IBM Helps Transformation to an Information-Based Enterprise

fact sheet Vendor: IBM Corporation (www.ibm.com) Vendor's Information: About IBM Information On Demand About IBM Corporation vendor resources The Information Agenda: Rapidly Leveraging Information as a Trusted Strategic Asset for Competitive Advantage 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. The Importance of an Information Strategy In this paper, we will discuss what an Information Strategy is, why it is important, and what it takes to build one. We will also consider IBM's Information Agenda, that company’s approach to assisting in the development of an Information Strategy. Global CIO Study: The New Voice of the CIO How are today's chief information officers successfully growing profits for their businesses? The 2009 IBM Global CIO Study explored this and other issues facing CIOs during challenging times. We talked with more than 2,500 CIOs from over 75 countries and 15 industries. Improving Confidence by Increasing Understanding of Information IBM Business Intelligence solutions draw on trusted and timely data to deliver consistent information in the terms businesses can own and understand.

Market-leading companies around the world are taking steps to transform their organizations into information-based enterprises. An information-based enterprise has the flexibility to rapidly deliver information as needed to optimize processes, applications, and business decisions for sustained competitive advantage.

This transformation doesn't require the replacement of existing systems and information sources. It only requires that those systems rapidly expose insightful information in a flexible way.

At IBM, companies that are working toward and information-based enterprise are said to have an Information Agenda.

Cost Effective Records Management—Assessment by Cohasset Associates Given the ever-increasing growth of litigation, investigations and regulatory actions coupled with the explosive growth of electronic records, automation of an organization's records management policies, processes and business practices is no longer an option; it is now a necessity.

The process begins with an information strategy, which establishes the principles that will guide the organization's efforts to create and exploit trusted information. The information strategy provides an end-to-end vision for all components of the Information Agenda and is driven by an organization's business strategy and operating framework. It helps set the tone, nomenclature, and common set of objectives, providing cohesion to ease the process of executing against the vision.

In order to manage information as a strategic asset over time, companies must commit to an enterprise-level information infrastructure. Within the context of an Information Agenda, an enterprise information infrastructure framework identifies the technology required to integrate current investments with future technologies, helping to optimize return on investment. Most enterprise information infrastructure frameworks include the following elements:

Information Integration: works to accelerate the delivery of trusted information by enabling effective integration of information management tools such as enterprise intelligence (data warehouse) solutions, ERP and CRM deployments, and infrastructure consolidations such as SAP.

Master data management (MDM): enables master data—such as customer, supplier, partner, product, materials, and employee data—to be consolidated to provide an integrated, view of relevant, trusted information within any given business process.

Dynamic warehousing: provides the next-generation data warehousing capabilities required to help organizations turn traditionally latent and historical data into relevant, real-time predictive analytics that enable timelier, more insightful business decisions.

Enterprise content management (ECM): provides content management, discovery, and business process management to support content-based business transformation.

Enterprise data management: encompasses the data servers and data management tools that can support a wide variety of platforms in helping to reduce cost and enable rapid use of data.

Business Intelligence and Performance Management: provides decision makers across the organization with information they need to understand, oversee, and drive the business. These capabilities provide an understanding of what happened and why, enables them to establish a forward-looking view of the business and measure and monitor actuals against forecast so they can align their actions with organizational objectives.

Metadata management: creates and manages an organization's metadata (information about information) and defines the meaning of data within the repository. Consistency, completeness and context of data are assured via service directories, data directories, content directories, translation, retrieval and navigation processes.

IBM's Approach
IBM's Information Agenda approach arms customers with a step-by-step, practical, proven approach that accelerates the transformation and improves results. IBM employs supporting tools and information management technologies to create and execute an effective Information Agenda.

Information Agenda Industry Guides and Workshops from IBM help create an Information Strategy as well as a roadmap to help navigate and perform the key transformation tasks.

An open set of Foundation Tools help users discover and understand the data they have, design their trusted information structures for business optimization, and govern their information over time. They help organizations profile, model, define, blueprint, and govern their information separate from the applications and technologies that utilize this data for day-to-day support activities.

IBM also offers industry-specific expertise through Industry Accelerators like data models and proven business optimization assets that reduce risk and achieve a better return on investment in a shorter time.

Among the Information Accelerators currently available:

• More than 180 industry-specific assets
• More than 30 performance management assets
• More than 50 Enterprise content management assets
• More than 10 IBM InfoSphere® assets
• Six IBM industry models
• 25 IBM information-intensive applications
• More than 10 IBM Global Business Services Analytical assets

Information On Demand Competency Centers centralize best practices, capture new standards, and embed those capabilities as new skills of the organization and facilitate the transformation to an information-based enterprise. Using a combination of practice aids, methodologies, tools, and technology, IBM can guide organizations through the process of establishing a Competency Center in their organization.

IBM's Information On Demand solutions have been specifically designed to address trusted information needs. Based on open standards and reflecting an investment of more than $10 billion in the last three years, IBM Information On Demand solutions are among the industry's most comprehensive. They provide organizations with an enterprise-wide approach to deploying and managing an information infrastructure. In addition, customers gain the advantage of IBM's industry-specific accelerators and extensive knowledge of technology best practices that can deliver a cost-efficient, tailored set of trusted information solutions.

If your organization is ready to jumpstart its trusted information efforts, you should consider a hosted Information On Demand information agenda kick-start workshop. This workshop leverages IBM's extensive experience and Information On Demand best practices to guide CIOs and their business colleagues quickly through the process of building a cohesive information agenda, with an actionable set of projects to execute.

Once you get started, your organization will be on its way to delivering trusted information that can greatly improve your organizations' ability to identify and manage risk, meet regulatory requirements, speed new products and services to market and enhance customer service.

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