that
visually tracks, analyzes and displays metrics, key data points
and key data performance that used for monitoring the health
of a business. Users will only see all the data in the form of
tables, line charts, bar charts, and gauges.
Fig. 7. Cell-Phone Credit Sales Dashboard
Fig. 7. Shows the dashboard of company XYZ Cell-Phone
Credit Sales. Many things can be identified from this
dashboard such as the most selling product, the most loyal
customer, the best sources, and total sales of Cell-Phone
Credit. The First one is Sources Bar-Chart, from this chart the
best sources can be identified, this might be useful for future
development. The second one is a pie chart that shows the top
5 customers so the company knows who is the most loyal
customer. The Third one is the selected product. This
selection will affect all of the output shown by the other item.
The Fourth one is Product Bar-Chart, from this chart the Cell-
Phone Credit Sales per-month can be seen. And the last one
is a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) that will show the total
sales of Cell-Phone Credit Dashboard that might be useful for
the company to evaluate their success at reaching targets.
V. CONCLUSION
With the growth of size and variety of data, it is important
to make the right choice on how to manage the data. It is
important to build a structure that can handle and cover all the
requirements. Based on the reporting and decision support, a
data warehouse can handle and also make it easier and faster
to generate reports and decision support. Data sales from all
providers and nominals have been processed. For future
works, there will be a prediction for the top three products
and nominals that will hold in sales for 1 quarter. The results
from these data can be used by the business team to manage
or prepare a strategy and can be a spear to get revenue.
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