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This paper provides an overview of what is required to create an environment to leverage information dynamically for innovation and competitive advantage. Organizations that understand the strategic benefit of this approach can dramatically improve business results and introduce innovations that change the business. In fact, according to an IBM survey of CFOs, [organizations] with highly effective delivery of performance insight, growth insight and risk insight have higher revenue growth and are driving more value creation than their industry peers with less effective insight delivery.” However, to truly leverage information organizations must modify their traditional view of their information assets and their overall information architecture in three ways:
Think differently about information. Information is not just stored in your customer databases, file systems, content management systems or applications (e.g., ERP, CRM, and SCM). Information resides in many different repositories including custom applications, e-mails, digital images and reports. You need to make sure you are leveraging all your relevant information no matter where it originated, no matter what its format, and no matter where it resides to help your organization innovate, compete, provide service and grow. You need to understand the value of your information and to recognize and act on the importance of information quality.
Think differently about what it means to have a business solution. A business solution for information is a set of best practices that works in concert with your information infrastructure. A business solution is modular and flexible and can be adapted to changing business events. This modularity enables a loosening of the tight linkages between relevant information and applications. In addition, when metadata - definitions, mappings, and other characteristics describing how to find, access, and use data or content - is maintained in a unified way, the information becomes more modular. In essence, relevant information becomes available as a service that can be delivered in a repeatable, consistent and trusted way across the business.
Leveraging Information for Innovation and Competitive Advantage
Think differently about your overall IT environment. Your server platforms, storage systems, process platform, system management and security systems provide the foundation for a resilient information infrastructure. Your underlying IT infrastructure must support the organization’s need to access clean and accurate information with appropriate availability, performance, cost-effectiveness and governance to drive efficiency. The infrastructure should also extend the scope of information visibility, so that blinders are removed and views are comprehensive.
Some innovative organizations already are deploying solutions based on these new approaches. Indeed, they are enjoying significant benefits and are the source
of new best practices that other organizations can follow and refine as they address their own information challenges. IBM calls this approach Information On Demand - defined as leveraging information to optimize business processes, applications and productivity.
The Role of Enterprise Information
Organizations have long considered their people, their reputations, their intellectual property, and their plant and equipment as critical assets. Now there is a new entry into the list of critical assets - their enterprise information. Organizations are recognizing that information that was previously managed within departmental silos becomes a more powerful asset when it can be leveraged in an accurate, timely and consistent way across the enterprise, when and where it is needed. Accurate, complete and consistent information can be leveraged and shared more easily for organizational advantage. Indeed, the IT infrastructure can go beyond supporting business change; it can become a catalyst for changing the business. Enabling technology can lead to business innovations in areas like spotting trends, identifying opportunities or threats, improving efficiency and entering new business markets.
On the technology side, organizations need to develop an information infrastructure that helps them prepare for the future in a pragmatic way. Hurwitz & Associates recommends the adoption of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) strategy as the best approach to a flexible IT infrastructure that supports evolving business needs and enables high levels of reuse. In fact, SOA and Information On Demand go hand in hand. Essential to enabling a SOA strategy is an enterprise information infrastructure that can deliver, through open industry standards, trusted information as a service to applications and business processes. With this approach, organizations can avoid starting from scratch.
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