WILLIAM G. SMITH & ASSOCIATES INFORMATION RESOURCE MANAGEMENT SEMINARS AND CONSULTING "CLEANING UP THE WORLD'S DATA MESSES"

CONCEPTS OF INFORMATION RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (IRM)

Most enterprises today are critically dependent upon automated information for both daily operation and management control. Today, information is the most important and highest-leveraged resource the business controls -- the means by which all other resources are managed. Yet, few businesses have begun to exploit the enormous strategic potential of a well-integrated information environment. Most enterprises function at a small fraction of their potential productivity with a set of terribly dis-integrated, inconsistent, and often redundant application systems, operating on an underlying redundant, inconsistent, and untimely data mess. The main obstacles to exploiting the information resource are internal to the enterprise, and can be easily overcome.

This informational (not skill-building) seminar targets senior management of the enterprise, and strikingly contrasts the way we currently manage business resources (human, financial, material, equipment, and facilities), and the way we currently (mis)manage information. The seminar also contrasts the IRM environment with the traditional "dis-integrated systems" environment embraced by most enterprises today, and describes how/why the IRM approach solves the problems inherent in the "dis-integrated systems" approach. It shows how simple application of well-recognized, time-proven, routinely-practiced management discipline to this stuff called "information" will remedy the massive information messes so prominent today. An integrated information environment is a strategic necessity today, and is not the result of accident nor random motion. The react-mode IS/IT Organization within the enterprise today must be empowered to carefully plan, model, build/acquire, and maintain this integrated information environment, not to just react to immediate need of the moment. The need for the enterprise to change rapidly and affordably, and the accelerating rate of change in computer technology makes IRM not only a proactive, but a defensive necessity in today's economy. Ironically, any business or government agency today would function significantly faster, cheaper, better, and more flexibly using less than 10% of the stored data that they currently attempt to manage, less than 10% of the existing program code they've bought/built, and a fraction of the computer technology (hardware and operating software) they currently manage. Integration means shaking it all down, pressing it together.

The seminar clearly describes the six critical success factors for an effective IRM environment (what management of the enterprise must do and change in order to succeed with IRM), and describes a detailed, step-by-step plan to transition (aggressively, or gradually) from today's react-mode IS/IT to IRM. The seminar is 100% jargon-free and easily understood by any audience, without over-simplifying the issues.

After presenting this seminar to scores of senior management teams, we are usually asked "This is such common sense! Why didn't we do this ten years ago, before we made such a mess?" The simple answer is that the IS/IT Organization has been so preoccupied with its senior-management-defined role of reacting quickly to the next requirement, and senior management with steering the ship, that no one has stepped back and asked "What's going wrong here?" It is very easy to become rooted in "the way we've always done it". The sooner the enterprise begins transition to IRM, the sooner it will experience the almost unbelievable benefits. The scenery only changes for the lead dog....

TOPICAL OUTLINE:

• Information Resource (IRM) Concepts
  • Information Resource Management Defined
  • Managing Information as a Corporate Resource
  • Systems-land vs. IRM-land
  • The Problem - The "Dis-integrated System Paradigm"
    • Consequences of the "Dis-integrated System Paradigm"
    • Trends in the Dis-Integrated Systems Environment
    • Data Quality in Systemsland
    • The Orthogonal Process/Data Conundrum
  • The IRM Goal
    • Information Resource Categories and Management Objectives
    • The Primacy of the Data Resource
    • Trends in the IRM environment
    • Data Quality in IRM-land
  • A Little Guidance from Aristotle
  • IRM Requires . . .
• The Big Six Critical Success Factors for an IRM Environment
  • 1. Executive Leadership and Involvement
    • Example CIO Charter
    • Example Executive Information Steering Group Charter
  • 2. Formal IRM Infrastructure (Ground Rules/Controls)
    • IR Framework
    • IRM Policies
    • IRM Standards
    • IRM Method(s)
    • IRM Tools
  • 3. Living Conceptual-Level Enterprise Information Resource Models
    • Enterprise Functional Model
    • Enterprise Organizational Model
    • Enterprise Geographic Business Location Model
    • Enterprise Conceptual Data Model
    • Enterprise Conceptual Transaction Model
    • Enterprise Conceptual Distribution Model
    • Enterprise Conceptual Technology Model
  • 4. The Master Implementation/Migration Plan
  • 5. Effective IRM Organizational Structure and Transition Plan
  • 6. Appropriate Skill Base
• How to Transition from "Dis-integrated Systems-land" to "IRM-land"
  • Businesses Change When . . .
  • IRM Step-by-Step Transition Plan
  • Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary Transition
• Summary

DURATION: 1 DAY (can be squeezed into one-half day if necessary; time for Q&A of audience concerns, problems, misunderstandings, etc. must be eliminated)

TARGETED AUDIENCES: (no recommended maximum number of attendees)

• CEO, Senior Enterprise Management, CIO
• Middle-Level Enterprise Managers
• IS/IT Managers
• IS/IT Staff

PREREQUISITE: none