SOA - Actionable Information for Business Optimization

Actionable Information for
Business Optimisation A White Paper
October 2007 The r ight information at the right time. A Bathwick white paper © 2007 have the information they need in order to make the Contents right decisions?" Contents...............................................................2 The process of decision making is hampered by a Creating a personalized information environment....2 number of factors; Approaches to helping clients get the right information at the right time in the right place........6 . Information fog - Sifting the relevant Setting the SOA Agenda ........................................9 information from the ocean of irrelevant "facts" Lessons from the front line ..................................11 . Information Quality - Getting accurate information . Getting timely information - Information that is Creating a personalized current .information environment Feral Data - Data that lives in the "wild" outside the control of existing policies We live and work in a fast-moving and dynamic world, caught between a host of conflicting Information "fog" demands on our time and attention. Against this Whenever business leaders are asked if they have backdrop we're called on to boil an ocean of too much information the overwhelming response is information in order to support the decisions that almost always "yes". Next, when asked if they have we have to make on an hour-by-hour basis. enough of the "right" information the overwhelming In this paper Gary Barnett (a Partner with the response is "No". While there's no shortage of information, the ability of people to manage this Bathwick Group) and Greg Milwid (a Manager deluge of data is being restricted by within IBM's Software group) discuss the the mass of reports / emails / papers challenges we face when it comes to ensuring "The fog of that frequently contradict each other. that we have the right information, in the right information can format and context, and at the right time in order Decision makers have to contend with drive out to make the right decisions. an avalanche of information to the knowledge." extent that "information overload" is a Decisions, decisions. major hindrance to effective decision- Daniel J. Boorstin , making. Busy decision-makers can (American Historian, Most of us have to make dozens of decisions every sometimes spend as much time 1914-2004) day; many of them are relatively minor like choosing discarding irrelevant information as the route we take to work in order to avoid traffic, they do considering the relevant. while some represent critical choices that might make the difference between hitting or missing our Information, no matter how much of it you have, is quarterly numbers, or even the success or failure of not knowledge. In order to transform information our business. into knowledge it has to be correlated with the other information you have, and then it needs to be placed We make these decisions on the basis of the in the correct context. information we have available to us, combined with our evaluation of that information. So we try to The more information you have to contend with - ensure that we have the information we need in the harder this process becomes. order to make the best decision we can. The birth of Information Technology brought with it the promise Our goal isn't to have "lots of information"; that we'd be better informed than ever before. In our goal is to have enough of the right many respects we are better informed than our information. predecessors, but this then raises the question "Why do so many business leaders feel that they don't
All contents © The Bathwick Group Ltd. 2007 - 2 - www.bathwick.com The right information at the right time. A Bathwick white paper © 2007 Information Quality data centre - in France - where this was in fact the case). Real-Another issue is that we're increasingly suspicious time information is only of value With hindsight, we about the actual quality of the information we if it's relevant to you, and if receive - when one report states that a customer's see that the Soviet you... [download for more]