The Information Agenda: Rapidly Leveraging Information as a Trusted Strategic Asset for Competitive Advantage

As the CIO of a flourishing business, you are happy to report that the current information projects are going well. The new call center is up and running, the new data warehouse is on-line, and the new customer loyalty systems have been deployed successfully.

Things seem to be going well until the CEO asks, “Who are our most profitable customers and which channels do they prefer?” Although the new systems have a lot of information, they can’t immediately produce the requested information. The information the CEO needs will take time and effort to extract and may delay other projects. The successful information projects haven’t created the ability to rapidly respond to this question and the CEO will want more answers to address new and emerging business opportunities. You realize that you need a more unified approach to leverage the information you already have. You need to create an Information Agenda for your organization.

An Information Agenda is an approach for transforming information into a trusted strategic asset that can be rapidly leveraged across applications, processes and decisions for sustained competitive advantage

Over the years, businesses have focused on reducing processing time and costs by investing in applications that helped automate and streamline processes. Frequently, business units made localized decisions that were convenient, but ended up creating multiple applications with little consistency. This often meant that cross organizational decisions couldn’t be implemented with speed. Over the last two decades businesses and technology vendors have worked together to create an application agenda to alleviate some of these bottlenecks. Typically an organization’s application agenda consists of a standardized application platform to rapidly build custom applications for competitive differentiation, and a set of packaged applications for the rest.

Information Management is at the same inflection point that applications were about twenty years ago. A multitude of local information projects like data warehouses, data marts, business intelligence and master data management have been created with little information consistency. New requests for information can not be delivered with speed and flexibility. Businesses need to treat information as a trusted strategic asset. They need to create an Information Agenda for their organizations to achieve the information agility that allows for sustained competitive advantage. Sometimes people make a false assumption that having multitudes of information projects means they have an Information Agenda. An Information Agenda requires a broader view of information that treats it as an asset that can be reused across the enterprise.

An Information Based Enterprise is an organization that has an Information Agenda. It has the flexibility to rapidly deliver information as needed to optimize decisions, applications and business decisions for sustained competitive advantage. The transformation to an Information Based Enterprise doesn’t require the replacement of the existing systems and information sources. It only requires that those systems rapidly expose insightful information in a flexible way.

Making this transformation can seem like a daunting task and it is often difficult to know where to start. You can get started with an existing information project by leveraging the tools and methodology from IBM to convert information into a trusted strategic asset which can be used beyond the scope of your current project. This is fairly straightforward because it provides business value at each step of the process. IBM has the experience it takes to guide your transformation and has invested in the capabilities to help you evolve into an Information Based Enterprise. The keys to a successful transformation are having the right tools, the right processes and the right environment. IBM has offerings that will help you in each area.

Understanding the key tasks in the transformation, like discovering and governing trusted information are vital to completing the transformation successfully. Choosing and tailoring the key tasks according to your industry will keep the transformation focused and efficient. Having best practices for these tasks can accelerate the transformation and improve the results.

The Information Agenda Methodology includes:

• An open set of Foundation Tools that can help you discover and understand the data you have, design your trusted information structures for business optimization, and govern your information over time
• Information Agenda Guides and Workshops to help create an Information Strategy as well as a Roadmap to help navigate and perform the key transformation tasks
• Industry Accelerators like data models and proven business optimization assets reduce risk and achieve a better return on investment in a shorter time
• Information On Demand Competency Centers which can capture new standards and best practices, embed those capabilities as new skills of the organization, and facilitate the transformation to an Information Based Enterprise

An information infrastructure built as an open, flexible environment enables the use of existing systems to rapidly deliver new capabilities to the business, and is critical to a successful transformation to an Information Based Enterprise. Such an environment must also embed the best practices and Information Agenda methodologies as part of their instantiation. IBM delivers the best in class open and flexible environment that can support organizations’ needs for performance management, trusted information, content based processes, and integrated data management.

IBM’s Information On Demand Initiative has defined how to unlock the business value of information through four entry points that can facilitate business optimization. Entry points like managing data over its lifecycle, optimizing content-based processes, delivering trusted information, and optimizing business performance and knowledge have identified opportunities to increase optimization by focusing on these key areas. This was an excellent start to demonstrating the value of information. The next step is to deliver information with speed and flexibility to enable organizations to successfully transform into Information Based Enterprises.

Today, a new entry point to Information On Demand has been introduced, the Information Agenda. The Information Agenda brings together the right tools, the right processes, and the right environment to enable you to transform information into a strategic asset that can be rapidly leveraged for sustained competitive advantage. The Information Agenda will also help you answer those tough questions from the CEO, both now and in the future.