Well what a week so far. Loved it. Very busy but the kind of thing that makes you think.
Day 2 started just like day 1. Woke at 3am – I guess due to jet lag. Cleared the now burgeoning email. How can you work in a location where you don’t get emails during the day but when you wake up, there is 160 of them just waiting for your attention?
Breakfast at 7.
I had a couple of 1-1’s before my first presentation at 10 – a new one on the Business of Information Management. There is renewed emphasis on information strategy, and how it should be taken seriously as an investment program. After all, those organizations that generate a greater return on their information investment than their peers will, in general, out perform the other guys. So why shouldn’t we, as information leaders, think more strategically about information? Before the dot.com crash (remember that?) the ‘strategy’ was king – it was over the top, even. Post dot.com the “strategy” kind of got a bad name. Everyone focused more on the hear and now. It was thought to be silly to be too far out. Well, that lack of vision and strategy is now holding many firms back. This deck looked at how to apply skills and disciplines from other domains like general management and supply chain to improve information strategy. Specifically I looked at scenario planning (for longer term information strategy analysis), Activity Based Costing and Value Stream Mapping (SCM) to help with information life-cycle improvement issues, and also Root Cause Analysis (to help with overall data quality issues). Very busy room – great questions. Can’t wait to see the scores to see if this new deck get’s rewarded. I believe it has a bright future!
11.30am to 2.30pm and another 1-1 before lunch. A quick bite and then into a workshop on “how to get started with information governance”. Packed room – every seat taken. This also was a new workshop, built off of the success and use of an MDM workshop. This workshop tries to help organizations determine what kinds of information assets need governance sooner rather than later. So we look at master data, other structured data, analytic data, transaction data, records, content, digital assets, social data etc. Interestingly some industries are struggling with so much data across the spectrum; others are focused on (still) getting a handle on master data first.
3pm team meeting with a client. Shame we only had 30 minutes. Great discussion about how to get started with an information governance program. MDM was one key aspect of this. In fact that was a key theme for me from the two days. MDM is very often one of the key starting points for an IG program.
Another 1-1 and then a quick coffee break before closing key note.
Final summary of topics from 1-1’s and impromptu discussions with users on the show floor:
- Getting started and selling value of information governance – 6
- Using advanced metadata management techniques like Enterprise Metadata Management to get more value from information – 3
- Making information governance “stick” day to day – 4
- Can I get information governance working effectively when the data in question is in my (BI) data warehouse – 2
Almost every inquiry touched on master data, even if MDM was not mentioned. I don’t want to say that MDM is ‘for everyone” but it seems everyone has master data. The general question for ALL 1-1’s might really be re-stated as “how do we start managing our most important information assets for better business outcomes?” MDM was one route for some firms. For others, the name of the program was not clear, since the data itself did not attract a program name.
The final question is a hot topic too – and one I have blogged on several times (see Information Governance on (or in) the Data Warehouse – Does it Exist?). It is VERY HARD to get business people interested on day to day stewardship and governance of data in a data warehouse. But if you have to start there, you need to transition to upstream, operational IG as soon as possible before the users lose interest!
Fun time. Hope we added some value. Can’t wait for the next Summit. On to London in a couple of weeks. See you there!
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