by David Stodder |
4/1/2008 | Article ID: V08-12 | Article Type: VentanaView
Summary
The Information Management Practice at Ventana Research is dedicated to providing insight to IT departments and lines of business about how to acquire, organize, control, disseminate and use information to create and enhance business value. Whether the goal is to reduce costs in business processes, comply with regulations or find potential avenues for business growth, data and information play a central role. Information management is a broad, substantial topic on its own; [[in addition, customer, financial and product information management are subset areas that are important to other Ventana Research practices as well, among them Customer Experience Management, Financial Management and Supply Chain and Operations Management. The Information Management Practice will provide insight into how effective management of customer, financial and product information can support objectives defined by these practices. In 2008, the Information Management Practice will examine business and technology issues and best practices involved in the following areas: the role of information in managing performance; improving the accuracy, timeliness and consistency of information; making it easier to access, share and use information to increase its value; managing information assets effectively; and building and integrating business models and information architectures.
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Data and information access, reporting and analysis used to be regarded as processes secondary to the recording of transactions; these days, most large organizations view them as vital to their operations and finance functions. Also, once upon a time information management divided neatly into two separate worlds, one devoted to business intelligence or decision support and the other devoted to processing and recording transactions. Today, though, business and technology demands increasingly have blurred that distinction. While historical analysis still retains value, many organizations want information that operational employees can apply immediately to increase the business value of transactions even before they are recorded. As a result, the speed and accuracy with which organizations can locate, organize and present information have become competitive differentiators.
We base this year’s information management research agenda on issues we have found are important to IT and business leaders as they work to align people, technology, processes and practices with the organization’s often fluid goals and objectives. These are the five topics we will focus on in 2008:
Applying Information for Performance Management
Performance management enables organizations to increase the business value of information and use it more effectively to align actions with strategic objectives. Information management supports this process in several important ways. Integrating data from dispersed applications and databases is vital if performance management metrics are to be accurate, complete and consistent. In this regard, we will examine how organizations can use master data management (MDM) to improve the timeliness and accuracy of performance data. We will provide research and analysis of how organizations can use customer and product information to improve business processes and uncover opportunities to enhance profitability. Because performance management must be dynamic, not static, information management must help organizations improve their collaboration and agility, including by adoption of rich Internet applications (RIAs), access through mobile devices and use of advanced Web technologies that will expand traditional concepts of reporting and content analysis. We recognize that the power of information also brings great responsibility; therefore, we also will articulate best practices for establishing information accountability and data governance to support performance management.
Improving Accuracy, Timeliness and Consistency of Information
Our recent benchmark research study “Operational Business Intelligence ” that accuracy and timeliness of data are among the most highly valued benefits of operational BI deployments – but also among the most difficult to achieve. That research also found that 78 percent of participants regard updating data more than once a day necessary to support operational BI effectively, and 32 percent need even more frequent updates. Information management therefore must use all means necessary to support access to real-time data and real-time analytics. Options that we will explore include BI and data warehouse appliances and specialized databases, accelerators and middleware. We will provide insight into how implementation of new technology must be informed by best practices and involve improved data quality, MDM and governance processes. Weakness in these areas can slow down data delivery or undercut accuracy and consistency as much as if not more than pure technology challenges.
Making Information Access and Sharing Easier to Increase its Value
For organizations to gain the most value from information, it must be packaged in a form that users can understand easily, and it must be relevant to decisions and processes at hand. We will examine how business and IT can collaborate to ensure that user requirements are understood and needs and expectations met. We will provide research insight into how search, data visualization and text mining can blend with BI and content delivery to broaden and improve accessibility. We will also focus on the role of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) and other important industry standards that hold promise for improving financial management and reporting through more efficient integration of information and processes.
Managing Information Assets More Effectively
As profit margins shrink and budgets tighten, organizations need more than ever to use their information assets to the fullest extent. In BI and data warehousing, this means doing the best possible analysis of report and query workloads to ensure performance is maintained and where possible improved, and to determine where to direct new technology investments. In 2008, we will report on a new benchmark research study, to be called “Optimizing BI and Data Warehouse Performance,” that will examine how well organizations are coping with the challenges they face and finding best practices for improving BI and data warehouse performance. In that study and in other research, we will focus on how organizations can integrate information held in disparate data marts, applications and other sources so that they can extract maximum value from it while protecting against use that violates regulations and policies. We will provide insight into how organizations can assess the lifecycle of their information and make appropriate choices about where to store and how to manage the information to facilitate access and analysis. Because customer service and business process improvement are key objectives at many organizations, we will consider how integrating customer and product information and related content can help improve process management in supply and demand chains.
Building and Integrating Business Models and Information Architectures
Especially after mergers and acquisitions, organizations often face a hodgepodge of information architectures that were developed at various times to fit specific user communities, processes or applications. We will examine how information architectures can enable organizations to support the requirements of multiple user communities, maximize the business value of disparate information resources and reduce the costs of accessing and analyzing information. We will explore how service-oriented architecture (SOA) can be employed to simplify the integration of data sources and support the development of BI services and components for business applications and processes. We will examine how organizations can work with their base of technology investments and experience to support real-time, event-driven information demands and employ MDM, data governance, business modeling and other approaches to improve agility, efficiency and effectiveness. Finally, we will provide guidance on the development of business models that enable organizations to capture user requirements and create flexible and aligned information architectures that fulfill those requirements.
Assessment
Ventana Research advises clients that excellence in information management will be critical to improving performance and ensuring that decision-makers throughout their organizations can take actions that are aligned with strategic objectives. New requirements for real-time data and analytics as well as complete views of all information about customers and products are creating demand for technologies ranging from appliances to accelerators to MDM tools. Organizations that can discover and analyze information rapidly, in some cases before transactions are completed, will have an advantage over competitors. Information assets are growing in both size and importance, which makes it critical to manage them effectively, analyze how they can be used more profitably and define governance policies and processes that both protect them and increase their potential.
Related Research Notes
Teradata 12.0 Counters the Appliances
More Efficient Processing, Workload Management and MDM Help Handle Mixed Workloads (January 25, 2008)
Performance Management Benefits from Better Data Quality
Cognos and Informatica form closer partnership (QuickTake - October 3, 2007)
Actuate Targets Developer Interest in Open Source BI
Business application developers seek inexpensive, embeddable BI and reporting (September 21, 2007)
The New Frontier of Business Intelligence and Search
Enterprise search can provide access to information from many sources (September 21, 2007)
Oracle Announces Next Generation of Data Warehousing
New database release and appliance initiatives should impact the market
The Enterprise Data Warehouse, Reconfigured
HP’s NeoView 2.0 brings an appliance approach to mixed BI query workloads
Is that an Appliance or a Configuration?
Technology suppliers pack data warehousing in bundles
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