It is often convenient to combine facts from multiple processes together into a single consolidated fact table if they can be expressed at the same grain. For example, sales actuals can be consolidated with sales forecasts in a single fact table to make the task of analyzing actuals versus forecasts simple and fast, as compared to assembling a drill-across application using separate fact tables. Consolidated fact tables add burden to the ETL processing, but ease the analytic burden on the BI applications. They should be considered for cross-process metrics that are frequently analyzed together.