Making Enterprise Information Management (EIM) Work for Business: A Guide to Understanding Information as an Asset

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Introduction

There are three reasons this book is necessary. First and foremost, you are already doing enterprise information management. You have customers, suppliers, ledgers, e-mails, memos, manuals, web sites, orders, and contracts. You sell stuff, build stuff, litigate, or legislate. And the fuel for all of it is information. If you are reading this book you already suspect you are not managing information very well, if at all. This book will teach you how to manage your information better.

Second, this book is an apology. Throughout my 30 plus year career in information technology, I have known in my heart of hearts that we must address data and information as an asset. That said, my peers and I have absolutely done a terrible job making a business case for this. We are even worse at explaining what we mean. We have asked the business to understand us. The organizations that pay our bills are repeatedly asked to change their processes or models to accommodate IT or guru-speak. Sometimes change truly is required, but most of the time we send our business sponsors out of the room muttering to themselves. We have applied tools and tricks and TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) and most organizations will tell you they still cannot get to the data, or feel they are exposed in some way. This book is geared for business understanding.

Third, this book offers counsel, perhaps even forewarning. Business attitudes toward data and content are stuck in a quick-fix, I can do it myself and Information Technology are idiots mode. The average business area leader is always looking for a way to obtain information, or better mange the information resources required for day-to-day functions. This is certainly understandable, but the pursuit of end-user information mastery has created serious problems. The Vice President who authorizes his/her area to buy or build departmental databases and spends 50% of his/her FTE budget on scraping data together to do reports is the same person who goes through the mail at home and complains mightily about duplicate credit card offers and an incorrect bill from the hospital. Most business area leaders do not grasp the risks, costs, or accountability that goes with managing your own data empire. Many business areas outright abuse a vital asset, put the organization at risk, and still collect their bonuses at the end of the year because they were able to squeeze out a sexy report. This book will cover risks and challenges that can only be addressed by a different view of data and content.¹

This book has to answer a question—What makes information management valuable? Not useful, but valuable. How do we recognize value from the billions spent on business intelligence, content and data management technology? What does the asset metaphor really mean? We easily recognize we can use data to do valuable things. But we still manage this treasure poorly. Perhaps if we treat information the same way we treat something we measure and track, the treatment will improve.

To be clear, I am not proposing sweeping organization upheaval like business reengineering or Information Engineering. Whatever the motivator, this book is intended to make Enterprise Information Management less abstract and more real. This book endeavors to explain Information Asset Man agement and place it into a pragmatic, focused, and relevant light. The concept is the management of your information as an asset. The pragmatic part is explaining what this means, why it is important, and how to build a program that adds value to your organization.

The two most important terms in the book are EIM and IAM. We evolve a larger definition of these in Chapter 1. However, Table I.1 presents these terms and two others so I can review the contents of the book.

The assets covered in this book are called data, information, or content at various times. For the most part, these terms can be used interchangeably for the purpose of labeling the asset we are learning to manage. We will point out if there is the need to focus on data vs. information as two differing concepts.

Part 1 will provide the material required to sell, understand, and validate the EIM program. It is written for executive audiences, and is presented in business terms.

Chapters 1 and 2 present the concepts of treating Information, Data, and Content as true assets, and what that means. We establish a vision of EIM as a program, and then review current challenges and scenarios that can benefit from the IAM philosophy.

Chapter 3 presents the very important concept of Information Management Maturity. An executive cannot snap a finger and make an enterprise change the embedded behaviors around data. Understanding Information Management Maturity is fundamental to determining how to alter data behavior.

Chapters 4 and 5 describe what EIM looks like and how it affects organizations. Then Chapters 6 and 7 provide background and concepts for the EIM business case. Chapter 8 extends the business case, but delves into what can be described as notional concepts of information assets. We take a quick look at the ramifications of actually placing information on the balance sheet.

Chapters 9–12 review the actual steps and activity in the EIM program. We review the basic process that builds and maintains an EIM program. Since many EIM programs start out fine, but then die from lack of care, we focus a bit on the finer points of sustaining EIM. We address cultural issues and on-going adjustments to the program.

There are several reasons for the failure to take information and make it more valuable to an organization, so Chapter 13 reviews several organizations and offers examples from two case studies to provide a bird’s-eye view of the products of the EIM program.

Chapter 14 is the final chapter in Part 1. The reader can stop here, and hopefully has acquired background and understanding enough to interact with or sponsor an EIM effort.

Part 2 will dive into the methods and artifacts necessary to maintain EIM and have the business manage information. Often it is tempting to get caught up in the technology, the new project, or the philosophical examination of what is a customer? Part 2 tries to avoid these distractions and sort out the details required to bring substantive results to managers and others responsible for EIM deployment.

Table I.1 Terminology Guide to this Book

Chapters 15 and 16 provide overviews of Information Asset concepts and the EIM process, but at a lower level of detail, and from the perspective of the manager charged with delivery of EIM. Chapter 17 covers how to get the EIM program initiated. Chapter 18 is a brief chapter that explains how to read Chapters 19–27, which present the activities and work products required to support EIM.

Chapters 19–27 review the necessary building blocks to manage the changes to managed data and content. Throughout these chapters, we will review how business personnel should assist the EIM program to develop deliverables that describe specific initiatives and processes that will result in healthier business performance, lowered risk, and more frequent exploitation of opportunities. There are a lot of artifacts that go with this, and these are described as part of the methods and techniques for building an EIM program. The artifacts of interest to business people are kept separate from the artifacts that will be produced by the IT folks to get the components of EIM designed, and up and running. We will cover what deliverables are truly the end products, and what other artifacts are necessary working products.

We also emphasize process, technique, and work products that are unique to the EIM program and of business interest. We will address designing these information value chains to be efficient and relevant to any business model. Certain technical work products like data models, databases, and application designs are necessary but we only mention them. There are many other books that cover these in detail.

Finally, after business artifacts like principles, policies, architecture, and frameworks are developed, and a sensible, pragmatic road map is produced to incrementally implement the various pieces of EIM, we cover the sustaining aspects in detail. We wrap up this treatment of EIM (the program) with a look at various means to measure the success of IAM (the philosophy), and we even take a crack at what the balance sheet might look like if we could assign a number to information value.

We will use two case studies in this book. They are amalgams. No one company has their EIM information presented. The main reason for this is I present failures as well as successes. However, all samples are real output, and have only been revised to conceal real financial numbers or guard corporate strategy.

There is a lot of ground to cover in the following pages. In fact, there is probably a Part 3 or revised Part 2 with more details waiting in the wings, but at some point you have to get something out there. There are web addresses at the end of each part where any ideas or feedback can be posted so that we can continue to provide better material. This book also approaches the topics at hand with, hopefully, a professional mix of humor and philosophy. This can be very dry material. It isn’t that I do not take my profession seriously. I just insist on smiling during the journey.

Reference

1. Content means anything you cannot envision as rows and columns. Memos, manuals, media, and web sites are content. It carries the same issues as the Access database or mission critical spreadsheet.

CHAPTER

1

The Asset Called Information

CONTENTS

Formal Asset Treatment

EIM and IAM Explained

An Example

Content as Lubricant

Content as Fuel

Change

Definitions to Go Forward

Value Proposition Please

EIM Vision

Summary

References

If you are not a CEO, pretend you are for a moment. If you are a CEO, then thanks for reading. As a CEO or Chairperson, imagine receipt of the following letter from an auditor sometime in the near future. While the following may seem trite, it sets the context.

Dear Sir/Madam:

You are well aware that as your auditor, it is incumbent on our firm to bring matters to your attention that, while seemingly under control, may threaten financial progress, or at worst, contain sufficient risk to cause irreversible harm to your organization.

In that context, we need to discuss your enterprise’s treatment of an asset we believe is at risk:

• This asset is costing your organization millions per year, and while we have documented expenses, credits, and amortization in relation to creating this asset, we cannot find it on the balance sheet.

• Regulators and compliance may soon require us to report liabilities inherent in that asset.

• Nobody can tell us where the asset sits, how much we have, or where it came from.

• In spite of this lack of control, this asset is repurposed thousands of times a day.

• Many managers claim to own this asset, but an equal number try to absolve themselves of any accountability at all.

• Those that do claim ownership deny all accountability.

• For every request from compliance to destroy this asset once it offers more risk than usefulness, there are four requests to keep this asset available and take a chance with the risks.

Please schedule a meeting with us at your earliest convenience to review your action plan to mitigate these risk areas.

Since you know the title of this book, you know the asset is information. The sample note presented earlier is appearing in some form at many companies. But the note is not from auditors of information assets. There are no such positions (yet). The message in the note is swelling up from middle managers, external regulators, and customers.

This fictional memorandum contains good news and bad news. The good news is that there truly is genuine interest in Data Strategy/Information Management (IM) at the enterprise level. But that good news is being delivered in the form of reports and documentation of the cost of poor data and content quality. Part of the interest comes from the new ROI. As a client recently put it, ROI is the abbreviation for Risk of Incarceration. In short, the legal and regulatory ramifications to the presentation and accuracy of data are beginning to materialize. As this book was written, a global recession was under way, fueled in part by poor information and failure to recognize risk.

The bad news is that those who are close to hands-on management of information still really stink (and I use that word with deliberation) at explaining what this means to business people. Even if the explanation of data value and the need for good data is presented well (via Davenport & Harris, 2007; Redman, 2008; and others), someone still needs to make it real for the business. If the CEO gets a note from the financial auditor, he/she goes to the CFO. If there is an operations issue, he/she goes to the COO. Where does the CEO go for Information Asset Management (IAM)? Can he/she go to the CIO or not?

This chapter sets the stage for the remainder of this book. We are going to talk about managing an asset called information. Some of this material will be basic and familiar, but with a twist. Some of it will be new. All of it is wrapped around a holistic approach to managing that which cannot be counted, i.e., data, information, e-mails, web content, catalogs, memos, and the list goes on.

Is there an executive who will say information is not an asset—it is a burden? Is there an executive who does not want to exploit information? Probably not; if there is, give them a copy of this book. But take any businessperson who states information is an asset and make them explain it in realistic, comprehensible terms. Are there formal standards and policies deployed for creating, using, and disposing of all data and content? Not written down and ignored—but deployed. Does his/her company or division have a formal program to reduce or manage inherent risk in data? Does the CFO or CEO sign the Sarbanes–Oxley form every quarter with unabashed confidence? Ask him/her to explain the difference in accounting or balance sheets if information is treated like an asset, or it is not. This isn’t easily done. But if the asset metaphor is more than metaphor, these questions require better answers.

Information as an asset is the main theme of this book. Until data, information, and content are managed as other assets are managed, neither information nor data nor content has a chance to fulfill its potential or its role within organizations. There can be billions more spent on exploiting data. Buying Business Intelligence (BI) tools and replicating data and content many times in many places just increases the costs with little perceptible gain. It is wasted money unless you know what to exploit, where it comes from, and what it is worth to your enterprise. If you are going to do business or operate any organization in the twenty-first century, the asset metaphor needs to become the asset policy.

FORMAL ASSET TREATMENT

There is a lot of proof that data is valuable. But formalizing the management of data to make it more efficient and add value has been elusive. There are frameworks and guidelines and still, solid IM remains elusive. An increasing amount of money is being spent on new technologies that will deliver even more information. Yet, neither the information nor the technology dollars are being consistently translated into business value.¹ We manage entire Information Technology (IT) portfolios as programs, we look for earned value and strive to find (ROI) on IT. But we totally miss the boat on the stuff that IT and all of the technology manages.

There are scores of tools to move and look at data, yet few businesspeople know how to truly handle data. There is access, literally, to more content than a human being can possibly comprehend, yet we still miss findings or fail to communicate critical conclusions. I believe the basic root of this problem is twofold:

1. We focus too much on the ROI and contribution of IT in general. However, IT is a label for a myriad of functions. We do not focus on what IT has to manage; i.e., data, content, information. All of the rules and tools are for the processes, not the product.

2. Organizations are too hung up on parables and metaphors as a technique to explain the real value proposition of IM. One of the core reasons for this book is to bypass metaphor and present a real foundation for value.

Information Is an Asset is an extremely common statement, and probably the most common information principle published within organizations. The subsequent explanation is that assets are managed, so information has to be managed. While this makes eminent sense, it does not sell or get IM efforts funded. Leadership is not impressed. The metaphor certainly starts the explanation process, but does not complete it. There have been several excellent books printed in the last few years that delve into the definition and explanation of the asset metaphor and offer a somewhat focused business justification. But the justification is anecdotal, and quantifiable results are scarce. We have plenty of examples of cool things that happened AFTER an organization took the risk to exploit data in some way. We have few examples where organizations embarked on a formal business-altering program that treats data and other content as a formally managed asset. There are also many books on the value of IT, or the return on technology investments. The emphasis is on program or portfolio management. This is a great start, but the raw material that is being handled, used, abused, and replicated has no formal oversight. The bottom line is we do not have a guide (hopefully until now) that instructs the business on creating and operating a formal program to create the opportunities to improve the value of your organization through information and content management.

Often CEOs will demand a precise business case. This can be done, and I will address the topic in a few chapters. But they also may want the business case to predict valuable usage—in effect, promise analytical aha moments. This is not unreasonable, but there is no way this can be done unless the care, feeding, and use of all enterprise content are understood as business issues.

EIM AND IAM EXPLAINED

Enterprise Information Management (EIM) is a program to treat data and all other types of enterprise information as assets. This book calls out the asset management concepts separately, and I will use the label IAM to separate these concepts from the EIM program. IAM represents the fundamental asset management concepts and processes to manage an asset—in this case, the asset of information vs. cash or a physical facility.

The program we have labeled EIM shows a company how to best weave those asset management concepts and best practices most effectively and efficiently into their core corporate business model. IAM represents the concepts and EIM is the program that implements those concepts.

We need to know what an EIM program, or the concept of IAM, does for us on a daily basis, what its value is, and what impact it would have on the balance sheet. We can always look at a financial statement and say My, didn’t we do well! If we get an aha, that’s great. But we cannot guarantee the aha. We also certainly cannot tie that financial result or aha moment to the data or content that we used to generate the result or have the flash of inspiration. How can we increase the chances of the aha moment? Right now it seems we can only justify and program the scenario to make the aha possible.

Does that make data and information mundane? No. I contend that when we weave EIM into the day-to-day fabric of a company, we see that the IAM concept can have value and assist us in managing the value of our content. A company does not want to flat out grab and store every single tidbit of data and hope for the aha. It is too expensive. We want the right amount of content and detail to use data to our advantage. So we need to not only acknowledge the asset metaphor, but also apply it.

AN EXAMPLE

Managing information at the enterprise level must be pragmatic. There is too much shelf-ware technology where long-term development of applications like data warehouse fails to align with the needs of shorter-term business cycles. Managing information assets must also be efficient. We will point out how and why an EIM program should not result in higher costs. But managing information is, in itself, strategic. Finished goods inventory, supply chains, and customer retention are all strategic processes. Information is in the same league, but it does not receive the same treatment. If EIM is to add value, and if the asset is real, then data and content must move into the strategic league.

To further understand the implications of information inventory asset management, we should track a piece of information inventory. We can contrast this with a piece of hard inventory, like an aluminum billet. (I chose an aluminum billet because many years ago, aluminum billets created great career angst for me.) A billet is a large chunk of something—in this case, aluminum—and we made doors, window frames, and the aluminum frames that go on the outside of buildings to hold glass and building-climbers.

The hard asset/soft asset comparison is given in Table 1.1.

We can beat this example up ad nauseam. For example, if the aluminum billet is of lower quality alloy, perhaps it is qualified. If the data is from a source that is less than reputable, perhaps it is also tagged as to its level of reliability. If the billet can be heated and improved, then the data can also be enhanced or changed to improve its usefulness.

Of course, any use of the billet is recorded. Eventually, it is melted down and made into appliances, door frames, or baseball bats. The data is also used. It is read, updated, and enriched. The one, and really irrelevant difference, is the data isn’t used up. Some experts will declare that this aspect of data means that information cannot be tracked along a value chain like other consumable items. However, this difference is insignificant. The billet is turned into valuable goods. The data is used to create value as well (business decisions, documents, and reports). The key to asset management of the nonfungible item (like data) is measuring its usage vs. value. Other than that, both accrue value to the organization through usage, enhancement, and consumption. I can look at the billet and see the potential value in its usage. The same goes for information and data.

Table 1.1 Inventory vs. Information Asset

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

The philosophical discussion around data being the only asset that is not used up or decremented is frivolous. Many words have been written around this, and I suppose it makes for good discussion after hours. When you start to do EIM or address IAM, there will be challenges based on the intangibility of data and content. However, goodwill is intangible, appears on the balance sheet, and can certainly be used up. There are many other business products and components that are intangible. We review this later in the book; for now it suffices that this particular discussion is in the league with angels and pins, and does not have any business impact.

CONTENT AS LUBRICANT

The reason any institution using data and content must become more formal about managing these assets has to do with the changing role of information. During the 1950s, data and information were used as a lubricant. We removed friction from processes, like oil does for a car engine. We used data to speedup processes, eliminate some back-office jobs, and drive a few easy dollars to the bottom line through efficiencies. The first large-scale IT systems (back then they were called Data Processing Systems) were dedicated to the back office; e.g., payroll and general ledger. Afterward came back-office support for sales and inventory, but the applications still greased processes.

This created an arrangement where business drove requirements for IT, or IT became the enabler for business. The relationship has always been a linear one. But this practical need for separation has evolved into a we and they view of business use of technology. When I play cards with my father, he makes two columns to keep score. They are labeled we and they. The first time you see this, it is amusing. However, there is a simple, diplomatic, but adversarial implication in this. There was we—our side, the good guys, and they—the other team. The