Critical Business: Best Practices in Building an Integrated Information Management Strategy

PERSPECTIVESToday's IT Leaders on Market Trends
Critical Business Best practices in building an integrated information management strategy
uccess today depends on enterprises being infor- Information Management: A Corporate Mandatemation-driven to support business goals and gain Business executives often must quickly make decisions, but competitive advantage. CIOs and business execu- to do so, they require trusted information to best guide tives are under incredible pressure to increase ef- those decisions. Thus, accurate, reliable and timely informa-fiSciencies while innovating for top-line results. Developing tion has become a corporate mandate, placing pressure on sales channels, driving new demand, reducing production CIOs to have a strategy that provides consistent information cycle times-for all of this, instant insights into business across the enterprise. performance and opportunities, based on information from This information management challenge is made more across and beyond the enterprise, complex as businesses increas-are pivotal. ingly function as collaborative To support this information- networks-including multiple driven business imperative, CIOs internal stakeholders, partners, must provide timely, accurate and suppliers and customers-to consistent enterprise-wide infor- drive competitive innovation for mation. With data typically resid- growth and efficiency. Informa-ing in multiple disparate systems tion sources and demands across and applications, that can be a these business networks often challenging task. Enterprises require a sound and compre- change rapidly, due to factors such as close customer col-hensive information management strategy. laboration in product development; mergers and acquisi-Increasingly, CIOs are looking to standardize on one tions; partially outsourced business processes, (such as sup-integrated platform for information management that ply chains); or compliance in manufacturing.encompasses multiple technologies, such as business in- This is clearly under-telligence (BI) and master data management (MDM). stood by business executives About CIO2CIO By integrating these technologies, organizations gain a who see the need for an agile Perspectives: This peer-based thought comprehensive view of business data and processes, en- infrastructure for informa- leadership program abling real-time visibility into operations and improved tion management. According analyzes quantitative decision-making. Inventories can be reduced, sales and to the survey conducted by research and tests it via qualitative inter-billing processes can be streamlined to better respond IDG Research, 76 percent views with actual CIOs. to customer demand and costs can be controlled more ef- of global respondents say the To obtain a free down-fectively. ability to manage data as an load of the complete 28-page research brief Research and in-depth discussions with CIOs, con- enterprise asset-to be shared cited in this paper, ducted by IDG Research Services, have pinpointed a set of and reused across multiple go to www.cio.com/best practices for architecting and implementing a compre- applications, systems, business whitepapers/research. hensive information management strategy, encompassing processes and users-is a critical To learn more about CIO2CIO Perspec-transactional systems, data warehouses, BI and MDM sys- or high priority. tives, please contact tems and content management solutions. "Information management mavery@cxo.com.
CIO2CIO | INFORMATION MANAGEMENT 
SAPWhitePaperUSA.indd 1 12/7/07 3:58:55 PMPERSPECTIVESToday's IT Leaders on Market Trends
A Solid Platform for Information ManagementInformation management is a business discipline as based platform to manage this information across the enter-much as an IT discipline. Sales operations need real-time prise. Integrating structured and unstructured information visibility into inventory. Production requires unique identi- from heterogeneous sources, it provides one single version fication and tracking of products across supply networks. of the truth, across master and transactional records, as Finance demands compliance with business record man- well as business documents. Information is managed and agement policies. ... [download for more]