High performance requires more than data acquisition and control. Organizations need a more comprehensive approach to business intelligence that enables them to create value from data by providing timely, reliable and relevant information for making strategic, managerial and operational decisions at all levels.
By Michael Kuhn, Iain D. Lopata and Greg B. Todd Outlook Journal, June 2005
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Recently, an executive at a major food products company canceled his own strategic
initiative. Using the information available to him from internal sources, he was unable to say with certainty that the project would be a success. So he went with his instincts and pulled the plug. Later, he learned from his somewhat frustrated boss that external analysts thought the project had been on track to succeed. "We have data everywhere," the executive complained, "but I can never get my arms around it to understand how it connects."
Sound familiar? It's a problem many organizations face these days: Lots of data, but not
an insight to be found.
For several years, organizations have been burdened with the
need to acquire and store more
and more data. As technology
has advanced, the types and sources of information available have exploded, and they now include not only structured data managed by enterprise systems but also unstructured material such as text documents, visual images and audio. The Internet in particular makes available immense quantities of unstructured data, of varying degrees of reliability. More recently, security concerns and regulatory requirements have added to the pressure on organizations not only to acquire data but also to exert greater control over
its flow and use. Legislation in the United States—chiefly the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002—and the Basel
II rules in the European Union have complicated the already significant challenges of data storage and
control. Security has become a major issue, especially in the wake of a pair of recent events in the United States. In one case, two major data warehousers inadvertently allowed unauthorized access to confidential customer information; in another, a leading bank
lost data records it was moving from one location to another. 
In the face of this growing challenge, organizations continue
to struggle in their efforts not
only to acquire, store and manage data but also to use this data in meaningful ways. Some companies
have come up with solutions to achieve discrete objectives, but these efforts are not yet integrated across those organizations. Too often, data is stuck in silos. And the people working with the data lack a common understanding
of what it means and how it can
be useful. At times, they are unwilling to share data across divisional boundaries; other times, they are unclear about the rules and responsibilities for data governance.
 
If companies are spending money
to improve data acquisition and control, then why not get full strategic value from the investment? To accomplish this, executives need to take a broader view
of business intelligence and find ways to make data more meaningful for decision making. They need
a new, holistic approach to managing information that creates value from data by providing timely, reliable and relevant information for making strategic, managerial and operational decisions at all levels
of the organization. This approach goes well beyond the data warehousing, management and reporting activities that constitute "business intelligence" in the minds of many business people today:
- It encompasses all types of data—internal and external, structured and unstructured.
- It embraces the entire information lifecycle—acquisition, storage, cleansing, integration and, ultimately, analysis.
- It entails not only the technology for managing information but also governance issues such as roles and responsibilities for data handling and policies for ensuring security (see Figure 2).
No organization we know of has used this holistic approach in its entirety. However, some aspiring
to high performance have taken critical steps in the right direction, and the case studies cited below illustrate how these organizations went through the two-phase business intelligence process.
Phase 1:
Defining the Strategy The first phase of this process takes
a top-down approach to defining
an information strategy. It has
three steps. Educational grounding: What does better information mean?
Educational grounding is the starting point. Critical players, often from different parts of the organization, need to come to a common understanding of information needs and problems, and even the definitions of key terms.
At Cardinal Health, for example,
a crucial aspect of the educational grounding process was defining
the exact nature of the company's information quality problems. Cardinal Health, headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, is a leading provider of products and services supporting the healthcare industry worldwide.
Managers at all levels of the company had long complained about "bad data." In a series of workshops held over 12 weeks, the company focused on exactly what users meant by that term. Did it mean
the data was incomplete or unclear? Was the problem timeliness—did it take too long to make the information available? Was it an access issue, such as the ability to run a warehouse report 24/7? Was the data presented in a hard-to-use
format? Did it require extensive manipulation to be useful?
Addressing these kinds of questions gave Cardinal Health managers
a better understanding of exactly where their problems lay and,
therefore, how they should be fixed.
Managers also gained a new perspective on information itself: that
it is as much of a corporate asset
as a company's physical plant. Data incurs operational expenses at each stage in its lifecycle, because it costs money to capture, compile, analyze, update and store (or discard). Yet it creates value only when it is used.
A good return on investment for data, therefore, depends on it being both economically managed and accessible for decision making.
That insight led Cardinal Health
to recognize the need for better information governance. To that end, the company defined a new role on the business side called "information stewards"; they were charged with formulating data
definitions and usage guidelines, setting priorities for IT, helping to resolve issues, and tracking and reporting on data quality metrics. Diagnostics: Where Are Our
Opportunities?
Once the educational grounding process is complete, the company can move on to the diagnostic step. Now the challenge is to look beyond immediate needs and problems to see the larger, longer-term opportunities presented by the information.
Diagnostics begin with a series of broad questions: How could better information help this organization perform at a higher level? Carry out its operations with greater speed, effectiveness and efficiency? Take advantage of new opportunities?
Next, the work shifts to business outcomes, to determine what value having timely, relevant information will bring to the organization. Only then does the process focus on the obstacles that must be overcome
to access and use the information needed for better performance.
The understanding gained from this diagnostic step shapes an organization's unique strategy for managing its information. Strategy: How can information drive better decisions and higher performance?
A central aspect of the holistic approach is that it be driven from the top down: Technology issues, organizational challenges and
security concerns all need to be addressed in the context of an
overall vision for how information can support high performance and business advantage.
Within that strategic vision, the organization can then set priorities. It can act first on the specific initiatives and changes that will deliver the greatest advance for the time and effort required.
Work at the US Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which develops and promotes measurement standards and technology, provides one example of a successfully conceived holistic strategy. The project's initial focus was on implementing
a financial management system.
As part of the diagnostic process, however, the project team members stepped back to take a larger strategic view, asking themselves: What additional value would result if users could access information not just for reporting purposes but for forecasting and planning? How would the user experience improve if tools for managing and analyzing information were available through a single portal interface? What if that portal also could provide access to news, educational materials, user forms and online support? And what if users could access all business systems through the same portal?
Answers to those questions became the basis of a broader strategic vision for the NIST Commerce Business Systems Portal, a launchpad
for integrated access to more than 15 business system applications and related content for NIST and the nine Department of Commerce bureaus it services.
Another company with a holistically conceived strategy for managing information is a US-based global provider of enterprise and data storage systems, software,
networks and services. Although the company had already spent millions on specific knowledge management solutions, it was still
in search of better approaches to
the creation, management, sharing and delivery of content.
The company's vision was of information moving seamlessly among customers, partners and sales personnel—based in more than 50 countries and speaking 10 languages. The
company developed a strategy built on the business case for an enterprisewide approach to information management, including a single, powerful new portal. Phase 2:
Supporting the Strategy
The holistic strategy developed in
the first phase underpins four core areas of discipline addressed in the second phase: governance and the technical considerations of data, storage and delivery. Because organizations begin at different starting points and face different challenges, the sequence with which they address these disciplines and the attention required for each can vary. 
At the Department of Commerce,
for example, the NIST team's focus was primarily on architecture and delivery of meaningful financial information. The team incorporated existing data storage systems, including a data warehouse, to serve as the backbone of its information management system. The result was the NIST Commerce Business Systems Portal. The portal offers NIST users real-time, centralized access
to quality data through a streamlined user interface that continues
to be customized and extended to meet new requirements and serve additional user groups.
Although information access was the team's primary focus, governance was also addressed. Most notably, the team established a change control board that meets monthly to review requests for additional support and functionality, and then sets priorities. For NIST, the result has been better decision making.
For its part, the global information systems and services provider has decided that its top priority is the development of a powerful portal
to give its partners, customers
and sales force around the world access to information in support
of its business strategy. To keep
the site, which is currently under development, fresh and relevant,
the team is working to create tools and capabilities that can translate
the content and target it to various segments of its global user groups.  Translation capabilities will need
to be integrated into the workflow so that when, for example, a new marketing message is being developed, it can be sent to translation vendors and returned as objects linked to their original English version. Targeting will be accomplished by dynamically linking user types and content. Rather than predefining limited groups of users and
preassigning their access to specific documents, the approach used by the information services company is intended to assign each user a role with multiple attributes; documents will also have multiple attributes.
A separate back-end feature, outside the document management repository, will enable access and give the company great flexibility in targeting content to specific users.
Pfizer's tax division is another organization that has taken an especially comprehensive approach to information management. Pfizer's concern was whether its tax unit had sufficient information management capability to handle a huge new workload resulting from two company mergers—first with Warner-Lambert and then with Pharmacia Corporation—and also from the need to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Pfizer's tax unit assembled a team
to look at the full scope of the
company's data management infrastructure. Data warehousing and reporting were reconciled to ensure high-quality data was delivered
and enable high-value data analysis and review. The team developed a document management system and standardized processes, then implemented a tax information system to help bridge the company's financial systems and build data cumulatively to meet different reporting and filing deadlines. A tax portal was developed to provide each user with easy, ready access to all the tools and information needed on a day-to-day basis. A balanced scorecard displayed key metrics for executives.
The work at Pfizer's tax division went beyond technical design and implementation: Organizational change was crucial to the transformation. Roles and responsibilities were clarified and made more transparent, and work processes were reengineered to align with the new information management systems. The solution was implemented
in late 2004, and significant efficiency improvements have already been realized.
Despite the cost and ineffectiveness of out-of-date, imperfect and inadequate data, some organizations
tolerate the situation, operating as best they can. Like the food company executive who killed his own project, these managers may be frustrated, but they aren't sure how data can be transformed into information for decision making. As
a result, they are destined to fall behind their competitors.
But a growing number of organizations see that developing an information management strategy can
be a critical step on the path to high performance. Two cases in point: Pfizer and the US Department of Commerce, which are among the pioneers taking steps to ensure that meaningful, strategically valuable information is always at hand. About the Authors Michael Kuhn is Accenture's Information Management group lead for Europe, Africa and Latin America, with responsibility for the development of the company's information management capabilities, which include enterprise content management, portal, data management and business intelligence solutions. Greg B. Todd is the lead for information management and business development in the Americas. Located in St. Petersburg, Florida, he provides strategy, guidance and methods to successfully engage clients with information management solutions. For more information, visit Accenture Information Management Services or contact us.  To Top
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