How do data warehouses enhance decision-making?

Data warehouses significantly enhance decision-making by consolidating data from various sources into a single repository, making it accessible for advanced analytics. This centralization allows organizations to analyze large volumes of data efficiently, enabling them to identify trends, make forecasts, and derive insights that support informed decision-making.

By integrating data from different operational systems, a data warehouse provides a comprehensive view of the organization's data landscape. This holistic approach empowers decision-makers to utilize sophisticated analytical tools and techniques, leading to better strategic planning and operational improvements. The wealth of structured and semi-structured data available in a data warehouse facilitates deeper analytics, such as predictive modeling and data mining, which can uncover patterns and correlations that may not be apparent from isolated data sets.

The other options do not accurately describe the function of data warehouses. They are designed to make data more accessible rather than less, support structured and unstructured data rather than only unstructured, and encourage data utilization rather than minimizing it. This context reinforces the importance of data warehouses in decision-making processes.