Marc Andrews Observations On Demand

Steve Mills Talks to Forbes About the Need for an Information Agenda

Steve Mills was recently interviewed by Forbes magazine to talk about how organizations can deal with all of the information now being captured, and use it more effectively to improve their business.  You can read the full transcript in their article Drowning in Data.

He talks about the opportunity for companies to change how they do business and use information for competitive advantage.  He also raises the issue most organizations are facing, which is navigating information overloads to figure out what information they need, and what information is right.

He references an interesting example in banking:

If you look at a large bank, they have a whole set of product offerings ranging from retail banking to brokerage. They have various private customer relationships--trust, annuities and insurance. You may have a variety of accounts, but do they know you as one person? Do they have a master customer view of you so they can up-sell and cross-sell? For most major banks, the answer is, "No, that's a work in progress." Therefore, they miss opportunities to leverage the capacity of their integrated financial institution. In most cases they have a road map to fix that, but they're struggling to get there.

In this article, he suggests that establishing an Information Agenda can help companies get started, and ensure they are investing in the appropriate infrastructure to support more effective use of information.

Analyst Predictions for Information Needs in 2009

The end of this past year left more for speculation than probably any other year in most of our memories. We're experiencing the most challenging financial crisis we've seen since the Great Depression, plummeting retail sales that will likely change the landscape of the retail industry as much as the banking world has already been changed, continued exponential increases in health care, distrust in our banks and financial markets which has only been compounded by Madoff and what is being described as the largest Ponzi scheme ever, and increased turmoil in the Middle East with terrorism reaching Mumbai and renewed fighting over Gaza.

Of course, this has also led to increased uncertainty. The Dow seems to go up and down by hundreds of points on a daily basis with no clear rhyme or reason. Gas prices continue to fluctuate back and forth. And consumer spending...and investing...is seeming unpredictable. Maybe that's why so many analysts are predicting that companies will need to increase their investments in information in 2009.

IDC, in their report on Worldwide Information Access, Analysis, and Management Software 2009 Top 10 Predictions, talks about the importance of solutions that can "unify access to multiple types and sources of information" and "put better information access and analysis capabilities in the hands of more users." IDC recognizes that IT budgets will be impacted, but suggests that "the economic turmoil will also increase the need for insight into operations, finance, and sales processes." Some of the business drivers they cite include "compliance requirements, the need to compete effectively while keeping down costs, the enterprise information glut, and the recognition that unifying access and management of all types of information improves business processes, increases knowledge worker productivity, and decreases the risk of not understanding the real status of an enterprise because of an imperfect view of its internal information."

Of the top 10, the three I thought were most relevant were:

1. Need for tools to increase the performance and competitiveness of organizations
2. Corporate events (e.g. M&A, executive turnover, staff reductions) will trigger need for investment in capabilities to automate "knowledge" processes with reduced staff
3. Increased need to manage ALL types of information spurred by stricter regulatory compliance and needs for better, more intelligent business monitoring and decision making

Gartner Can't Say Enough About the Need for Enterprise Information Management and Business Intelligence
Gartner has also been jumping on this bandwagon. In fact, in the beginning of December, Gartner release five separate reports, all about this topic.  They started off by introducing a new EIM Maturity Model.  In this report, Gartner claims that organizations cannot implement enterprise information management (EIM) as a single project, but must implement it as a coordinated program that evolves over time. They introduce an EIM maturity model to help organizations identify what stage of maturity they have reached and what actions to take to reach the next level. IBM had actually put together a maturity model almost a year ago, based on experience from several hundred customers that are trying to establish their own information agenda. There is even an information agenda checklist that companies can fill out and submit to get help assessing their own information agenda needs.

Gartner also issued a report on Enterprise Information Management Revisited: Foundations, Progress and Futures, in which they suggest focusing on information governance as a first project for those that are new to EIM, and stress the importance of "defining and socializing" the relationship of enterprise information management to the business and the business role and the benefits that they can expect, as there is still a great deal of misunderstanding as to what "enterprise information management" really means and how it can provide business value.

In Predicts 2009: Enterprise Information Management Will Prove Itself, Gartner makes predictions on the value of EIM and claims that enterprises that adopt EIM can outperform rivals in areas such as operational efficiency, product development and customer service. And in How to Really Do the Five EIM-Related Things Everyone Else Just Thinks They're Doing, Gartner highlights how enterprise information management can yield measurable business benefits, such as increased efficiency of critical cross-company processes and greater information transparency. In fact, IBM's Information Agenda initiative is all about providing guidance on how to realize these benefits and get results you can measure.

Finally, in Predicts 2009: Business Intelligence and Performance Management Will Deliver Greater Business Value, Gartner claims that the current economic crisis shows the importance of trust and transparency in the information that organizations use to run their business. They suggest that companies need to integrate the analytical insights derived from this information into the decision-making processes throughout the organization.

So, it seems that the overwhelming message here is that 1) we're in for some challenging times ahead, and 2) companies need better access to better information to make better business decisions so they can improve their business performance and create a competitive advantage in the market.