strategy

Information Management is the new Black

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Dr Kate Andrews is a partner at BDO Kendalls (QLD), and Kate’s area of specialty is intellectual capital and knowledge management.  Kate looks for very practical outcomes from knowledge management to benefit the business, and I can’t recommend Kate highly enough as a KM practitioner.  Kate and I, though, often work with clients together in the area of information management and knowledge management.  There are a great number of aspects to a knowledge management strategy that are very relevant to business, and a great many of these aspects are extremely interesting, engaging, and fire the imagination of clients.

Perhaps unfortunately, information management is not, perhaps, shall we say, the most sexy of aspects of knowledge management to pursue.  Unfortunately for those that are really intrigued by the more exotic aspects of KM, information management is the absolute foundation building block of a successful knowledge management strategy.  It is very difficult to manage your knowledge if you can’t manage your information.  And so Kate and I frequently work together in the area of knowledge management and information management to get good client outcomes.

The most practical application of information management that we have found is the framework adopted by the Government Chief Information Office in New South Wales, although these have now been withdrawn from circulation and are in the process of being revised.  These identify specific activities around audit, copyright, framework, inventory, liability, data quality, and information custodianship.  BDO Kendalls uses this framework to provide an information management strategy based around our usual approach (three month milestones, defined work programs, and capability growth for the business in the area of information management for critical information types). 

One of the major variations we use to the NSW approach is that today we think more seriously around the use of a folksonomy instead of a formal taxonomy.  Although it – to my logical accountant brain – is illogical and irrational and makes no sense whatsoever, we find that this approach gives our clients 80% of the benefits for 20% of the effort (well, approximately – there’s never an argument with the pareto principle is there?). 

Future information management posts will provide an overview of information management and build a library around the topic. 

Aligning IS and Business Strategy

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As will be a tradition this week, I present an introductory rant about the topic at hand, and since today is Tuesday it’s IT Strategy day it’s time to talk about strategy.Â

It’s a given that IT strategy ‘must align with business strategy’.  Yet it is quite difficult to get this right – not least because it is hard to align an IT strategy with a business strategy when there isn’t a business strategy.  There is another article on this site (‘Getting IT Right!‘) that talked about those things that need to be done to ‘Get IT Right!’.  There was a follow-up presentation to that, which I will post in due course, that used the COBIT framework to identify 20 core business goals, prioritise those goals, the best  accounting tools for business and then map those goals to fundamental IT activities – which of course should provide direction to IT strategy that is aligned with the business.

These business goals, as outlined by COBIT, are:

Financial Perspective
1. Expand market share
2. Increase revenue
3. Return on investment
4. Optimise asset utilisation
5. Manage business risks
Customer Perspective
6. Improve customer orientation and service
7. Offer competitive products and services
8. Service availability
9. Agility in responding to changing business requirements (time to market)
10. Cost optimisation of service delivery
Internal Perspective
11. Automate & integrate the enterprise value chain
12. Improve & maintain business process functionality
13. Lower process costs
14. Compliance with external laws/regulations
15. Transparency
16. Compliance with internal policies
17. Improve & maintain operational & staff productivity
Learning and Growth
18. Product/business innovation
19. Obtain reliable and useful information for strategic decision making
20. Acquire and maintain skilled and motivated personnel

COBIT is a very useful approach to use in IT consulting, and although it was originally developed as an IT Audit tool, it makes a lot of sense to adapt COBIT to a ‘doing’ framework as opposed to an ‘assurance’ framework.  BDO Kendalls uses COBIT as its framework in all consulting services to our SME clients, and it is a very valuable tool for that purpose.Â

Those in the know will recognise these business goals as driven by a balanced scorecard philosophy.  Using COBIT, it is possible to rank these goals, and then identify the IT activities and focus that align with the business goals.  I will be posting more around this approach in this area of strategy, but essentially if a business cannot identify its business strategy in a cohesive form – which, alas and alack, is often the realpolitik IS professionals must deal with – a process to rank these business goals can be very useful in identifying what IT activities are needed to align IT with the business.

Next week:  how to go about ranking the business goals.Â

IT Governance Day: Is IT governance just for geeks?

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Well if it’s Monday – and it isn’t (at least not in Australia) -  that means it is IT Governance day at the blog.  I could start with a fundamental overview of the world of IT Governance and set out an agenda of blog entries for the next few weeks – but I won’t.  That would probably be too ambitious – so I’ll start with a fundamental flaw in, apparently, just about everyone’s thinking.

Tying this post back to the subject line, not only is IT Governance not just for geeks, it isn’t for geeks.  IT Governance is ensuring that the entirety of the IT system works towards achieving business aims and strategy.  It relates to ensuring that the portfolio of IT people, processes, and technologies is in balance.  That role absolutely has nothing to do with IT speak.  And yet I have been approached by journalists and clients alike in the past with the absolute underlying assumption that IT is very technical and that it cannot be managed without an understanding of the technicalities below that threshold. That is absolutely not true and in fact the opposite is true – it is probably less-than-helpful at a Board and committee level  to have that technical understanding of IT.  You do not need to be an IT geek to be on the Board and governing IT operations.  All members of the Board are equally responsible for IT Governance, not just a board member with technical expertise. 

No-one expects a board member to understand how the engines in the fleet of delivery vehicles work – and, news flash, the modern vehicle is fairly complex!  Yet information technology instantly draws shudders of revulsion from some quarters and dark murmuring of witchcraft, magic smoke, and database normalisation (all of which are the blackest of black magic and therefore clearly evil and not to be understood by anyone).  The role of the board member in IT Governance is, in my view at least, to focus on the portfolio of activities, require monitoring and feedback regarding the performance of IT, and to provide direction in the allocation of resources.  Certainly this requires advice from IT professionals – particularly around the area of resource allocation – but good IT Governance does not require that the mechanic be at the board table just because he or she knows how to rebuild an engine.  .

I think the situation that we have has come about because in the past IT professionals have been guilty of portraying IT as some form of dark magic rite, as that was felt to give power and direction over IT.  There is certainly a danger for IT professionals in comjmunicating only half the story behind IT to the board.  I have met with more than a few IT professionals in the past who complain that their IT budget has been slashed because they opened up and tried to explain to the board what was needed.  In most casese, the board listened, heard mutterings of dark magic, and then found a language they could understand – the language of the bottom line.  Which, with great glee, the board slashed – with little regard for what that meant to business outcomes.  The danger here is that IT is seen as a cost rather than a benefit – and the lesson for IT in dealing with the board and those responsible for budget allocations is to focus on the benefits of IT rather than just the costs.

There is a great publication that I was involved with two years ago through CPA Australia called IT Governance:  A Practical Guide for Company Directors, and it is a very accessible and usable publication with great ideas for implementing IT Governance.  It can be purchased here and is something that any company should consider purchasing if they are serious about seeing value from IT. 

I will use this guide as a framework for my future posts around IT Governance.  I will make the note here and now that, as chair of the ITM CoE for CPA Austrralia, there is a publication focussed on the business management of information technology in the pipeline, and a publication of the IT Governance Guide aimed squarely at SME’s.  These will be interesting future publications – probably coming out in the second half of 2007 and first half of 2008 respectively.

Travelling to Sydney for clients and other stories

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I have just finished running a workshop as part of developing a knowledge management strategy for a client. I am now sitting in Sydney Airport, where it is all bedlam let loose upon the world with delayed flights due to fairly impressive storms and hail. I am on a 5:00pm flight out of Sydney – hopefully it isn’t delayed – but looking at the departure boards that may be wishful thinking. I guess I will find out one way or another – skies look fairly clear.

This is the view from the food court (I am flying Virgin Blue although every trip I have taken with them has had a delay in the past year and this one looks like being no different – jury’s still out because it requires evidence beyond all reasonable doubt).

And I know – the new active blog hasn’t got material added to it yet. I never said when I was starting, as I recall; will create a post on the plane on the way home.

(Post Update: The plane was half an hour late – due to a storm cell over Sydney this morning that delayed flights all day. All handled very well, and professionally, and QANTAS was probably delayed too. Still, that’s 3 of 3 now).

Blogging and the art of lying fallow – fallow like a phoenix

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The blog has been lying fallow for a fair chunk of this year.  There have been several good reasons (and several bad reasons) for this – it seems to be a point of pain that a lot of bloggers come to eventually.  For blogging to work, it seems you definitely need good content (well, duh) to attract readers.  And regular content.

So thinking it through the blog is at its tipping point – either it gets ‘heavier’ and more regular in its content or it devolves into a sporadic nonentity.  Clearly the second option is quite possible at the moment, but I guess I’d rather not.  The most successful blogs in my observation have had regular content on a topic of interest.  Now, ‘information systems’ is a fairly niche area of interest, so I am not kidding myself that this blog will:

  1. Ever make a Technorati ‘most popular’ list
  2. Make money

However, with any luck I can bring together my thoughts and research around the management of information systems into one spot and help at least a few people.  With this in mind, I am going to commit to the following schedule:

  • Monday:  IT Governance Day
  • Tuesday:  Business IS Strategy Day
  • Wednesday:  IT Management Day (IT Review and IT project management)
  • Thursday:  Information Management Day
  • Friday:  The Toolbox (New software or tools that help people to Get Things Done)
  • Weekend:  The Fun Stuff (Games, videos, jokes, strange stuff on the Net)

These topics cover off my areas of expertise and the work I do for clients, and of course I’ll try to throw in the ‘normal’ ad hoc blogging stuff like media mentions and upcoming speaking engagements.  I will try to throw in a bit more personal stuff as well to humanise the blog (although I attended a session on identity theft recently that scared the bedickens out of me). 

And while I’m at it – a name change is in order so that the blog sounds less like the poor cousin to a root canal and somewhat trender, hipper, and using a language that has been dead a thousand years:  from the ashes arise ‘notitia ratio procuratio’ (latin for information systems management).Â